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It’s over. Donald Trump is history.

For countless Americans– a bulk, by nearly 5m popular votes– it’s a time for event and relief. Trump’s ruthlessness, vindictiveness, non-stop lies, corruption, rejection of science, disorderly incompetence and gross narcissism brought out the worst in America. He checked the limits of American decency and democracy. He is the closest we have actually come to a dictator.

Democracy has actually had a reprieve, a stay of execution. We have another chance to preserve it, and restore what’s excellent about America.

It will not be simple. The social material is deeply torn. Joe Biden will inherit a pandemic far even worse than it would have been had Trump not played it down and refused to take obligation for containing it, and a recession exacting an unneeded toll.

The worst tradition of Trump’s term of workplace is a bitterly divided America.

Judging by the number of ballots cast in the election, Trump’s base of support is approximately 70 million. They were mad even before the election (as were Biden fans). Now, most likely, they are angrier.

He didn’t simply pour salt into our injuries. He planted grenades in them

The nation was already divided when Trump ended up being president– by race and ethnicity, area, education, nationwide origin, faith and class. But he exploited these divisions to advance himself. He didn’t simply pour salt into our wounds. He planted grenades in them.

It is a repellent legacy. Americans have actually highly disagreed over what we want the federal government to do, we at least concurred to be bound by its decisions. This meta-agreement required enough social trust for us to regard the views and interests of those we disagree with as similarly worthy of consideration as our own. But Trump continually compromised that trust to feed his own monstrous ego.

Elections normally end with losing candidates congratulating winners and graciously accepting defeat, thus demonstrating their dedication to the democratic system over the specific outcome they fought to accomplish.

There will be no graciousness from Trump, nor a concession. He is incapable of either.

He will be president for another two and a half months. He is still charging that the election was stolen from him, installing legal obstacles and demanding recounts, maneuvers that could prevent states from satisfying the legal due date of 8 December for picking electors.

If he continues, America might find itself in a scenario similar to what it dealt with in 1876, when declares about ballot fraud forced an unique electoral commission to choose the winner, just 2 days prior to the inauguration.

I would not be amazed if Trump refuses to go to Biden’s inauguration and stages a huge rally rather.

It could go on for many years, Trump keeping the country’s attention, staying the center of debate and divisiveness

He’ll send firestorms of aggrieved messages to his followers– questioning Biden’s legitimacy and urging that they refuse to recognize his presidency. This will be followed by months of rallies and tweets including even more extravagant charges: plots versus Trump and America by Biden, Nancy Pelosi, “deep-state” bureaucrats, “socialists”, immigrants, Muslims, or any other of his basic opponents.

It could go on for years, Trump keeping the nation’s attention, staying the center of debate and divisiveness, sustaining his followers in perpetual fury, titillating them with the possibility he may run again in 2024, making it harder for Biden to do any of the national recovery he’s guaranteed and the country so frantically needs.

How can Biden recover the country when Trump doesn’t want it healed?

The media (consisting of Twitter, Facebook, and even Fox News) could assist. They have begun to call out Trump’s lies in actual time and cut off his interview, practices that should have begun years back. Let’s hope they continue to tag his lies and otherwise overlook him– a fitting end to a reality TV president who tried to turn America into a truth warzone.

The responsibility for healing America falls to all of us.

For starters, we ‘d do well to recognize and honor the altruism we have actually observed during this attempting time– starting with 10s of thousands of election employees who have actually worked long hours under tough and in some cases dangerous situations.

Add to them the hospital workers across the country conserving lives from the scourge of Covid-19; the countless firemens in the west and the emergency responders on the Gulf coast fighting the effects of environment change; the civil servants getting joblessness checks out to countless out of work Americans; social workers dealing with household crises in the wake of expulsions and other hardships; armies of volunteers doling out food from soup kitchens.

These are the real heroes of America. They embody the decency of this land. They are doing the recovery, rebuilding trust, reminding us who we are and who we are not.

Donald Trump is not America.

Robert Reich, a previous United States secretary of labor, is professor of public policy at the University of California at Berkeley and the author of Saving Industrialism: For the Numerous, Not the Couple of and The Typical Excellent. His brand-new book, The System: Who Rigged It, How We Repair It, is out now. He is a writer for Guardian US