Tending to the herd on even the tough days

The chores of the farm show us a way forward for American democracy

This is where a farmer’s responsibility lies. For citizens, the task is no less pressing (Photo by Wolfgang Hasselmann on Unsplash)

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The friends we invited for Thanksgiving dinner this year didn’t show up until just after dark. There had been a power outage on the farm, it seems, so before they drove a couple of hours to our place they had to fire up a generator to make sure their cows would have water. We had a great feast and lots of conversation, and then everybody went off to bed early because our friends had gotten up before dawn to feed the cows. And then they took off right after breakfast because — well, you know — they had to get back to the cows.

This is the thing about cows: They get thirsty, and they expect to be fed all the time. Our friends hope to grow their cow-calf herd by a couple dozen head in the spring, meaning that they’re not backing away from this responsibility. If you know anybody who raises beef or dairy cattle, you have become acquainted with persistence.

It’s an admirable quality. Persistence is not the same as stubbornness; one implies dedication, the other pigheadedness. And one is more difficult than the other: You can be blindly stubborn, but you persist only with your eyes open, knowing what lies ahead but carrying on nevertheless.

Which is part of a topic that came up around plenty of Thanksgiving tables this year, I’m sure. A lot of my friends — good people who ordinarily engage eagerly in public affairs by supporting candidates, participating in civic activities, doing public service journalism — have suggested lately that they’re not so sure they can persist.

This isn’t about being sore losers. We’ve all experienced disappointing election results before. But there is something uniquely dispiriting about the notion of another Donald Trump presidency, and all that it implies about our country. Even the most energetic among us has got to be wondering: Can we really go through all this again? And then comes this question: If a candidate as flawed as Trump can nevertheless win almost 77 million votes — that is, 49.8 percent of the ballots cast — can anything we do make a difference?

There hasn’t been much to encourage us in the news lately. Trump’s cabinet appointments have ranged from the marginally qualified few to the horrifying many. His public pronouncements, as intemperate and dishonest as always, have reminded us of how pervasive rude behavior has become and how hard it will be to restore civility to our democratic institutions. And as Trump begins to re-assert his presence as a powerful player on the public stage, it’s hard not to be heartbroken with disappointment: Think of the brave and war-weary Ukrainians who are about to be abandoned as Trump rekindles his bromance with Vladimir Putin, or the damage to the planet that will flow from Trump’s disregard for climate change, or the hazard to the health of American children that will be posed by his elevation of anti-science demagogues to key positions in the public health establishment.

It's going to be a very long four years. That’s why I’ve been trying lately to summon the drive to persist even though I’ve felt more like yielding to the impulse to retreat. I know this: If there’s to be any hope that America can emerge from the second Trump presidency without even more damage than it sustained during his first term, it will come only if we who recognize the peril that he presents are able to be persistent. That won’t be easy.

There’s a temptation to think that all we need to do to deal with the return of Donald Trump to global power is to buckle down and summon our grit. That is, if we just get stronger in our determination, we can withstand the traumas of the second Trump administration and prepare for the political and governmental battles that lie ahead. There’s some academic support for that kind of an idea. Angela Duckworth, a University of Pennsylvania psychologist, wrote a bestseller eight years ago about grit — entitled, appropriately enough, Grit: The Power of Passion and Perseverance. Grit is a character trait that is common among high achievers, Duckworth explained, a predictor of success that has more to do with conscientiousness than with intelligence.

While grit of the sort that Duckworth described can be traced somewhat to hereditary factors and life experience, research has identified specific brain regions associated with grit, including the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex. So while a person can develop the skill of grit, there are neurobiological factors at work, too.

Yet if it took only toughness to keep our heads above water as Trumpian misbehavior floods the zone, we would have plenty of energy for the fight, and lots of champions to rally behind. Instead, we’re plagued by fatigue and even doubts about whether we’re entirely right. Maybe sky-high tariffs won’t yield both higher prices and job losses, as most economists predict; perhaps a foreign policy that accommodates authoritarian regimes won’t be as damaging to the human quest for freedom as we think. And will four years of neglect really turn the fight against climate change into a lost cause?

Before we entertain those questions, though, there’s a place that we might better position ourselves. It lies somewhere between accepting such doubts and insisting that everything will be better if we just buckle down — someplace, that is, between accommodation and stubbornness.

We might take some cues, in fact, from the advice that psychologists offer people who are fighting depression. In moments when achieving goals seems hopeless and growing optimism seems pointless, experts say, it’s useful to practice self-care and to manage stress — that is, to get rest and exercise, for example, and perhaps to meditate. It’s a good idea, too, to focus on immediate goals; small victories not only give us some encouragement to keep going, but also can add up to larger accomplishments. And it’s probably best to avoid negative influences, which in this case might mean that we should take some breaks from the news or avoid our angriest friends.

Notably, experts say that the first and most important step in fighting depression is to stay connected — that is, rather than withdrawing from life, to keep in touch with others, and to confront reality rather than avoid it. Couldn’t that sort of advice apply more broadly, as we consider our own engagement with the political challenges that face the country?

In fact, it’s not hard to infer that the healthy course ahead is to engage with our own community while not exhausting ourselves, and to keep in mind the challenges that lie ahead rather than dismissing them from our awareness. Rather than wallowing in the self-pity or anger that might typically affix to election losers, and instead of withdrawing from the life of our communities, we might more vitally join in local efforts to sustain civic life — working to make lives better in our cities and towns and across our countryside, such as through non-profit organizations, schools and local governments.

At the same time, we might keep a close eye on what’s happening in Washington, so that we’re ready to participate in the next election cycle on behalf of the ideals that aren’t represented by the Trumpian mindset. And in doing all of that, we need to give ourselves a bit of leeway to assure our mental health and physical stability.

But we were talking about cows, as you may recall. Any farmer who works with livestock knows that you can’t ignore them — that leaving cows to their own devices in a pasture is a path to losing a herd. It’s hard work: feed and water to distribute, medications to administer, fences to maintain, live births to enable. My friends have kept at the task even as fewer people are engaging in farming nowadays. They often draw upon their neighbors for help, too; that’s typical in a rural area where a lot of people understand the tasks that go along with making a living from the land, and the urgency of keeping at the work.

Our friends’ grit is admirable, but I’m pretty sure that’s not what they’d say about getting up at dawn and working through winter cold and summer heat. They’d suggest that their persistence is just the responsibility they assumed when they took on the task of building a herd.

No less do we all confront important work associated with our fundamental task of citizenship. There are days when it’s hard to pick up the chores — like the season we’re living through just now, when it feels like we’d rather just turn away. But if we hope to cultivate our democracy, we’re obligated to play a vital role, now and in the future. And so we take on our tasks, one day at a time, with some help from our neighbors and a determination to keep ourselves ready for what might come next.

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-REX SMITH