Rage. Trucks with Big Wheels.

I very rarely click on anything that has a picture of Donald Trump. Frankly, it’s not good for my personal health. But lately, pictures of him keep showing up in my feed. Him in a golf cart. Him standing there like a wax figure gone sour. Him facing a crowd. Him signing things with his big handwriting, like a first grader. I am always reminded that a small man signs with such a big signature.

I can’t help but notice—he always looks so miserable. Unhappy. Angry. As if he lost the election and now he’s standing there complaining about what President Harris has done. I find myself wanting to say, “You won, remember? Everything you dreamed could happen is starting to happen. Why are you in such a bad mood?”

Then a friend of mine—who stands on a bridge in Maine most Wednesdays holding a sign and waving at cars, said the same thing about the Trump supporters who pass by. Big trucks. Huge wheels. Trump flags flapping at the edges, torn from too many seasons in the wind. They roll down their windows and scream at her. Just filled with rage. She said, “I always want to shout back, ‘You won. Why are you still so mad?’”

It reminded me of a conversation I once had with Jason Epstein, Editor in Chief of Random House in the eighties - one of the great editors of 20th-century literature. He worked with Gore Vidal, Norman Mailer, Joan Didion, Philip Roth, Toni Morrison, E.L. Doctorow—brilliant, complicated people who shaped the American canon. He spent his weekends and summers in Sag Harbor, back when it was still the blue-collar neighborhood of the Hamptons, in the ’80s and ’90s when we all gathered there from NYC on the weekends and summers to regroup. The man noticed things.

He told me he used to walk around town and watch the local kids drive by, especially the boys in their trucks. He noticed a pattern: first, they’d go by in beat-up little pickups, just graduating high school, a girl sitting next to them on the bench seat. Big smile. A year or two later, they’d drive by again in a newer truck, lifted, oversized tires, louder than it needed to be. Still the same girl in the passenger seat. Then more time would pass, and they’d come by in a secondhand car, no longer a truck. Still the girl—but now with a baby on her lap. And, he looked angry and unhappy.

It bothered him. He felt like there was a cycle from which they couldn’t escape.

Blown-up trucks for blown-up egos? Guys who, let’s face it, have no need for those giant tires or gas-guzzling engines. It’s about trying to feel big. Powerful, when in fact, they are so not powerful. Or courageous. And even though Trump has won, at least in their minds, and they got their way, they still don’t feel big.

It festers in me.

I remember when Biden was inaugurated. I sat in my car driving from New York City to Maine listening on the radio and weeping through most of it. Just listening, not watching. It was a great way to experience it. The words were so moving. When the young poet laureate, Amanda Gorman, read her poem, I was overwhelmed with gratitude. America had voted with me. We’d chosen hope. We’d chosen decency. I felt joy. And for the next two years, I didn’t watch politics very closely. My mistake, I’ll own that, but I was happy. Happy we’d won. Happy to see the promises Biden made actually coming to life. We didn’t scream at anyone. We didn’t roll down windows or shake fists. We just went back to our daily lives and felt good about it.

I grew up around negativity. My mother loved bad news. She’d call me, breathless, and say, “Do you have a minute? I have something to tell you…” And then she’d deliver some awful story—someone’s diagnosis, a tragedy, a betrayal. I used to wonder why. Why did she need to pass it along like that? Was it joy in the bad news of someone else that made me so uncomfortable?

I turned to my AI collaborator, Celeste. I asked her why she thought Trump supporters were still so angry, even after they they won.

Here’s what she said.

“Well,” she started (Celeste always speaks with a calm kindness, even when she’s about to land a punch), “anger is a habit. And for some people, it’s also an identity. It gives them purpose. Energy. A sense of belonging—even if it’s in shared outrage.”

She paused. “Trump didn’t build a movement based on hope. He built it on resentment. And resentment needs a target, even when you win.” Celeste, AI

Ohhh, now I get it. She’s right.

If your whole worldview is built on what you hate, the government, immigrants, women with opinions, books, vaccines, wind turbines, oat milk—you can’t just flip a switch and feel joy. Joy is unfamiliar. It doesn’t get you high the way rage does. It doesn’t get the same dopamine hit. It doesn’t get shared and reposted the way fury does.

So even when they win, they’re still mad. Because they don’t know what to do with the win. They weren’t for anything. I’m for so many things.

And maybe that’s where my next lesson is.

Maybe the best armor I can wear, no wait, maybe the best weapon I’ve got is joy. Not fake joy. Not toxic positivity. But the real, solid, unshakable happiness that comes from knowing I’m living in alignment with what I believe. When they scream, I can smile. When they snarl, I can laugh with my friends. I can wave at their trucks like a queen waving from a parade float. Not one ounce of fear or loathing leaking out of me, no matter what’s swirling inside.

Maybe that’s the thing I need to add to my to-do list: let them see what joy looks like. Let them wonder where it comes from. Let it rattle them a little. Let them realize that no matter what, they are not rattling me. The fight will always be there, win or lose. I am on the right side of that fight.

Enjoy the weekend. CM