Election 2024: The illusion of division hits a tipping point

Yesterday, the world awakened to a reality that hundreds of millions of people neither expected nor wanted: an America boasting Donald J. Trump as its President-elect.

After more than a year of egregiously manipulative campaign ads, roller coaster polling, grandstanding debate performances, and recycled (and unfulfilled) promises from the 2020 election cycle, we were primed to expect the worst. We’d endured warnings from pundits and political operatives of the looming threat of fascism and dictatorship, unchecked racism, deportation of legal immigrants, mass executions, nationwide bans on abortion and interracial marriage, and the death of democracy and the Constitution. We’d been inundated by headlines warning of inevitable violence and unrest, regardless of which candidate ultimately won the election.

Yet in the cold light of day, something unexpected happened. The aftermath of one of the most hotly contested elections in modern history has been, well, surprisingly uneventful—dare I say, even anticlimactic?