Trump is not the storm that is battering our political shores. Trump is the storm surge, the destructive water crushing and eroding our norms and shattering the dykes of good governance but he is merely a product of the storm, an emergent property of the cyclone and should he be defeated in November, even if it is by margins so large and unquestionable that we are certain of the result on election night, the storm will not have passed but instead will have presented the false calm of its eye.

Without the benefits of aircraft, satellites and radar an approaching hurricane seems at first like a large but normal storm, there is nothing in the growing winds, darkening clouds, and sheets of rain to foretell the monster that is imminent. For decades the growing reactionary racism, rejections of reality, and insular inbred system of information of the Republican party and its supporting organization have been the building storm. Trump is not a sudden lightning strike that shatters the air and then vanishes he is the product of the building winds, the lowering pressure that pulls the sea from its bed to wash away civilization. While the storm surge deals tremendous damage, it is not the most dangerous part of the hurricane that is the eye wall where the winds are the fastest and can rip tress from their roots and houses from their foundations.

When you pass through the eye wall into the storm’s eye the winds vanish, the skies clear, and the calm can lure you to your death. Because when the other side of the eye brings the storm back it does not build slowly as it did before but rather the winds go from calm to full force in moments, now battered weakened and damaged structures from the opposite direction, shattering weaking building with the sudden force.

Trump defeat will be a moment of clam but Trumpism, the vile, racist approach to American governance will not have vanished. The attacks, spurious and hyperbolic on the new administration will, with their resemblance to GOP behavior during the previous Democratic Administrations, seem like a return to normalcy and like the hurricane’s eye we must not be lulled into compliancy or expect that the worst is over. 2022 and 2024 will be end of the eye and the return to the fight for survival and we must be ready for it. The storm surge will have passed but not the storm.