Be careful what you wish for, it may come true.

It’s taken a few days for the reality of the election to set in.

The shock of the first realization that Mr. Trump was going to win has passed. The unsettling feeling that the next four years could be a return to the turmoil of the past has begun. And the ravings of the true devotees of Mr. Trump waxing on about vindication and manifest destiny are echoing everywhere.

So, it is time to be honest with ourselves.

Trying to understand how this happened and preparing for the consequences are key to preserving our perspectives and policies.

There are a few difficult but undeniable realities. Joe Biden, whom I have always had the greatest respect for, broke a promise. I heard him make the promise long before he decided to run against Mr. Trump. He said it was time for a new generation of leaders and that those like himself had a responsibility to bring them forward.

When it was clear no one was rising to the occasion, he ran and defeated Mr. Trump at a critical time in our history. No conjecture can describe how different a country and world we would have become had Mr. Trump won consecutive terms, it is an exercise in futility.

But Mr. Biden, once in the office of the Presidency, could not let the power of the position go. While it was his right to run, he had a higher obligation to the country to step aside and let the primary process work.

It is the single biggest reason we are in the predicament.

And when it became abundantly clear he was no longer a viable candidate to face Mr. Trump, the choice was limited by unprecedented circumstances. Now I believe Ms. Harris was well qualified for the position, but she was never a serious contender in the 2020 primary process, and that hurt her..

She was forced into a race with limited time, the burden of an unbreakable link to an unpopular Biden administration, and inadequate campaign organization. This is not to excuse the choices she made or the strategies she employed. It is just the way it played out.

Mr. Trump began running for office the minute he reluctantly relinquished power in 2020, she had three months.

But there is, sadly, a simpler reason why Mr. Trump is returning to the White House. And this fact says volumes about how the character of this country has changed. Mr. Trump has spent the last eight years appealing to the baser instincts of humans. He promulgated the replacement theory. He promoted fear of cultural changes. He painted a picture of an idealized time in America that never existed.

And those who choose not to go beyond headlines that reinforce their own uninformed prejudices bought it.

Mr. Trump won because millions of Americans put self-interest before country out of fear that a false narrative was true. They were blinded by misleading and inchoate rhetoric about the state of the economy drawing them to Mr. Trump by the oldest of motivations, greed.

We shouldn’t be surprised since that was his business model.

While the mantra of “It’s the economy, stupid” has always played a major part in deciding elections, character and integrity were also important elements. We have abandoned them. The United States of America, the greatest experiment in government of the people, by the people, and for the people, has just elected a convicted felon, (un)reality TV star, and misogynistic scam artist to the Presidency.

I wish I could hear the explanations for that in a Poli Sci class fifty years from now. Or see the look of incredulity on the faces of the students.

Now if you believe in our system of justice, you cannot pick and choose what elements of that system to accept.

Many of you fervently believe the cases against Mr. Trump are politically motivated. It doesn’t matter what you believe. There is a process. We seek indictment followed by trial, jury verdict, and appellate procedures to provide the ultimate safeguard against such situations. Believing in our system is to follow it, not pick and choose what you think is valid.

To do otherwise is anarchy.

“This is a court of law, young man, not a court of justice,” Olivor Wendell Holmes once famously said. And that’s how our system works. Mr. Trump is a convicted felon until a court of competent jurisdiction says otherwise.

What we have done is give Mr. Trump the ultimate get out of jail free card.

But this doesn’t fully explain the vote, there are a lot of other factors in play.

We have stepped away from science. We reward mediocrity. We embrace people famous for being famous. We have become so timid and fearful of offending anyone that we turn a blind eye to situations and circumstances that are simply wrong. Or we target the most vulnerable among us out of misplaced fear and ignorance.

Mr. Trump won because those of us who see a different path forward assumed there would be a balance between self-interest and the greater good.

There was not. Nor should we have ever expected it given our recent descent into the pathological madness of conspiracy theory.

We assumed that warnings of Mr. Trump’s dangerous character flaws, by individuals who held the most significant positions of command authority over our most precious resource, the men and women serving in the military, would convince people to put country over politics.

We believed that individuals, placed in high government positions by Mr. Trump himself, with the best vantage point to observe Mr. Trump’s behavior as President, who warned us against putting him “anywhere near the Oval Office” would matter.

We let, without challenge, the sycophants and blind devotees deny such warnings. We stood by as they demean the character of such individuals and whitewash, minimize, and refute the seriousness of the threat.

We’ve let misinformation become a religion. Don’t like something, create a meme, post it online and there are people out there who will believe it. Screaming Fake news, Fake News, FAKE NEWS blocks out the real stories.

No one, NO ONE ate a dog or cat in the circumstances Mr. Trump claimed. That was a lie. A bold-faced outright lie that undoubtedly someone who reads this will claim to have proof to the contrary from some tweet or Facebook post or “News” article.

This is also a self-inflicted wound. No one reads multiple sources to confirm stories anymore. I would venture to say no one reads with any critical eye anymore. (Except, of course, those who will criticize this piece.) If a story is contradictory to your belief, it must be fake news. Just keep looking and Facebook or X or Instagram will offer you a story version you can embrace.

The New York Times, The Washington Post, NBC, ABC, CBS, CNN and even Fox when they drift off the expected lock-step message are the enemy. Just a few decades ago those same newspapers published the truth about the war in Vietnam and stories that led to the resignation of a corrupt and criminal president.

They are not the enemy, they are a bulwark holding government accountable. Do they get things wrong? Of course, but this doesn’t negate the things they get right. The Freedom of the Press, something Mr. Trump and his acolytes attack on a regular basis, is a key to balance of power and prevention of a decent into a dictatorship.

One of the truly troubling aspects of this decision is the influence of Evangelical and Fundamentalist Christianity. Individuals who it would seem have forgotten the fundamental tenet of Christianity and exchanged it for dark age, selectively Bible quoted, black magic where devils and demons are actual beings.

Those of this doctrinally rigid faith seem able to ignore character flaws because it advances their desire for a Christian based government.

They see the divine hand of “God” in the rebirth of Trump and his miraculous survival of an assassination attempt.

Their argument is the same used by the Catholic Church when it chose to cover up the widespread abuse of children by priests because the reputation of the Church was more important than the criminal acts committed against the most innocent.

This belief, that anything that advances a Christian dominated government is good, defies logic. By these standards, Judas could be forgiven as long as his actions furthered the purposes of this fundamental Christianity. Some might argue he did.

Both needed a martyr rising from the dead. One on the crucifixes of Rome, the other in the resurrection of Christian Nationalism from progressive modernity.

But here we are, facing four years of a President—who was a train wreck in the past—with a MAGA hypnotized Republican Senate majority and perhaps a pliant House.

A rising chorus points at images such the one below and claim an overwhelming majority of the country has spoken. But the image is deceptive. The actual numbers are much closer. And while the popular vote doesn’t decide elections, it does reflect the differences of opinion in the country.

By the latest numbers, 50.7% voted for Mr. Trump 47.8% voted for Ms. Harris. The difference amounts to 2.9% more Americans supporting Mr. Trump. While he won the election, 69,404,818 Americans preferred him not to be President.

That is hardly a mandate for wholesale change of direction.

And let’s not ignore the elephant in the room. This country has shown no compelling desire to place a woman in the office of the Presidency. There is no doubt in my mind that many people bit the bitter pill of choosing Trump simply because of that reason.

And when they scream and yell that gender had nothing to do with it, rest assured it had everything to do with it.

Sadly, the racial aspect is an element of that.

It is tempting to just sit back and let the country burn for the petty satisfaction of saying I told you so. But that would be counterintuitive to those of us who care about the country and the world.

For now, we have no choice but to bide our time. The mid-terms will tell the real tale if the country continues to embrace Mr. Trump. Let’s hope there’s enough to salvage. And let’s hope those politicians with character are still out there ready to stand in the way of another disastrous Trump administration.