While the shock wears off, again, from our presidential election, it is a suitable time to just take a breath before we decide — that is, lock down — our reaction.

And we do decide our reaction. We will throw up our hands, rip out our hair, or just gawp with that thousand-yard stare of the traumatized. We might just quit in disgust — “I’m done!” — or blame the electorate, or just shake our heads in confusion and close the drapes.

Before we lock out other information, it might help us all to accept there are myriad reasons for Donald Trump’s reelection, and it will take a host of changes to keep Trumpism from becoming the permanent narrative of America.

First, we now know Trump’s “sweep” was really the closest the popular vote has ever been in over 100 years, as he got 49.997%, according to The New York Times. We are not Trump Nation; we are still split right down the middle and have been since 2000 when the Supreme Court decided the election 5-4.

Second, let us please dispel the false flag that only racism and misogyny fueled Trump’s win. America elected and reelected its first Black president in 2008 and 2012. Americans elected their first woman president in 2016, but the Electoral College cheat did not allow a Hillary Clinton presidency. So, these as the first and only, or even most important, explanations do not hold.

Then, of course, it seems the 2020 election was not as much of an emergency as we had feared when scrambling to replace Bernie Sanders with Joe Biden. Let’s face it, giving Trump four years off allowed the organized right wing to prepare Trump to do far more damage this time than had he won reelection. Notice, for example, how Trump now knows to try and avoid the Senate to get his Cabinet appointments approved. No more wild swings in the dark, the minions are ready like snipers to take out very carefully identified targets.

Finally, the Democrats and their supporters failed to make sure Biden was always going to be a one-term president; the Dems and Biden never made that clear because Biden never meant it to be. Dumping him, correct though it was, handed the ticket to Kamala Harris. And in case we did not notice, Harris is a younger Hillary Clinton, and their liberalism is not what America needs nor yearns for anymore.

So, as usual, the Dems went for a one-off emergency choice, and then just hoped for the best in 2024.

And hoping for the best got us Trump again.

And now, what? Quit? That is easy for the affluent liberals who feel America “let them down.” But only because they’ve never really felt let down. Oh sure, they hated George Bush, and opposed this one and that one, but when they told America it had to vote to save their democracy and America didn’t? Well then, to hell with America.

Why? Why the demand for simple answers to complex questions? They can soothe us, but then we must accept we are not particularly different from the MAGA crowd: If we don’t win, we quit. We won’t say they cheated; we’ll just go home or blame America for disappointing us.

The preference for the easy or simple soothing lie, over the hard, uncomfortable, and complex truth is an ailment that afflicts right and left — and partly explains where we are today. If we surrender to it, we will become part of the problem.

Yet, America has seemed destined for this moment since the Supreme Court decided the 2000 election 5-4. And the 21st century has not been much kinder to us since.

Now, we watch what happens when someone like Trump, determined to undermine the civil society America has not valued in a long time, gets his wish list. And how of course, the rump of civil society fights back. That fight will decide if Trumpism will come to rule or not.

But we know, we do, in our hearts, that something has come to an end in our nation. The American Century, Pax Americana, Leader of the Free World, Destroyer of Communism — all seemed to fade so very quickly when the century and millennium turned. And now that which we were is ended, and that which we will become is yet to be perceived. It will take another 12 to 20 years to sort out where we will end up.

This is the time for courage, for a sense of duty to take over from despair. The courage and duty of someone like the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr., who never wavered even though he knew he would never see “the promised land.” And can any of us say we have it worse now than he did then?

The late great poet Adrienne Rich once wrote that “despair … is a lack of imagination.” Do not despair! The villains won this one, but it was a battle not the war.

Joe Gannon, author and teacher, lives in Easthampton.