Writing after Trump

Donald Trump is leaving office tomorrow, and I'll admit to some personal nervousness. What's it going to be like to write opinion pieces in the post-Trump age? 

Over the last four years, there has been a certain clarity to writing left-of-center opinion. It's not that I wanted to reduce everything to "orange man bad" (as conservative commentators like to say) but the truth is that Trump wasn't just bad, but that he provided a prodigious supply of outrages. There was often fresh material, something new to illustrate his badness. 

But he is moving away from the very center of politics, and I fear that the muscles I use when NOT writing from a place of deserved moral outrage have grown atrophied over the last few years. I have criticized Trump for being a purveyor of "pure, refined grievance" but now I worry that I, too, am an addict. 

I'm sure that there will still be things to be mad about. Hunting for those things, seeking out the high of angry righteousness, would be a bad path to go down. 

Back in 2009, when Barack Obama took office, I feared I would run out of things to write about after George W. Bush's presidency so enraged me I made the jump from a straight-news newspaper career into opinion journalism. It turned out there was plenty to write about, even then. Probably, the same will be true now. 

We still have a pandemic to fight, an economy to write right, climate change to try to mitigate and other big issues. 

 And I will have to remind myself that some things are worth writing about even if they don't piss me off.

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