There is no metaphor for what is about to happen in Washington, D.C If we erased every threat, every lie, every theft, every crime, every con, even the inexplicably self-satisfied look on his face as he bopped awkwardly to “YMCA” at that town hall with Kristi Noem last fall, nothing, and I mean nothing, could have prepared us for the gigantic national ignominy of having a felon and rapist take the oath of office under the dome of the Capitol he had his hordes trash four years ago nearly to the day in his attempted coup.

We have reached a nadir when the only comparison to this moment that seems even marginally adequate is the shelling of Ft. Sumter by a Confederate battery that began the Civil War, which in addition to costing the lives of 600,000 American citizens, cleaved this country in ways that persist to this very day.

Lamentations by Democrats filled online spaces this morning – doom and gloom and finger-pointing and regret and anger – the eleventy-seven stages of grief that follow a political loss. But I’m going to ask you a question now that I hope will aid you in dealing with the hideous display of the inauguration and the chest-beating war dance of outrage and illegality that will be the executive orders he has promised and will certainly follow.

Have you cried, in public or in private, at the seemingly unbearable tragedy of a political loss previously in your life? I have. It was years ago. The candidate and the office at stake don’t matter, but it happened, and it was real, and my tears shocked me. What was I doing crying because one of our good guys lost to one of their bad guys? It had happened before, and it would happen again, and in the interim, the good guy would win other offices, so what was the big deal? Elections are baked into our national politics and way of life. Somebody wins, which means somebody else has to lose. That’s the way the game of politics is played.

The tragedy of the particular political loss that happened years ago came and went, along with many, many others that have happened since then. Bad things came to pass, like wars and preventable deaths from disease and poverty, but good things happened, too, like advances in civil rights and the passage of the Affordable Care Act and the expansion of health insurance to tens of millions who had never had it. Life went on.

Is this time really so different that our despair should be so deep, our sense of doom so complete?

My answer is no, and to understand why, I point you to what just happened with Trump’s big plan to execute immigration raids in Chicago later this week. It was reported that the plans for the raid “leaked,” so they have been put on hold, which is code for cancelled, at least for now.

But that is not what happened at all, and what did happen is illustrative of why there is hope even at this dark moment. It seems that Trump’s “Border Czar,” Tom Homan, was at a political party in Chicago last month and was bragging about the immigration enforcement the new Trump administration was planning, as ever, for “day one." Homan told the assembled Republican fat cats that it would begin “right here” in Chicago because the city had lots of immigrants and Trump and his minions had a bone to pick with the mayor, who they claimed had turned Chicago into a “sanctuary city.” The raids were promoted on right wing social media as part of Trump’s “shock and awe” plans for Inauguration Day.

Oh, how the arrogant and incompetent work their magic, let us count the ways!

Here is what you don’t do if you want to carry out something you’re calling a “raid.” You don’t advertise what you’re going to do in advance, because then it’s not a surprise. You don’t include the online right wing in your planning, because they’re a bunch of loudmouths and what they say is right out there for everyone to read. Which means if you’re an immigrant, and you’re in Chicago, and you read there’s going to be a raid on Tuesday, you might consider taking a quick trip to Rockford or maybe Cedar Rapids and cool your heels for a while.

Trump has not even been inaugurated. He doesn’t run the Department of Homeland Security or Immigration and Customs Enforcement yet. The people working in those departments report to Biden administration officials, who still occupy their offices and pull down federal paychecks.

Let’s consider this: Trump has been flapping his jaws about how much he hates the federal workforce and how he wants to fire people wholesale and replace them with his loyalist hacks. So, do you think there might be some federal employees in the agencies associated with immigration enforcement who are not looking forward to the reign of Tom Homan and Kristi Noem, she of the nervously-smiling-through-the-“YMCA”-dance-along? Do you think that some of these federal employees, over whom Trump does not yet have authority, might have helped to leak the Homan plans for the Chicago raids?

See how this works? If you want to do stuff like Trump has been bragging he’ll do, such as disassemble whole sections of the federal government and cut not billions but trillions from the budgets that pay for the jobs of people Trump has promised to fire, you had better have your shit together, because there are a lot more of them than there are of you, and many of these federal employees Trump is so disdainful of love their jobs and count on their paychecks to pay their mortgages and their kids’ college tuitions.

It goes beyond the misbegotten immigration raid. Take Trump’s nominee for Secretary of Defense, Pete Hegseth, who has made no secret of his disrespect for the service of women and gay people in our military. The first thing Hegseth is going to have to do when he sits down at his big desk on the E-Ring of the Pentagon is deal with the severe recruitment problem the Army, Navy, and Air Force are having. The point being, you can’t have an effective military if you don’t have the warm bodies to fill the ranks. So, whatchagonna do, Petey boy? With holes in the ranks of serving troops already, you’re going to drive women and gays and trans soldiers out of the service because they get the message you think they aren’t up to the task of being what you insist on calling “warriors,” without a reason beyond your own Christian Nationalist prejudice.

That makes a hell of a lot of sense, doesn’t it?

Trump’s people just aren’t very good at the job of being avenging assholes for Donald Trump. I read today that a total of 19 former Fox News hosts, contributors, staffers, on-air commentators and executives will be filling jobs in the new Trump administration. They aren’t even in office yet, and already like Hegseth, they are well-endowed with the useful qualities of arrogance and ignorance and incompetence, and already they are alienating the people who actually run the operations of the government they are taking control of and will seek to bend to their will.

We have a tendency to look at Trump and the politics of Trumpism as if it happens in a vacuum. We are accustomed to listening to Trump make pronouncements as if the words coming out of his mouth are actions. You need look no further than Trump’s campaign promises to deport “ten million” immigrants, “the largest deportations in this country’s history.” Even today, there was a story about Trump bragging that he will deport more immigrants than Eisenhower. Who knew that was even a thing, and yet there he is, with more words, more bragging, and of course, more lies.

Above all, remember the lies. Lies are his oxygen. He can’t breathe without lying, and so a lot of what we will see and hear from Trump in the coming days will simply be lies. He will issue executive orders that are lies, things that cannot be done by executive fiat, things that will immediately come under fire from administrative challenges and lawsuits, things that have no meaning, such as “shutting down” the windmills and “ending” electric cars. Even “drill baby drill” is already imperiled: the Biden administration put up leases in the arctic for auction, and there were no takers. Nobody wants to drill for oil up there at a time when drilling down here is at record levels.

Things are not good in this country of ours with Donald Trump on his way into office. We would be a lot better off if that were not the case. It’s not that despair isn’t an option. There is nothing wrong with a little hand-wringing at a time like this.

But think of it as if you are Muhammed Ali. Do you remember what he would do in the ring just after the bell rang? He would skip around, shaking his arms at his sides from the shoulders, seemingly defenseless, until his opponent would do something stupid, like taking a shot at Ali. His left would flash upwards, then again, then a right, and punches would connect and it was a fight.

We’re in the arm-shaking stage. The fight begins tomorrow. Get ready to be hit and to hit back. This is politics. We’re good at it. We’re fighters. We’re Democrats. It’s what we came for.