After four tumultuous years, the sordid Donald Trump administration finally reached its conclusion today. It could be argued that as a nation we avoided disaster, though anyone looking around at the raging tire fire that engulfs the United States could be forgiven for thinking otherwise. That said, our constitutional republic endured an enormous amount of abuse, culminating with an insurrection, but held up. The Trump presidency was a deafening wake-up call that bad actors can be elected here, and we may not be so fortunate next time. I’ve read World War II history for decades, and the legitimate question of Germany embracing Adolf Hitler persists. How on earth did good people go against their better angels and best interests to accept an abhorrent man with abhorrent ideas? Perhaps we have now seen how easy it is for a nation to lose its way.

It has been said before but bears repeating. As bad as Trump was, he was just a symptom of our real problems. The devils were already here and they remain: the growing wealth gap, racial inequality, disdain for or outright denial of science, disregard for facts, the dark money flowing freely into the political system, the GOP at the national level lurching from conservative to reactionary politics, the violence that always bubbles beneath the surface and often erupts in this country, etc. We have to do better solving our problems. Trumpism isn’t going anywhere, though its name may change thanks to the damaged brand.

Trump was the great purveyor lies and came dangerously close to overturning election results, which led to his second impeachment and created new legal issues for him though he is out of office. There has been much talk of unity since the breach of the United States Capitol. It can be heard everywhere, including from voices hoping to avoid any accountability for their actions in fomenting the insurrection. That simply does not work. Unity and impunity are not partners. There needs to be justice in order to move forward. Not vengeance. That’s easy. Justice. That’s harder. But it is required of those who cruised through the Capitol taking selfies while hunting for elected officials and destroying public property. It is mandatory of the politicians who courted and incited these groups by echoing statements they knew to be false from a vituperative con man.

There is a lot that needs to be dragged into the light. We’re probably going to see in the coming weeks that things were even worse than we thought. But if our elected officials lose interest in holding accountable those responsible, all in the interest of moving on, then we’re just postponing another rendezvous with catastrophe.

That’s not all. We have to do serious work to address our problems that were laid bare in 2020, including our health care system, inequality, climate change, disdain for science, contempt for truth, and the wealth gap that is shrinking the middle class. The root causes for these issues are deep, challenging to overcome, and often seated in utter human selfishness, but they relate to so much of what happened during the past four years and how Trump came to power in the first place. There is accountability needed here too.

We best get to it. There are Trump acolytes waiting in the wings, and you can bet they’ve been observing. Some are smarter, more competent, and less repulsive as human beings. And they have learned that people can be convinced to vote against their own best interests. That should scare all of us into being more vigilant about the American Experiment.

What should give us hope is how many resisted the administration’s worst impulses and spoke out loudly about the injustices. We have a new president who is eager to leave the toxicity of that administration behind. There is a lot of good in this country, and the tide is starting to change in the right direction. Let’s make sure the last four years are a regrettable blip, not the start of a trend.