I was a beatnik. We wore our hair long—longer than the business majors, but not as long as the hippies who came along a decade later. We postured in turtleneck sweaters and pipes, attempting to look wise and world weary and probably failing at both. We insisted that we understood the rambling, loosely connected sentences of Kerouac or the shouting poetry of Ginsberg. And sometimes we might have.

As a beatnik, I was probably a fraud. I accepted the perks—listening to introspective jazz and seeing the questioning stares of students who were clinging tenaciously to the middle way (which at Western Carolina meant following the rules and not upsetting the faculty or administration). I even had a few really bad poems published in the campus magazine and in a college anthology. But I didn’t really risk anything other than a few wrist slappings for my newspaper columns criticizing the administration’s decisions. It was, by the standards of the real beatniks who spent time on the road, their brains scrambled by magic mushrooms and staying one step ahead of the landlord (and in some cases the law) a pose.

However, nothing is wasted.  

Part of the required reading for any wannabe beatnik was Albert Camus and Jean Paul Sartre, as well as Kerouac, Ginsberg, and Ferlinghetti. The part that came back to me last week while I was pondering the president-elect and his cabinet choices was Camus’ The Myth of Sisyphus. In Greek mythology, Sisyphus was sentenced to roll a large rock up a hill. Each time he got to the top, it would roll down again, and Sisyphus would trudge to the bottom, put his shoulder to the stone, and start rolling it up again. According to Camus, because Sisyphus knew the rock was going to roll back down and expected no better, he wasn’t disappointed when it did. He accepted the absurdity of life itself and did the best he could within it.  

And that’s how I’m hoping to deal with Trump presidency.

It is, to me, absurd that this country elected a man who so poorly reflects the moral, religious, and political standards that we believe in, but elect him we did. Quibbling about the unjustness of the Electoral College really doesn’t do anything. Nor does the assuredly futile hope that a bunch of electors will wake up on the morning of the ballot and realize that they have to save the nation from a president-elect whose primary platform plank was “I hate the people you hate.” I don’t believe that will happen and would probably have terrible long-term consequences if it did.

Donald Trump was, by the rules set down in the Constitution, elected president of these United States, and since I’m a citizen of the United States, that makes him my president, like it or not. I dealt with it under George W. Bush and will deal with it again. However, having no expectations regarding the President-elect’s ability to govern for the good of the people (especially after seeing his cabinet nominees), I cannot be disappointed. It’s possible that I’ll be pleasantly surprised, but that is the longest of long shots.

There is one bright spot in all of this: the Republicans who have been criticizing and attempting to stymie everything that President Obama tried to do will now have to put up or shut up. For instance, they are saying that they can replace the Affordable Care Act with a “free-market solution” that will maintain all of the protections built into the act, improve coverage, and cost less without an individual mandate. If they can, then God bless them, but if they could do that, it would have been nice if they had done it years ago.

The second bright spot is that if the Trump presidency and the Republican Congress perform up to my expectations, we’re not looking at enduring it for four years. The mid-term elections are only two years away.

Meanwhile, if you need me, I’ll be at the bottom of the hill over there putting my shoulder to the stone.