Despair not my blue and purple friends. The tide is turned, and the red wall breached. It has been a daunting task from the very start. Don’t let the expectations of a greater wave and a larger breach in the wall diminish the very real victory achieved on Election Day 2018.

We faced tactics in 2016 that Americans are not used to dealing with at home. So great we have been as a nation, we haven’t faced a true despot since George III.

We have seen them in other countries, tyrants, strong men, dictators, oligarchs, and defeated them time and time again, but it was a new phenomena here on our shores. We are used to giving our leaders the benefit of the doubt, respecting the office, and believing the game was fair, and while we may disagree, we didn’t doubt their commitment to our country. Flawed men, all of them, to varying degrees, no doubt, but even this is something new for us.

Many hoped for more dramatic results, but have courage and conviction. This is just one obstacle, and an existential challenge to the nation. The journey is long, and arduous, it is not a walk in the park, but a march of endurance and perseverance.

Fear and hate are powerful and dangerous weapons, and in the hands of a master conman like the current president, who is an expert at playing off people’s emotions, ambitions, and insecurities. These tools should not be underestimated.

Make No Mistake, the man is a juggernaut. He exploits the weaknesses in our system and within us. He uses our own eyes and ears against us, tells us those who watch events and inform us are the enemy, and from day one, he has insisted that his desires of illusion and deception, are truth, and reality itself is fake.

From day one, when he told us all that it was a sunny day, when it was raining. From the start, when he said the man who led us for eight years, wasn’t really one of us, and was an imposter from somewhere else. Then when it served him no longer, he discarded the no longer convenient illusion, and moved to the next desirable fiction to distract us from the painful truths.

How does one fight a man who has such sway and hold over the minds and imaginations of others, that truth matters not a bit?

We can forgive ourselves, we are learning to fight back in a different way, against these plays out of a dark playbook of sowing division, repeating the big lie, and invoking again and again the fear of others.

These are problems we were warned about from the very beginning by those who founded our nation, but it is hard to keep those lessons fresh in the minds of each generation.

So make no mistake, we just pushed him back, and did what the Germans failed to do in 1932 when they were faced with a similar leader using similar tools and rhetoric.

We have changed the course and direction of history, and those who are ruled by hope, cooperation, and compassion have struck a great victory against those who are swayed by darker and fearful influences.