So...it happened. Donald Trump--the buffoon, the meme, the man who I opened the very first published article of my career by associating with the words “I am aware / That I am an asshole / I really don’t care / About all of that, though”--will, thanks to the Electoral College, take the oath this January and become the next President of the United States.

As President, Trump and the Republican Party will have both houses of Congress in their grasp. They will also be able to fill at least one seat on the Supreme Court--if not the currently-vacant one that Senate Republicans have refused to fill since February, then certainly whichever ones open in the future--and have total control of the state legislature and governorship in 24 states. This means the GOP will have the ability to push their agenda at all levels of government, and by now, we know what that means--cut taxes, strip away regulations on business, add restrictions on access to abortion and birth control, and everything else the Republicans have been doing over and over since their policy ideas stagnated in the 1980’s.

If you’re a Democrat right now, or you’re a disaffected Republican who never liked Trump and never voted for him, then the next few years probably look bleak--especially if you’re a woman, a person of color, a non-Christian, a member of the LGBTQ community, or anyone else who might be at risk of harassment, intimidation, and violence from newly-emboldened bigots. At the very least, the Republicans in Washington will have two years to steamroll policy into effect, during which time we risk destroying NATO, wasting billions on building a wall (let’s be real, Mexico’s not paying for it), derailing global efforts to fight climate change...the list goes on and on and on.

It’s not a good look for America at all that we’re going to have a man who has openly bragged about dodging taxes, gaming the legal system, and sexually assaulting women as our leader and global representative, especially after the restorative effects that President Obama has had on our reputation abroad. It’s not a good look that, in the upcoming months, Donald Trump will be in court multiple times for such charges as racketeering and child rape. Yes, I know, he’s supposed to be innocent until proven guilty, but frankly, the fact that he has to go to court for this at all--not to mention that tape of him saying “I’m gonna be dating her in ten years” about a 10-year-old--makes our whole country look bad.

So yes, Democrats, now is the time to get mad. Frankly, we have a right to. Say what you will about Hillary Clinton, but she was objectively saner and more qualified, she won the popular vote--possibly by over a million votes, once the count finally ends--and yet thanks to an arcane electoral mechanism that was supposed to keep demagogues like Donald Trump out of the White House, we’ve now been screwed out of the White House twice in the last five Presidential elections. Now is not the time to be passive.

But when you draw your swords, Democrats, promise me one thing. Promise me you won’t turn them on each other.

I know, I know, this might sound bizarre when we’re still trying to figure out where we went wrong and there are so many tantalizing explanations out there. If you were for Bernie in the primaries and only voted for Hillary out of resignation, if at all, it’s easy to say that this is all Hillary’s fault. It’s easy to say that Bernie would have wiped the floor with Trump, that if only the DNC had given him a chance, he would have kept the Democrats in power. Conversely, it’s easy for those who were with Hillary the entire way to say that all Bernie did was needlessly divide and demoralize the base, that we never should have listened to him, that Russia and WikiLeaks and the FBI all put their fingers on the scales. And in both cases, it’s easy to conclude that the other Democratic candidate’s faction of the party is the problem, and that the progressives need to kick out the establishment Democrats or vice versa.

But no matter where you fall within the party, putting the blame on some other section of the party is the tempting way to deal with things because, let's face it, it’s the easy way out. It’s easy to say losing the election is somebody else’s fault, because it lets you absolve yourself of the blame. It lets you be frustrated at your own party for not being able to get the job done without having to stop and reflect and say, “What if I didn’t do enough? What if I’m the reason that we lost?” because those are the questions we don’t want to have to answer. Those are the difficult questions, and in politics these days, tough questions are an anathema.

But even then, those questions shouldn’t become the subject of every liberal thinkpiece from now to Inauguration Day. Reflecting on those things on your own is perfectly valid. But when we spend too much time on these what-ifs, and when we get stuck on other what-ifs like “What if Hillary campaigned in this state?” or “What if this demographic voted in greater numbers?”, and when every liberal commentator with a writing gig sits around making what-if articles all day long, it stops being productive and starts being mental masturbation.

A hall of mirrors is no better than a house divided, and we as a party absolutely cannot afford to become either one. Why? Because right now, the Republican Party is looking like a pack of cartoon wolves--eyes wide, big red tongues slobbering, forks and knives in hand that they really don’t need, but carry anyway because cartoon logic. They’re hungry to implement their agenda, they’ve got practically every single seat at the table, and they’re not leaving anything for us if they can help it.

See, the Republicans in DC don’t care how they got here. They don’t care that Donald Trump is a volatile egomaniac who lacks both the experience and the temperament to be President. They don’t care that Donald Trump has flip-flopped on basically every one of his policy positions except for “vaccines cause autism.” If anything, that works in their favor, because they can easily convince him of whatever policies they want to push. What they care about is that their six years of obstructionism have finally, improbably, paid off, and now they can undo everything President Obama has accomplished. That means goodbye environmental regulations, that means stripping rights from the queer community, and most of all, it means repealing Obamacare. And with all the power they have right now, you’d better believe they’re going to push their agenda with everything they’ve got.

The more energy Democrats waste fighting amongst ourselves or hiding out in echo chambers of introspection, the more space the Republicans have to undo everything Democrats have fought for in the last 8 years. It doesn’t matter which one we end up in, because the results will be the same if we get into either: we lose out, and more importantly, the American people get screwed over.

Now, more than ever, Democrats need to stand together. We need to set aside establishment vs. outsider, Hillary vs. Bernie, all those divides, and remember the threat we’re up against. We have to stay shocked at Donald Trump, because normalizing him and trying to work with him only makes another Trump in the future more likely. We have to fight the Republicans’ agenda at all levels of government in all 50 states, because we need all the ground we can get. We have to get active and get out the vote in 2018, 2020, and every year afterwards, because when Democrats don’t vote, Democrats don’t win.

Yes, it’s going to be a difficult road. Yes, it’s going to be hard sometimes to all get along. But if we start clipping wings of the party, we only make it harder to rise up. The time to organize and fight Trump isn’t when he takes office, or when he starts making appointments, or when he does something dangerous. It’s here. It’s now. And the longer we wait to do it, the greater the chances that Donald Trump sends the country plunging off a cliff like so many of his ill-fated business ventures.