There is so much to be said right now about the fate of our democracy. What kind of President will Trump 47 be? Was he kidding when he said he wanted to be a dictator on his first day? Will he really order police to shoot shoplifters? Are we technically an oligarchy now? Do a majority of Americans really think Elon Musk is cool?

These and many other serious thoughts keep me tossing and turning at night. And yet I keep coming back to a funny thing I did when Trump 45 was elected.

At that time, in 2016, Trump had just defeated Hillary Clinton (in the electoral college, but not in the popular vote).

In the weeks before the election, a tape had been released of Trump describing how he would grab women by the crotch: “When you’re a star, they let you do it.” A lot of women, including me, thought this remark would turn off so many voters that Trump would lose.

And yet he won. And I cried. I showed up bleary-eyed to school drop-off the next morning, looking at other women whose eyes were also bloodshot. I felt like I was unexpectedly surrounded by a nation of men who saw me as less than fully human.

I wanted to take action against this vast sea of sexism. And so, I broke up with my dentist.

There was nothing wrong with this dentist, other than the fact that he was a man. I didn’t really have a long-range plan to defeat sexism, but this was my immediate plan: I was never going to let a man put his hands into my mouth to check for cavities again.

And so I made the perilous journey over the water into Seattle to a female dentist. I was treated so well initially. She gave me some tea, and a comforting blanket. This was female compassion in action, I thought. Finally, I’m in a good place.

But the more this female dentist talked, the more I realized she was a complete fraud. She lied to me in a sweet and kind voice about how I needed thousands of dollars of work done. She told me compassionately but falsely that she was only looking out for me, treating me as she would her own daughter.

Chastened by this reminder that women could also be capable of deception, I paid my exorbitant bill and made my way back to dentist number one — the male.

He looked in my mouth for perhaps 30 seconds. He said that there might be a couple of things to watch in there, but that for now everything looked basically okay. He’d see me again in six months.

I hadn’t really even processed the 2016 Trump victory at that time. I hadn’t looked at all the exit polls. I hadn’t learned that a majority of white women had voted for Trump. And I didn’t know that white women would do this again in 2020 and 2024.

From the time I was about ten years old, I remember Trump in public life. I remember him on TV. I associate him with that old TV show “Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous.” He had a full head of golden hair then, and always a smirk, and he seemed tacky to me, even as a child, with his golden toilets and his golden everything. He seemed like a cautionary tale about what might happen to somebody who valued gold above all other things.

Knowing nothing about adult relationships as a ten-year-old, I still knew when a woman was being disrespected. I knew it when I went to a cooking class at a woman’s house when I was ten, and her husband had Playboy magazines spread out on the coffee table as all us kids passed by.

I knew even back then that Trump was the kind of guy who would do this; who would enlist women to participate in their own humiliation, then assure them it was normal; who would say that everybody’s husband just leaves Playboys lying around when kids come over. Nobody had to tell me any of this. I knew it instantly.

I know that, as a female, I’m supposed to try to compassionately understand my fellow citizens’ motivations more deeply, especially the motivations I don’t understand. But right now, that feels like a lie.

I think for now, I’ll take a page from the matter-of-fact male dentist’s book. I’ll peer briefly inside the mouth of our democracy this year, and cast my little light around. I’ll say it looks like things are basically holding together for now, but let’s keep watching it. Let’s see each other again in four years.

Elizabeth Fitterer is a Vashon resident.