For those of us who stiffened at Elon Musk’s stiff-armed salute, who saw the billionaires seated in First Class and felt sorry for the true believers in steerage, who took in Melania Trump’s hat and thought, “Well I would hide my face, too,” Monday did not scream “golden age” but “golden calf.”

From the open grift of the fill-my-pockets new Crypto coin of Donald Trump’s realm to the affront of pardoning even those January 6 insurrections who attacked cops – a “betrayal of decency,” fallen Capitol police officer Brian Sicknick’s family called it – it was a disgraceful day, and a lucrative one.

Once again, the president compared those who had pummeled and tased police officers to Hamas hostages. This time, he did so in front of the families of some of those kidnapped in Israel last October.

He also purged non-loyalists from non-political government jobs, suspended refugee resettlement, ended the program that was still working to reunite immigrant children separated from their parents during his first administration, and signed an executive order attempting to end constitutionally guaranteed birthright citizenship.

So, promise kept on that “dictator on Day 1” thing. It’s hard to accept that this really is what the people voted for. They did, though, along with cheap bacon, which he’s already said they will not get.

As my 96-year-old friend Frank Loy, who has worked on climate issues for 30 years, told me Monday with a smile in his voice, “a person could get discouraged.” Only, Frank never does seem to get discouraged, and this seems like a good time to tell you about that.

Frank was born in Nuremberg, Germany in 1928. Most but not all of his Jewish family was able to get out alive, and he arrived in Los Angeles at age 10 knowing almost no English. What he’s accomplished since then would take a book, not a column. But even as the State Department where he fought to promote human rights and protect refugees is being emptied of professionals, our former chief U.S. climate negotiator is focusing on what he still can do and we all still can.

If we don’t do that, then what?

On Inauguration Day, he told me how excited he is that the nonprofit he chairs, the Smart Surfaces Coalition, just expanded into India, where they’re working, as the coalition’s website says, to “enable cities to thrive despite climate threats, decrease urban heat as the world warms, save cities billions of dollars, reduce flooding/mold risk, slow global warming, and strengthen city livability, resilience, and equity.”

He’s also working with some American cities, trying to help them better cope with the extreme storms and weather that scientists had long said were coming.

Now, my friend Frank is one of a kind, and one of the people I most admire in all of the world, because while trying to make our world more hospitable to life, he and his wife, the artist Dale Haven Loy, enjoy that life too much to ever give up on making it better for everyone they know, and everyone they don’t know, too. They are strong Democrats I’ve never known to write anyone off for disagreeing with them, and I admire that as well.

But even if we can’t all make India greener, we can all stand up for what we know to be right, in our own way and in our own corner of the planet. “A person could get discouraged” is going to be my new motto, because of the unstated, second part of what Frank meant by that, which was that we could but we can’t.

If you think mass deportations are a betrayal of our values, and that the First Amendment is under serious attack, along with the rule of law, this is no time for a nap.

Of course we feel like looking away. If you can’t see why the border is being declared a national security emergency, when since last July, crossings have been at a four-year low, and if you shake your head at all the performative “drill, baby, drill” nonsense with Los Angeles on fire and U.S. oil production already at an all-time high, well, you are certainly not feeling encouraged.

There are times, I have to say, when writing about the law as it’s supposed to work, or trying to hold any officials accountable for anything, seems so quaint; why even have a Congress or Supreme Court if Trump can undo what they decided about TikTok just by saying so?

But indulging our discouragement would be almost as un-American as trying to do away with birthright citizenship. “That’s not productive,” says Frank, for one thing because it “crowds out” ideas about and energy that could go into what still is possible.

So whatever else happens in the next four years, I hope we’ll be like him, and remember that slumping into stunned resignation is one thing that we just can’t do.

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