I lie awake at night thinking about stuff. My restless brain is apparently trying to make sense of ironies, anomalies, contradictions, and paradoxes in the present life we are living. These nocturnal mental forays of mine are all over the place—I hang on and trail in their wake.

Fair warning. The reader can decide if he or she wants to gamble ten minutes reading this sample of such ramblings.

I puzzle about the outcome of the recent presidential election. I ponder what it says about human nature broadly.

It seems to me we live our lives, individually and collectively, positioned somewhere on a continuum between self-interest at one pole and concern for the broader welfare of others at the other. Depending on our circumstances, we make adjustments trying to balance these opposing impulses. If we are desperate enough or sufficiently uncomfortable, we move toward the selfish pole. Relief from struggle, even survival, may compel it.

This propensity is understandable—it’s in our nature.

Religions and cultures have recognized this tendency of individuals to favor self-interest under pressure. They’ve seen the threat it poses to group well-being, and they’ve tried to compensate by restraining moral codes. “Do unto others as you would have them do unto you” is a teaching of most faiths—Christian, Jew, Muslim, atheist, whatever. But it’s a high bar.

The teachings attributed to Jesus in the Gospels are hard words indeed when applied to the realities we face: “Give a man in need the coat off your own back”; if he has wronged you, forgive him “seventy times seven”; following the example of the Good Samaritan, acknowledge that everyone in distress is your neighbor. (Really? What if a desperate man and woman--wetbacks—with several little kids in tow wade across the Rio Grande into MY country? Seriously, are they my neighbors?)

Difficult as they are, such teachings are the pole star, the moral ideal, that we must continue to orient ourselves by if we hope to have a civil society. The noted American historian, Jon Meacham, is surely right when he says we cannot have a functioning democracy without a moral foundation of concern for others, that we must see our fellow citizens not as enemies but as neighbors—with all that that implies. Where do the boundaries of the neighborhood end?

This country has just inaugurated our new President. We knew already that he is an unprincipled egotist, a crude abuser, a divider, and a non-stop unmitigated liar. His recent tone-deaf inaugural address was yet a reminder of these flaws. Turning that ritual of national healing as he did into an exercise of political insults, lies, outrageous hyperbole, and self-aggrandizement came as no surprise.

How can I explain to myself at 3:00 a.m. why Americans chose such a man to lead us?

Pundits have pointed to numerous factors in Trump’s victory, but two in particular are cited. 1) Illegal immigration: Trump falsely but relentlessly asserted that undocumented entrants across our southern border are violent rapists and murderers or otherwise mentally deficient—barbarian hordes at the gates who threaten our safety, our jobs (notwithstanding that our economy has come to depend on them), and the “purity” of the American gene pool. He fomented fear and exploited it.

And 2) the economic pinch of inflation: Trump over-simplified the causes, blamed the Democrats for failing to control uncontrollable economic factors, and claimed forcefully he would fix the problem with policies like steep tariffs on imports (a spectacularly bad idea, as most economists agree; it amounts to an indirect regressive tax on those least able to afford it).

Enough voters were persuaded. Feeling desperate for fairness/ safety/ economic survival, they wanted to try something different from the status quo. Anything!

The obvious conclusion my restless, sleep-deprived brain comes to is that unquestionably pure self-interest decided this election. Very narrowly, as a nation, we gambled and moved our position closer to the “me” end of the scale.

Those “me-pole” voters did not worry about idealistic questions like “who is my neighbor.” Under stress, they did not prioritize the larger, more inclusive long-term good. It was simply, “How can I and my family get some quick relief?”

I get that. I understand the knee-jerk political reaction of people who feel ignored, underpaid, and overwhelmed by anger-inducing high costs of groceries, housing, and health care. I understand that they want to blame SOMEONE.

I may question their analysis, their judgment of causal factors, and how to fix things. I do. But I sympathize sincerely, deeply with their existential frustration.

Here is the most ironic absurdity in all of this. Most likely the outcome of this election will benefit primarily not those struggling, frustrated Americans who opted for the winner, but rather another much smaller class of “me-pole” citizens who are doing just fine, thank you, in the present economic climate and who are determined to increase their advantages.

At the forefront of these are the billionaires—the Musks, the Bezoses, the Zuckerbergs—whose money in the world of Trump Republicanism gives them unprecedented access to power. (Musk gave the Trump campaign $250,000,000; how corrupt is that! The payback he is getting for it has already become disgustingly clear. Those who say, looking at whom Trump will appoint and listen to in his new administration, that our government seems increasingly like Russian oligarchy is persuasive.)

Close behind the billionaires are the CEOs of major corporations who have been trooping to Mar-a-Lago in recent weeks to pay homage to and curry favor with their champion. Less powerful but still solidly motivated by selfish interests are many members of the financially flush citizenry. “We like Trump’s monetary policies” is their mantra.

And why not? The centerpiece of those policies is the 2017 Trump/Republican tax law (the old discredited “trickle-down” farce), which gives huge breaks to the wealthy and to major corporations, but merely a pittance to the middle class. The effect of that law, in addition to driving the national debt up even further, has been to increase yet more the glaring income disparity between the obscenely rich and the ordinary rest of us—America leads all developed nations in this unenviable category. (That particular tax law is about to expire, but Trump and our Senator Crapo, who chairs the Senate Finance Committee, are bent on renewing it. In whose interest, pray tell?)

I simply cannot understand the motivations of grasping, greedy financial elites for whom way too much is never enough, who already control most of the wealth in our country and are determined to use their monetary access to power to get more. Such gratuitous selfishness beggars the moral imagination. It exemplifies the worst of human instincts.

Nor can I understand why the majority of us tolerate representatives in our government who accept the warped economic realities as they currently stand and decline to make them fairer.

There aren’t simple solutions for the serious problems that beset America in this era of dramatic change, but those who thought a vote for Trump and his minions might move the country more to the “all of us” end of the spectrum probably made a bad bet. We’ve seen already that their priorities are focused elsewhere.

Night thoughts. I wonder if, in what little remains of my life, I’ll ever get back to sleeping soundly again.