It was President Harry Truman who shortly after leaving the presidency wrote: “The country has to awaken every now and then to the fact that the people are responsible for the government they get. And when they elect a man to the presidency who doesn’t take care of the job, they’ve got no one to blame but themselves.”

Unlike four years ago, no one is challenging that Donald J. Trump is the duly elected president. So, the question is what now?

Democratic Party leaders have yet to announce how they intend to strategically respond once Trump takes office. Will they cooperate with him where they can? Will they stonewall him in most every way as Republicans didwith few exceptionsto President Joe Biden? Will they sit back and quietly hope that he will enact positions that will ultimately fail, leading to voter unpopularity and a Democratic bounce back two or four years from now in the elections?

After the election, liberal groups like the ACLU and the Brennan Center for Justice immediately started fundraising, promising to fight Trump every way possible through the courts, even though Republicans control both houses and Trump seems to have majority support within the U.S. Supreme Court. The city of Los Angeles is already planning to fight President-elect Trump’s promise of mass deportations of undocumented residents—presumably mostly Latinos.

But where does that leave the average citizen, whether they voted for or against the president-elect?

The country is probably more divided than at any time since the Civil War. But it is more important than ever to try to stay informed, particularly not relying on social media platforms which by some accounts played a disproportionate role in voters’ decisions.

Pulitzer Prize-winning author Jon Meacham in his 2018 best-selling book “the Soul of America, the Battle for our Better Angels,” reminds us “there is such a thing as discernible reality.

Facts are stubborn things, former President Johnson Adam’s, once said, though some might argue that is no longer true based on the last election.

The mainstream or legacy media (newspapers, television and cable networks and radio) all have lost influence and credibility with the public in recent years, despite their professional journalists who have codes of conduct and internal systems aimed at providing facts to their audiences.

I would argue whether one voted for or against Trump there is a continuing obligation to:

—Search for provable facts using independent and trusted sources, not political partisans.

—Ignore the slogans and clever turns of phrase. They are meant to manipulate you.

—Stay engaged in the democratic process. If you don’t vote, you have no right to complain.

— At election time ignore the 30- and 60-second television ads. Seldom do they tell you the whole truth.

—Challenge your historical and political party assumptions and measure them against your reality.

— Really read and consider whatever is said by the political party with which you are not affiliated and, even better, truly independent analysts.

Particularly presidential elections of late have turned into a blood sport. They are far less about truly educating voters about a candidate’s position than resonating with what some pollster has told them is a hot button issue that may get you to vote for their candidate or against the opposition.

Elections DO have consequences and the president-elect has at least two years with a supportive Congress to make good on his many promises. Like it or not, Trump has been clear on what he wants to do when it comes to lowering taxes, deporting undocumented residents, dissolving the Department of Education, reducing governmental regulations across the board and back tracking on environmental protections aimed at minimizing climate change.

Watch him and make your own judgment whether you like the consequences.

Bob Rawitch is a former L.A. Times editor who also served as president of the California First Amendment Coalition.