False Hope

What have we done?

I hope you’re right.

I hope all 51% of you—all 277 electoral college votes worth of you, all of you down south and in rural areas, all the women who voted against their own self-interest, all of you more worried about the price of eggs than the health and freedom of your sisters, wives, mothers, daughters, and sister wives (we all know how the Mormons voted), all of you who are okay electing a convicted felon and admitted sexual assaulter and serial philanderer, all who couldn’t stomach voting for a black woman, or a black person, or a woman, or someone who laughs and smiles and can actually dance—are right.

I hope Donald Trump’s policies and promises come through and work out for you. For all of us!

I hope implementing even fewer taxes for billionaires and corporations finally helps the wealth trickle down despite the fact that we have 50 years of evidence that it never has and never will. I hope making even less of an attempt to manage and limit the impact of climate change somehow tricks Mother Nature into calming down, and that all the scientists and experts who’ve been screaming into the cancer-causing windmills for decades while things continue to increasingly get worse right in front of our eyes will realize they have been wrong all along.

I hope President Trump can bring down inflation even though it’s been going steadily down for years, and the president has little control over it. I hope adding tariffs that increase the cost of consumer goods somehow manages to lower the cost of your gas and your groceries and your MAGA flags and your insane fetishistic trading cards of Trump dressed as an oilman from Yellowstone or a spaceman on Mars.

I hope restricting abortion and/or leaving it up to the states or (let’s be honest) implementing the nationwide ban and letting women die from miscarriages and other complications, and arresting women who try to get the life-saving procedure helps and restricting access to birth control and forcing women to carry rapists’ babies to term, helps you get into heaven or whatever the fuck the goal is there.

I hope once those babies grow up, all the guns that continue to go unregulated don’t grant them the actual post-term abortion you’re supposedly so worried about, and that all the other conservative policies hell-bent on making life harder for poor and underprivileged people once they’re not fetuses anymore don’t make them wish they weren’t born in the first place.

I hope rounding up millions of families and children and hard-working immigrants and deporting them finally rids America of the crime that those immigrants, and only those immigrants, commit, turning America into a violence-free utopia of homogenous whiteness. I hope that the Proud Boys and their fellow white supremacists aren’t actually standing by to enact violence on illegal immigrants, or legal immigrants, or anyone who looks like an immigrant, or anyone who is friends with an immigrant, or a black person, or a gay person, or a trans person.

I hope the forthcoming persecution of Trump’s political enemies and former cabinet members and democrats and anyone in the “fake news” who dared run against or speak against Trump makes you feel more free. I hope giving Elon Musk governmental power helps expand free speech for everyone and not just all the Nazis and racists and misogynists and bigots currently cheering on X.com. I hope this doesn’t mean the final descent of journalism into full-on state-run propaganda.

I hope letting unhinged conspiracy theorist and weirdo bear-killer RFK Jr. make healthcare decisions for the country helps limit the spread of diseases rather than frighteningly escalate incidences of ones we’ve long vanquished. I hope if there’s another pandemic they’ve really learned their lesson this time!

I hope electing someone who vowed to be a dictator “on day one” doesn’t impact anyone you know and love. I hope letting Putin do whatever he wants doesn’t result in catastrophe. I hope Trump proves his diplomatic bona fides and somehow improves the situation in Gaza with his calm temperament and reasoned, reasonable geopolitical viewpoint.

I hope the new president was honest about not knowing anything about Project 2025, but given that he’s rarely honest about anything, I hope Project 2025 doesn’t send us back to the dark ages. I hope white-washing history books and ignoring science and teaching creationism and enforcing religious ideals the same way those middle eastern countries that Trump and his voters love to demonize do doesn’t result in an even more uneducated, ignorant, and intolerant populace that continues to elect people like him.

I hope worshipping a president who himself worships dictators and autocrats doesn’t continue to grow a citizenry that mistakes bluster and aggression for wisdom and power. I hope that bending the knee to a man who admires fascists doesn’t turn America into a mirror of our long-standing enemies. I hope that voting for a man that encourages hatred and division doesn’t continue to foster fear and anger towards anyone else who doesn’t look like you or live by your values.

I hope preventing trans people from playing sports helps you feel better about not lettering in volleyball 20 years ago. I hope that preventing gay people from getting married helps make your heterosexual marriage happier. I hope having a government that validates your fear of gay people and trans people and Muslim people and black people and Hispanic people makes you feel better about your culture.

I hope spending another four-plus years listening to an angry, bitter, corrupt, dishonest, hateful, selfish, stupid, senile egomaniac without an ounce of self-awareness, self-reflection, or remorse rant and rave and attack and insult and mock and harass and incite and target anyone and everyone who says a single thing he doesn’t like improves your everyday life and makes you feel good about the country that chose him.

I hope Trump fixes everything as he says only he can, despite his abysmal track record and total lack of interest in helping anyone but himself.

I hope he makes America great again! I really do.

But he won’t.