choking on the red pill
another four years of donald trump
Donald Trump has been reelected as president after 34 felony counts, one conviction, two impeachments, an insurrection, and one televised clip of him pretending to give a microphone a blowjob. He is officially the first convicted criminal to assume presidency, and won both the electoral college and popular vote with little plans and a lot of hateful rhetoric. It’s leaving many to bludgeon the same question over and over into their heads: How could this possibly be? How the fuck could this possibly happen again?
I feel helpless and worn, and I’m sure you do, too. We already know what a Trump presidency means, which is perhaps the most suffocating thing of all. It means billionaires paying less in taxes than working people, women being forced to drive across state lines to make decisions about their own bodies, and children facing ever-dwindling resources and the persistent fear of getting shot in their own classrooms. It means tax breaks for corporations and easing on fossil fuel conglomerates that will saddle future generations with carbon emissions and financial burden that I’m not sure they’ll be able to claw their way out of. It means the entire abolition of the Department of Education, overseen by Elon Musk. It means a government that will actively cheer on the death of any person of color, here or abroad. It means a government that will light the fire for people to kill on the basis of hate.
The blame game has already ensued. People are blaming Kamala Harris, Tim Walz, the Democratic party, Jill Stein, third-party voters. Reports from inside the Harris/Walz camp are wondering where their campaign strategy failed them. Everyone wants to know why, why, why. Find the weak link, and muzzle it.
In part, it is true—Democrats missed the mark. Harris lost pockets of potential voters in places like Dearborn, Michigan, simply because she simply refused to call for a ceasefire in Gaza. It makes complete sense; it’s a predominantly Middle Eastern area where people are losing family members to Israeli missiles every day, and instead of greeting them with empathy, the Democratic camp sent in Bill Clinton to say Israel was “forced” to kill 41,000 people. Similar patterns were seen in Pennsylvania, which turned red last night. Many young women voted for Harris apathetically, conscious of the fact that she was never their true champion, but rather another compromise against the other venom-spitting, forked tongue-wagging, orange-faced evil.
Still, make no mistake, this election proved that millions of people are perfectly ready to embrace hate and violence in this country, and with the unfolding of social media, are feeling emboldened to act on it. Red pill content has spurred the popularization of prejudice and the embrace of misinformation, and this election has shown just how large that bubble has grown. Between 2016 and now, the manosphere has blossomed at breakneck rates, turning young men in particular towards right-wing values. Human trafficker and men’s rights streamer Andrew Tate commands more attention among teen boys than former Prime Minister Rishi Sunak, and influencers like Sneako track millions of views while espousing vile rhetoric about women and the LGBTQ+ community. White people, men and women, are driving this ship into the ground. Trump got up and personally thanked podcaster Joe Rogan on the eve of the election, which is as damning a tell as anything. We are about to be engulfed in an era of their red haze, being force-fed their ideological rhino supplements for years to come.
But let’s be honest, this election was never about good and bad as much as it was about attempting to stave off the most damaging option. “This election was never going to save us, and so I have to believe it was never going to doom us either,” Scaachi Koul wrote for Slate. “Harris was not a savior, she was only ever a placeholder for something—someone—better.”
I feel broken and exhausted. I’m sure you feel it, too. Our grief is anticipatory and traumatic, and we have many more dark days to come. Today I will spend time with my loved ones and face the hard decision of what, realistically, must come next in my life. I must let go of my hope to one day have children. I must let go of the idea that the journalism industry will ever be what it once was. I do not have a champion in the White House or the security of knowing what waits for me tomorrow.
Hope is the last thing I have. I will protect that as we enter these years of red haze. I will strap it to my back like an oxygen tank at the bottom of the sea. Whatever tattered scrap I can hang onto, I will hang onto, until the ground swallows us whole and then for some time after we are trapped underneath. I do not hang onto hope because I want to. I don’t hang onto it because I am a fool. I hang on because I know in this world, in the reality we are about to enter, it is my responsibility to safeguard it for those who have lost all reason to keep it, so one of us can fight for us both. Hope is rare currency, and it is a powerful one. I’d sooner choke on the red pill than give it up.
“Hope doesn’t have to come wholesale,” Koul wrote. “You can pick and choose and take what you can get—in fact, right now you should, because it’s the only thing keeping our hearts from atrophy. Even in the rubble, light breaks through.”
There are many things that can still give us hope, whether it’s Rashida Tlaib and Ilhan Omar being re-elected into office or Monique Worrell taking her Florida state attorney seat back from Ron DeSantis. It can be the fact that Breonna Taylor’s murderer was convicted, or the fact that many mutual aid organizations and labor unions are already beginning to plan for what comes next. I do not want to downplay the horrors that await us, but I must find something to hope for. Once you are feeling ready, you can join in again.
One day, I’d like to cast a presidential vote without seeing Donald Trump’s name on the ballot. I’d like to choose my candidate based on how I think they’ll protect my loved ones and myself, not for the sole reason of keeping a broke, fradulent rapist away from the nuclear codes. I hope one day it will come. I know we cannot vote ourselves out of this system. American politics is a theater that is overacting its role to try and convince you that it is the most important path to change. But if we’re going to be forced to take the red pill, I will do what I can do keep my feet on the ground. Hope is my responsibility now, as it is yours. Nothing else will get us through the work that needs to begin. Where you can scrounge around for it, make sure to share it. If you can find steady ground to take a step forward, know that I and many others will be there, right next to you.
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