I never want to hear the words “America is better than this” again. I never want to be told about America’s “better angels.” It’s time to confront the uncomfortable truth: this is exactly who we are as a country.
We just willfully elected one of the most cruel, unscrupulous, and transparently self-serving political figures in modern history to be president—again. A convicted felon, a man who has normalized bullying, spread hate like an industrial sprinkler, and shown us time and again that he sees laws as irrelevant and self-enrichment as sacrosanct.
America didn’t just stumble into this outcome; we chose it. Despite the red flags—indictments for trying to overturn the 2020 election, the coddling of dictators, the endless chaos—we cast our votes for a man who embodies the worst of us.
And before anyone tries to spin this with comforting words like “this isn’t who we are,” let me make it clear: this is exactly who we are.
We are a country that supports mass deportations, a promise Donald Trump made and will likely keep. When families are torn apart, when communities are raided by federal law enforcement, and when people who have lived and worked in this country for decades are placed in detention camps, that will be on us—the voters who approved it.
If legal citizens get swept up in the chaos, that’s the choice we made. We voted for this.
When an unqualified billionaire like Elon Musk is handed the power to gut the federal government, that’s what America chose. When the Department of Education is abolished, and our education system is hijacked by right-wing ideologues and religious zealots, we’ll own that too. When Trump’s tariffs drive up prices across the board, making life harder for ordinary Americans, we’ll remember that we voted for him despite the warnings from economists.
If Trump manages to clear himself of legal charges, weaponize the Department of Justice against his enemies, and uses the military to silence dissent, that too will be our doing. This will not be some strange aberration of American values—it will be a reflection of exactly what we, the American electorate, have signed up for.
Don’t tell me how bad things could have gotten. Don’t tell me you thought voting for Trump wouldn’t hurt. I don’t want to hear how you didn’t like either candidate, so you decided to sit the election out. The stakes couldn’t have been clearer.
Kamala Harris ran a campaign that was as smart, focused, and qualified as I’ve seen. She reached across party lines and presented a vision for America that could unite us, even at a time of profound division. She is, by any measure, more qualified than the man who was elected. A former prosecutor, former U.S. senator, and vice president—Harris had the depth and experience Trump can only dream of.
But America chose Trump—again.
Voters chose the man who brazenly said he’d act as a “dictator for a day.” They chose the man who routinely insults our allies and coddles our enemies. They chose the man who is an adjudicated rapist, a model for none, a chaotic, incoherent, and hate-fueled leader who has torn this country apart in ways I never thought possible.
And we must now own it. We are Trump. We are the cruelty. We are the bullying. We are the hate. We are the chaos. And as painful as it is, we have lost the right to say that America is better than this.
The moment the presidential race was called, we lost the claim to be a country that strives for higher ideals. Now, we must confront the reality: We are who we chose.
