We Elected Him Twice: What That Says About Us

I have thoughts.

I’ve been thinking a lot lately about how we are a society that inherently gravitates toward electing a man—not once, but twice—who has been so loudly controversial. I am, of course, referring to the President of the United States. This is, for all intents and purposes, the most important political position on the entire planet. For a long time, that has been the role of the USA. We like to think of ourselves as the main character on Earth, the defender of freedom, the place where history happens. But if you zoom in from the glossy slogans to the group chats, the 24-hour news cycles, the social media timelines, you start to see a different story. Nevertheless, when it comes to taking care of things here at home, taking care of things for “the people,” the United States falls short. Despite producing most of the world’s billionaires, our country seems to lack something very important: a conviction to do what’s right, and to own up to our past behavior. We’re incredible at branding the dream; we’re terrible at taking accountability for the nightmare we sometimes create.

In order to fix a system that is so obviously broken, we need a moment of deep pause and introspection. We can’t talk about the current president without talking about the culture that propelled him to the top. Fellow reader, the truth about Donald J. Trump is that he represents a generation, a mindset, a dream that the American people could work really hard and become the masters of their own destiny. He’s like a walking billboard for that old-school American promise: if you hustle hard enough, you can turn yourself into a brand, then a business, then a movement.

But again, the truth is Donald J. Trump, like most successful white people in the “business,” is in fact a nepo baby. Which basically means Mom and Dad poured gasoline on this man’s successes…and failures. People who can afford to fail will eventually get that win they need. When the safety net is made out of generational wealth and connections, the word “risk” means something completely different. The fall is never as far when the ground is lined with money and lawyers. The truth is that it could have been any nepo baby to run the country, but Donald J. Trump felt as if he was destined to be president—at the very least, that it was his “birthright.” We’ve seen this movie before—famous last names recycled in politics, business dynasties treating public office like another family asset, the same circles passing power around like a bottle at a party. That’s honestly how I think the old man thinks. I’m willing to bet part of him regrets ever running the first time, regrets not instead using that effort to enjoy what he had already built. The constant controversy that has been both his personal and political life would be exhausting for anyone.

The United States is clearly navigating some delicate waters here. Every speech, every scandal, splits the country into a dozen different realities depending on which channel you watch, what feed you scroll, which friends you listen to. For better or worse, Donald J. Trump is our current president, and yeah, you can “hate” him all day long—in fact, I can empathize. It’s hard not to when so many of the things he has said or done have hurt you personally. Again, though, he represents a piece of our country, and how we navigate the next few years of what’s supposed to be his final term in office—how we as a country, and he as the president, navigate these next few years—will dictate where we end up on the other side of these waters. Are we steering toward something more honest, or just learning how to lie to ourselves more efficiently? I don’t know yet, but I know we’re not drifting by accident.

It is very clear the country is changing, and new voices are speaking up—and good, we need more of that. In fact, let’s take a brief moment here in this essay to encourage anyone to run for local office, maybe one day wind up in the White House. Why not? Retire the olds, and push for new, young voices. The school boards, city councils, random committees—that’s where decisions actually reshape lives.

Now lets drift our attention back to DJT.

There was a time when I myself was angry at Donald Trump.

I had finished up undergrad and was riding that high most of us were on after having President Barack Obama in office twice in a row. Sure, he wasn't perfect, but I never felt like he was gonna say some crazy shit. Good ol’ monotone Obama.

Then election time started rolling around, and I was one of those people who was so excited for someone like Bernie Sanders to be running in the DNC. You kidding? This man wanted us all to have healthcare and wouldn’t shut up about it. To my disappointment, it would seem the DNC “Kirked” Bernie Sanders and Kirked their chances at winning when they threw in Hillary Clinton instead. What were they thinking, I thought. How could they replace the sweet old man with this woman who had already been in politics far too long?

Plus, the honest-to-God reality here—and you might cry about this—is that the United States is not ready for a woman president. How do we know that? Well, Donald Trump won twice, didn’t he? And that says way more about us as a culture than it does about any woman who dares to run.

The first time he won, I was in technical school—that’s where they send you right after basic training. I was sitting with my then-wife at a pizza pub. We were watching the results come in. She was upset, maybe even crying, I can barely remember. The whole place had that weird energy where the TV is too loud, but nobody’s actually talking. Just forks clinking, people pretending to keep eating while history does whatever it wants on the screen. Me, I was shocked. I believe my first words were, “No fucking way.”

After, I headed back to the dorms (where they made me, a “grown man,” sleep even though my wife had an apartment I was paying for five miles off base). I guess they were building “discipline” or “teaching” me a lesson—who’s to say, maybe both! The military is a strange place to process democracy. You’re literally property of the government, watching the country pick your next boss over beer and pizza.

Once I stopped being surprised by Trump’s win, I got pissed. Why? Because this man had run his entire platform on getting rid of the brown people who were here “illegally.” I use the term “illegal” like this because…how many fucking laws has President Donald J. Trump broken? Illegal? Really? Yeah, fuck that noise.

I was pissed, and also worried. It was hard enough growing up with an undocumented mom. I was as American as they came, but my mom—she was trying to make ends meet, do the best job she could to raise me and my sister. Was she always emotionally stable? No. But was she a hard worker who cared about providing for her kids? Yeah. No doubt. That’s most undocumented immigrants. Or “illegal aliens,” if you’re a bigot. Behind every headline about “border security” there’s some kid doing homework at the kitchen table while their parent triple-checks every knock at the door. That tension becomes the background noise of your whole childhood.

The man who was now going to be my boss also felt strongly disgusted with “illegals.” Now, I want to take a moment to acknowledge that many people were feeling scared about his first term in office. I think it was a terrifying, out-in-the-open realization that society would elect someone who, on record, said things that would get you fired from most professions. American women must deal with the reality that their own culture elected Donald J. Trump twice over two female candidates. That’s a tough reality to swallow. I mean, Mexico beat the USA and Canada to it.

Anyway, for me, the experience at the time had me worried. My mom being deported at any moment was an annoying thought to have. I thought many times back then: this woman has been in this country for over 25 years, she wouldn’t survive in Mexico nowadays—mostly because she’s crazy. It would be too much to be separated from everything she knows. Not to mention it would add another layer of burden onto the siblings. Every possible future version of my life had two tabs open: one where we all stayed together, and one where we were suddenly scattered.

The good news is that while I was in service, my G Barack implemented this thing called “parole in place”—basically a way for service members to get their immediate family members a pathway to be here legally. What a kind thing to do. It was one of those rare moments where policy didn’t feel abstract; it felt like somebody in power had actually looked down and seen us.

Okay, so I finished my enlistment, and Donald Trump was on the way out of office, very upset with the results of the election. He was getting a lot of heat from the press after the takeover of one of our political institutions. Dude, that riot on January 6th was insane. Why? Because he egged his supporters on. This man did not want to give up his political position. Watching people climb the walls of a building you grew up seeing in textbooks is a special kind of surreal. It felt less like “this is who we are now” and more like “oh, this is who we’ve always been when the mask slips.”

Why did it escalate to this? My hunch: the press and the DNC would not let up on personally riling up the base with what? The topic of conversation that had swept the entire nation: the Epstein Files.

I first found out about this dude Epstein when that HBO documentary came out exposing the reality of a sex trafficking ring run by rich white people. Like something out of a movie, except it was real life. It was like someone had taken every conspiracy-theory-uncle’s Facebook rant and said, “Actually, yeah, a lot of this is real.” Among the people in those flight logs was even my homie Stephen Hawking. These transcripts could ruin anyone—or at least that’s what some people thought. For a minute, it felt like maybe there would finally be consequences for the kind of people who usually float above consequences like they’re allergic to gravity.

Trump went into hiding, to brainstorm at Mar-a-Lago, waiting for his return. Meanwhile, the DNC had propped up old man Biden to lead them. What an odd choice, but I started paying less attention to politics again, which I guess was a good thing. It seemed like things were getting boring. Boring in that numb way, where you stop expecting anything better, you just hope nothing gets dramatically worse.

And then the Biden administration messed up, in my eyes. They decided to go all in on funding a war in Gaza against Hamas, but the reality that became clear very quickly is that Palestinian civilians were the majority of the bloodshed. Most of the world was quick to condemn; however, the DNC proved once again that they were not willing to let go of their old ways of doing things. Every scroll felt like another video, another thread, another testimony, until the line between “news” and “trauma feed” basically disappeared. If you still don’t get why people are so upset with Israel, you are probably Gen X or a boomer. Everyone else gets it. You can’t just ask us to fund the murder of women and children and expect us young folks with hearts to let that slide. It cracked something open between generations—like we weren’t just disagreeing on policy anymore, we were living in different moral universes.

Now Americans are asking Joe Biden why we have enough money to fund murder but not enough to get healthcare. This is around the time that politics started to become more interesting—less “boring.” Artificial intelligence is picking up steam and quickly becoming integrated in information processing and creation. It is becoming effortless to understand politicians’ records and digital footprints since inception. Receipts last forever now. Every vote, every speech, every awkward photo-op is archived, searchable.

The DNC quickly realizes that they need to “Kirk” Biden, and they do, quickly replacing him with Kamala Harris, a woman. Was the United States ready for a woman? You know the answer to that. rump came back swinging while out on the road, getting his likes back up, becoming the star he was always meant to be. He thrives in chaos; the more unhinged the storyline, the more at home he seems. And nothing the crooked DNC could say about him would take him down, not even the Epstein Files.

Again, this is a tough reality to swallow, but when we understand that Donald Trump is part of a different generation—one that was essentially the wild west, where digital footprints didn’t exist—people just developed differently. Whole eras got away with things that would now live forever in HD screenshots and cancel-culture think pieces. I said this earlier, but I bet you if Donald Trump knew how much of a hassle being president would truly be, he wouldn’t have done it. A mistake he would have to ride out, because it was his destiny.

Once again the stage was set, and results were coming in fast. This time, I wasn’t in fear for my mom—more concerned for what this would mean for the culture. Are we, as Americans, going to piss women off again? Of course we are, this is America. Get back in the kitchen and welcome your new president, Donald J. Trump.

Yeah, I was not shocked this time around, just…well, a little disappointed. The United States would not have a woman in the highest seat in the land for the second time in a row. Ladies, I just have to ask…“Are you mad?…at ME???” I didn’t do this. But as a guy in this country, you still feel the side-eye, like you personally checked the box next to his name twice.

You want to know why I think he was elected both times? I think it’s because of Christianity—religious folks, to be honest. Our country has, for a very long time, had a connection there, and to ignore that would be to leave out the current reality of our story. Church isn’t just a Sunday activity; for a lot of people, it’s their social network, their news source, their therapy, their community safety net.

Donald J. Trump might be in the Epstein files, but you know why that doesn’t matter to religious folks? To put it plain and simple, it’s because the Republicans run as the party of saying no to abortion. Listen, me personally—pro-choice all the way, okay? Again, don’t be mad at me. It’s just that you have to understand: for religious folks this is the difference between going to heaven or being sent to hell. When politics gets braided that tightly with eternity, every ballot starts to feel like a test from God, not a civic chore. An abortion is, to them, literally accepting damnation. It becomes difficult to argue with their reality, and doing so will quickly turn you into someone who does not embody the “Holy Spirit.” It’s, again, some tricky waters we are navigating. You can disagree with the theology and still recognize the power it has over the choices people make.

What does this mean for our country? Well, it means it’s not gonna get easier, but it doesn’t have to get worse. We must understand, as a society, that not everything is so black and white. Our individual minds are complex. We should allow for grace amongst us—fellow Americans, fellow humans. Grace doesn’t mean agreeing; it just means remembering there’s a human being behind the bumper sticker, even when that bumper sticker makes your blood boil.

Now, am I upset that Trump got elected a second time? Yes. Am I upset that he is abducting brown people off the streets? Also yes. Am I upset that he is most likely mixed up in those Epstein files? YES.

But if I had to give him a win in my book so far, it has been mostly “ending” the war in Gaza. I live in a reality where the DNC—where President Biden—chose to fund mass murder of civilians. I couldn’t escape that on my feed for two years. No one who actually cared to watch could turn away. And now Donald J. Trump had put an end to it. When I heard the news, I think I literally said, “You son of a bitch, you really did it.” I hated that I felt a tiny wave of relief tied to a man I deeply distrust. It was like watching your least favorite character in a show finally do the one decent thing and realizing you can’t just boo them off the screen anymore.

Maybe the biggest takeaway is that the DNC will continue to disappoint you, and Donald J. Trump never ceases to surprise you. He’s like chaos in a red tie, proof that the system will bend however it needs to for certain people. One thing is for sure: how do we, as young people, stop getting pushed around by nepo babies? Maybe the answer isn’t waiting for the perfect savior candidate, because spoiler: they’re not coming. Maybe it’s learning how to build our own power sideways—locally, collectively, in ways that don’t fit neatly into campaign ads. Maybe it’s refusing to worship last names and starting to pay attention to track records, to who actually shows up.