Ten Years: And Still We Hope, Despite The Costs

Ten years ago today, Donald Trump announced he was running for President in the 2016 elections.

Jun 17, 2025

He Lost Me At Hello

It was a Tuesday afternoon, and 24-year-old me was sitting at my desk in the front office of Parkside Apartments in Tempe, Arizona, where I worked as a leasing consultant. All the students from ASU had gone home for the summer, so it was one of those hidden blessing kinda days; all we had to do was find a way to stave off the mind-numbing boredom, and we’d be paid for basically doing nothing all day.

I had heard of Donald Trump before; Hell, everybody had. He was in Home Alone! I bought a pack of smokes from Trump Tower during a trip to NYC once! He was just another rich, famous American on television to me; like Barbara Streisand, like Regis Philbin, like Ryan Seacrest. Still, I had never paid the man any attention… so the first REAL time I ever heard him speak was that day, 10 years ago.

I watched it on the same app where millennials watched everything in those days… Facebook. It was Donald Trump coming down a golden escalator, Melania behind him in a white dress of timeless fashion. He came up to a podium in the lobby, and began to speak. Some niceties, a little rambling, and then…

“When Mexico sends its people, they’re not sending their best. They’re not sending you. They’re not sending you. They’re sending people that have lots of problems, and they’re bringing those problems with us. They’re bringing drugs. They’re bringing crime. They’re rapists. And some, I assume, are good people.”

…And from that moment, I have opposed Donald Trump.

What He's Cost Us

He's had 10 years to change my mind. He didn't.

I cannot fathom the cost of this one man to our nation; but then, it wasn't one man. Not really. There were thousands who helped along the way, algorithms that ensured we received different facts and versions of stories, media complicit in chasing the views instead of the information we needed, all kinds of folks more concerned with money and power than oath or ethics or duty… life wasn't going to get better under Kamala Harris, but we weren't going to see blatant racism, the free reign of white-collar crime, the isolation from our allies, the rise of measles, the USA buddying up to Vladimir fucking Putin, the free gifts from foreign nations, letting a drug-addict loose on the American government, the babies dying of starvation because we pulled our pennies…

I cannot fathom the cost of this one man to our nation.

I heard some guy on a podcast once, I can't remember who, but he said something like “there are military generals and secretaries of state in the year 2080 who will still be answering for the actions of the 0USA in the 2020’s.” We haven't even begun to understand the long term effects of the domestic policies he's destroyed, the offices wiped away, and the true cost of tariffs…

I wonder if anybody is tracking the sheer cost of all the court cases… but none of them will touch the cost of watching videos of innocent people being grabbed in the streets, the viral footage of children bawling and screaming while neighbors try to intervene as parents are ripped away. We are living in La-La Land if we believe there’s no long-term cost for arresting children and zip-tying their hands.

Hope, For Some Reason

I confirmed, for myself, something like 80+ protests alone this weekend (that's in yesterday’s post if you'd like). Perhaps that's the reason this lil thought has been stuck in my head the last couple days:

Hope is radical. It’s audacious, like a little weed with the nerve to grow out of the crack in the sidewalk. In all the places you'd never expect to find it, with no reason to believe it would flourish… there it is, all the same.

It's a working concept. I'm not sure what the main idea is yet.

I do think it means it's not hopeless. Not remotely.

❤