Listen

Description

To those who voted for Donald Trump,

We on the Left were right.

We were right last year when we warned you that Project 2025 was the impending Republican Party agenda—that its explicitly outlined plans for theocracy would inevitably become their platform and that this would negatively impact all of us, Christian and non-Christian alike.

We were right in the Fall when we sounded the alarms about Elon Musk’s proximity to Trump’s presidential campaign, and the implications of an unelected billionaire having unprecedented access to our government and our personal information.

We were right when we predicted that our economy (which had been robust under President Biden, despite a Conservative media campaign saying otherwise), would be completely upended by the recklessness and impulsivity of MAGA’s leader.

We were right in our verbalized fears that if elected, Trump would fill his Cabinet with the dregs of the Fox News orbit—anyone whose morals or convictions hadn’t already led to their exodus or dismissal.We were right to tell you to worry about losing Social Security, Medicare, the Department of Education, the EPA, the CDC, and the IRS.

We were right in our prognostications of an accelerated and heightened move toward authoritarianism, with Trump’s promise to be “a dictator on day one,” one of the few he would ever keep.

We were right about all of this but know that this rightness gives us no satisfaction whatsoever, despite what you may think.

There is no great vindication in watching our nation’s systems being dismantled or hundreds of thousands of Americans losing their jobs or our National Parks being set up for the highest bidder.

We feel zero satisfaction witnessing low-income families facing greater adversity as their safety nets are being removed.

We come with no raised-nose self-righteousness as our global standing is disintegrating.

The reason we are not celebrating or rubbing it in or taking some kind of moral victory lap in these moments but are actually fully grieving—is because we love this country as much as you do and we are in this along with you. This isn’t a win for any of us.

From the beginning, we on the Left have tried to let you know that we were for you. We were fighting him because we cared for you and your family in ways he never could. Many of us have spent years tirelessly trying to dislodge you from your cultic adoration of a man who more than half the nation and a vast portion of the planet could recognize as a predator and conman and grifter.

Every single day, we did all we could to help you understand that we are all closer to being beggars than billionaires, and that people like Donald Trump and Elon Musk know nothing of the working poor, those living in food scarcity, or families on the brink of poverty—nor do they care to. To them, every single one of us is a potential victim, a possible mark, another resource to be plundered.

We know many of you may finally be realizing that all his promises were ear candy for people who wanted to believe that the world was against them. You might be slowly having the wool pulled from your eyes and seeing him for what he is. At the very least, you may be having a bit of buyer’s remorse as you watch your 401k dissolve and your grocery bills skyrocket and your job situation grow unstable.

And if this is indeed happening, we can only say that we welcome you to join those of us who’ve been in the trenches here for the last decade, hoping to avoid the place we now find ourselves—at the edge of a cliff teetering precariously toward oblivion.

As for us, we’re not interested in political tribalism or digging our heels in or making you feel badly about your decisions. We’re more interested in fixing what is broken, now that it is.

We’ll try not to toss out “I told you so’s” or posture in a way that makes it seem like we’re happy—because we’re rather miserable.

If there was ever a time we’d have wanted to be wrong, this was it.

But sadly, we were right about him and about his presidency—and we aren’t enjoying it one bit.

The Beautiful Mess by John Pavlovitz is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.



This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit johnpavlovitz.substack.com/subscribe