The Great American Do-Over
A Plan for the Next Four Years
I have so many regrets about how I spent my time during Donald Trump’s first administration. I moved to the woods and grew a beard, and nobody stopped me. I got arthritis from clutching my phone and brain damage from obsessively checking his Twitter account or hearing him speak. Even the mere sight of a red hat would trigger my fight-or-flight instincts. I can’t do that to myself again. Now that the election is over and the American people have spoken, I’m going to take this opportunity for what it is– A chance at a do-over.
This term, I will stop referring to him as the dumb orange man who lives in the White House and only call him Donald Trump, President of the United States of America, because that is somehow funnier. Say it out loud in a sentence. It’s so good. I think humor is what is going to keep me going this time around.
Alcohol consumption was up two hundred percent in my household the last time Trump was in charge of the country. I numbed myself every night with wine and tequila to make things seem less bad. But not this time. I need something stronger, like pure sobriety.
Instead of lying awake at night worried Trump will start a war, I need to reassure myself that no one in the White House would actually let him anywhere near the real nuclear button. I bet they hire set designers to build a fake war room where they’ll let Trump sit and do whatever he wants. Like, “Sir, go ahead and press that big red button if you feel like blowing up Pakistan.” Then, a sound effects guy will be in the next room making bombing noises, followed by Donald saying, “Trump go boom.”
I'm also not going to be triggered by every little comment or post I come across like I did last time, like when I got into it with my cousin’s husband who insisted slavery never happened and that it was fake news. My reaction from now on will be, “That’s a real interesting theory, I can’t believe they aren’t teaching that in schools.” And if any of the MAGA people want to storm the capital again, or make it a yearly tradition, I’m going to make sack lunches and wave at them while I say, “Have fun at your little party.” And while they’re doing that, I’m gonna get on Reddit and teach myself how to perform an illegal abortion. It can’t be that hard, plus I already know what a female’s body looks like due to being gay.
One thing I regret not doing in the first administration was putting together a team of queers to solve cold cases and naming our group something fun, like Murder They Wrote. We could pick an unsolved murder out of a hat and try to find the killer. We’ll meet every Sunday night at my place, which will be a safe space for the LGBTQIA+ community, well, until it’s time to leave. Then may god be with you.
I went to all the marches— the women’s march, the tax march, March 2020. But no matter how often we marched or how many steps we got in, Trump was still in office. And my funny signs were for nothing. So now, instead of marching I’m going to build a garden and bury myself under the dirt while I blossom into a corpse and become one with the planet. And maybe someone can print out the meme of that kid mowing the grass at the White House while being yelled at by Donald Trump, President of the United States of America, and lay it on my grave.
