As I write this, the final few votes are being counted in the 2024 United States Presidential election, and it is already clear that Former President Donald Trump will imminently begin his metamorphosis into President of the United States of America for the second time. Despite relatively consistent predictions for a toss-up, it is now inevitable–short of any retrospective revelation of electoral fraud–that Donald Trump will walk the White House halls once again. With wins in North Carolina, Georgia, and Pennsylvania, Trump has swept the swing states, leaving no opportunity for Kamala Harris to break through, let alone break even.

The presidential race is over and Trump has come out victorious, fist raised high. The unfathomable, yet regrettably unsurprising, has come to fruition. The trajectory has been set. While his supporters have their reasons, it’s hard to comprehend the overwhelming support Trump continues to receive despite his outrageous, and regularly illegal, personal behaviour, let alone his political report card. With teary eyes and an anxious gut I can’t help but wield anger and frustration at the peoples’ decision to select this candidate to dictate, a word not carelessly chosen, the next four years of their lives. And the impact of a second Trump administration will ruminate and contaminate global politics for much longer than his time in office. As the polls slowly turn red, I witness the American voters pick up their shovels and dig their mass grave. As a citizen, I proudly cast my vote for Kamala Harris. As with any event of such monumental potentiality, nervousness loomed quietly in the back of my mind. I pencilled the ballot with the slightest wobble as I marked an X next to Harris-Walz.

Living in the capital of the country, I have been protected by my blue bubble, both in life and online, having carefully cultivated a feed largely in line with my own ideology. And while I was cognisant of this, I can’t help but consider whether I have lulled myself into a false sense of security during this presidential campaign. Have I been naive to avoid the bigots in the comments or the MAGA propaganda in the news? Has my optimism blinded me to the reality of an inevitable republican win? There’s a metaphor, a twisted irony, about the use of rose–or red–tinted glasses somewhere here.

I can’t help but think of Gabriel García Márquez’s El coronel no tiene quien le escriba. A story of a retired colonel and his wife who, due to ineffective bureaucracy, are on their fifteenth year of waiting on a pension that will never come. Having inherited a rooster from their son, they take the few pennies and grains that they have and, at the expense of their own hunger, fatten it up for a cock fight. The idea being that if the rooster wins, they’ll be able to sell him for a higher price. While a gamble, the colonel was certain, equally as sure of the rooster’s win as he was the eventual arrival of his pension. His wife, frustrated, asks repeatedly of what the colonel will do if the rooster doesn’t win; if the pension letter doesn’t arrive. ‘Vendrá’, the colonel states simply. It will come. With unwavering certainty, he believes his circumstances will change for the better, despite their historically unwavering misfortune. He finds unshakeable hope in the

hopeless. When I first read El coronel, I remember being continuously exasperated with him. I couldn’t understand his almost aloof approach to it all, this pipe dream that kept him going page after page. The quiet determination that his pension would one day come; that the rooster would win; that the course of their lives would miraculously correct itself. I can see now that I misunderstood the colonel. He wasn’t deluding himself or turning away from his problems; he was facing them head on in the only way he knew how. In the only way he could. What I had mistaken for delusion or toxic positivity was actually Radical Hope™. Something I’ve come to know well.

Living in D.C. meant that my vote wasn’t going to have much of an impact on the polls. And short of trekking to the swing states to campaign, there wasn’t much else I could do. I resigned myself to positivity, not so much forced, but definitely sheltered; choosing not to contemplate the outcome where Harris didn’t end up in office. My aforementioned blue bubble shielded me from the sheer quantity of Republican voters and I was content with that. I had to avoid the Trumpian rhetoric for as long as I could, simply so that I could get through it. The implications of a second Trump administration were so great and so horrifying that, for my sanity, I had to choose peace. I stayed informed and advocated for a Democratic win when the moments arose, which they did often, but day to day, I chose peace. And with this, I have been participating in exactly what I had resented the colonel for doing: I’ve been radically hoping. And just like the colonel, I couldn’t have done anything else.

In writing this, I too acutely acknowledge my privilege as someone who can leave this country in seven months time and avoid the more immediate consequences of Trump’s administration. My heart breaks and anger rises for the countless lives that will be impacted, and likely lost, over the next four years. With a sharp realisation, the radical hope seems to slip away, replaced by an existential dread for the future. It feels like the cycle will only repeat and we will never learn from our mistakes. At least not until they finally come round to bite Trump and his billionaire familiars in the ass.

Perhaps I’ll look back on this in a year, or seven months, or even next week, when the shock has subsided, and take a slightly less fervent view. Perhaps my radical hope will regenerate as times like these are exactly when the radical, and the much needed hope, is born. While those who can take meaningful action should, whether it be a life without a pension or a second Trump administration, hoping radically can never be to anyone’s detriment. So while I, and much of the world, have a period of mourning, I’ll think of the colonel. He had it right all along.

La ilusión no se come —dijo ella.

—No se come, pero alimenta —replicó el coronel

'You can't eat hope,' the woman said. ‘You can't eat it, but it sustains you,' the colonel replied.

- El coronel no tiene quien le escriba, Gabriel García Márquez