Expectation adjustment

Any organization petitioning me to not let Donald Trump do something is living in a fool’s paradise

By Randi Hacker

June 5, 2025

I keep getting these email petitions from organizations like ActBlue and MoveOn, and Action Network. They say, variously:

Don’t Let Donald J. Trump Mine the Ocean
or
Don’t Let Donald J. Trump Disregard Habeas Corpus
or
Don’t let Donald Trump Accept a $400 Million Plane from Saudi Arabia

I don’t even open them. I just delete them.

Because any organization that is still petitioning me to not let Donald Trump do something is clearly still living in a fool’s paradise.

The term is antiquated now, a reminder of a time not that long ago when there was still a chance that our demands might just result in a change.

But unless you hand him a very expensive gift or an election, you can’t tell Donald Trump not to do anything. He doesn’t listen to anyone. He doesn’t care that what he does is illegal and immoral and, most egregiously, cruel. As long as he makes some money from it somehow. For example, when I read in Bloomberg that he had approved a cooperative partnership between US Steel and the Japanese steelmakers Nippon, well, the first thing I thought was I wonder what they gave him to get this instead of tariffed. I’m thinking Trump Tower Tokyo.

… unless you hand him a very expensive gift or an election, you can’t tell Donald Trump not to do anything. He doesn’t listen to anyone. He doesn’t care that what he does is illegal and immoral and, most egregiously, cruel. As long as he makes some money from it somehow.

Now I respect these organizations, and I share their outrage at each day’s fresh hell. And I know these emails are meant to send a message of hope and agency, but right now, unless you can get Mohammed bin Salman or Kim Jong Un to sign one, petitions are pointless. Right now, any hope of stopping him through our system of checks and balances, through our courts, through our elections is delusional. Thanks to the Supreme Court of the United States, Donald Trump has absolute power.

And he has the nuclear codes.

And it will be a long time, if ever, before this country has a fair election again.

That’s why it’s time for an expectation adjustment. Possibly temporary, but it’s better not to think about that.

Here’s what I mean: Keep on doing whatever it is that you do to protest. Don’t stop carrying a sign at the weekly protest downtown that says “Truck Fump!” Continue to boycott Target. Keep right on sending a daily letter to Chief “Justice” John Roberts, reminding him that all this that’s going on? His fault.

And that’s where the adjustment comes in: We must do these things with no expectation other than to remind ourselves that we are a very different sort of human being than the human beings currently checking their reflections in the new gold-inlayed Oval Office and talking about their beautiful hair or fabricating a white genocide.

And that’s not nothing.

Disclaimer: The opinions expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the opinions of WestmountMag.ca or its publishers.

Feature image: MUC-Spotter | YouTube (Qatari Family Boeing 747)

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Randi Hacker has been a writer and editor since the 20th century, and she’s been writing about the environment for more than thirty years, mostly to empower young people to take agency in their future. Satirical essays written with a partner appeared in the New York Times Book Review, Punch and Spy, among other publications. Her YA novel, Life As I Knew It, (Simon & Schuster) was named one of the Books for the Teen Age by the NY Public Library, and her TV show, Windy Acres, written with Jay Craven, was nominated for a New England Emmy for Writing. She just retired from her position as the resolutions copy editor for the State of Vermont, a job that has forever damaged her relationship with the comma. randihacker.com