Extinction On My Mind /5:
The Post-Election Edition

We will soon all be gone. Including Donald Trump.

By Randi Hacker

November 12, 2024

It’s been a while since I’ve written, and I had thought to respond to some of the comments I received on my last essay, the one about invasive, non-native species and how they connect with Earth’s efforts to recover from human assault.

And then Donald Trump was elected for the second time. And there seemed to be no point in perseverating about that. In fact, I’m finding it difficult to find a point to anything at the moment.

As I wrote in my very first essayette for this publication, when it comes to the inevitability of our extinction, no party can stop it: If the Democrats had won, our end would have been delayed, and our extinction anxiety counselling would’ve been covered by our insurance providers; however, with the Republicans in power and with the Supreme Court having handed Donald Trump the Golden Ticket to tyranny, our extinction will come sooner, and it will be more painful. Much more painful, I think, not just to ourselves physically, but to ourselves psychically as we witness them sucking the life force out of our planet and leaving it gasping and possibly beyond recovery.

… when it comes to the inevitability of our extinction, no party can stop it: If the Democrats had won, our end would have been delayed… with the Republicans in power… our extinction will come sooner, and it will be more painful.

Remember the movie Cocoon? All those old people taking the life force from the pool in an orgy of selfishness? This is what will happen now. He will oversee an assault the likes of which have never been seen before. As Donald Trump inflates with his power, like Ursula in Disney’s Little Mermaid, he will loom over the sucking dry of our planet’s lifeforce: He will open the ANWR to drilling. He will open all the protected lands to drilling. He will order drill rigs off every shore. Under his shadow, mountains will be topped, coal will be mined, natural gas will be fracked. And maybe, just maybe, he will drop a nuclear bomb into the eye of one of the tropical storms and tell us he stopped it. He has the nuclear codes, remember.

So, I think we can stop recycling now.

And we might as well eat carbs.

In her concession speech, the decent and brave and strong Kamala Harris said we cannot stop fighting. She used the whole fight thing throughout her campaign too, and, if I’m honest, that disappointed me. I had hoped that, as a woman, she would jettison the warmongering language and use perhaps the word work instead.

There’s nothing, it seems, that we humans won’t pick a fight with.

‘In her concession speech, the decent and brave and strong Kamala Harris said we cannot stop fighting… I had hoped that, as a woman, she would jettison the warmongering language and use perhaps the word work instead.’

We fight cancer. We fight addiction. We fight illiteracy. We fight childhood obesity. We fight injustice. We fight hunger. We fight poverty. We fight inequality. We fight for peace. We fight climate change (which is like Caligula fighting the ocean; we don’t stand a chance).

And there are wars too. There’s the war on crime, the war on woke, the war on drugs, the war on poverty, the war on human trafficking, the war on aging, the war on truth, the war on lies, the war to end all wars.

I don’t know what pushes something from the fight realm to the war realm. There’s probably a rubric that explains this. I will never read it.

I do know that I don’t want to fight anymore: not for so-called human rights and not to save Earth for us. Because I believe that saving Earth and saving humanity are mutually exclusive. And because I think it’s too late: I believe that the fight, if there ever was one, is lost.

I am seventy-two. I have limited energy. Instead of fighting, I want to expend that energy on mourning, breathing, and appreciating, truly acknowledging, the great good luck I have had to live on this unique and miraculous planet we call Earth: the sky scrubbed blue after a thunderstorm; the fragrance of lilacs that are unaccountably blooming in November; the charm of a 24-hour classical station that never plays the news; the serenade of a house finch perched on the cornice of a downtown restaurant; the glowing eyes of a raccoon that slips into a corner drain as I come down the dark street on my morning jog. I will live as gently as I can, here in this small space I occupy, to provide a place where there is no deliberate assault on the planet.

‘Instead of fighting, I want to expend that energy on mourning, and breathing, and appreciating, truly acknowledging, the great good luck I have had to live on this unique and miraculous planet we call Earth…’

My awe and delight are heightened by my acceptance, which is absolute, that our time is coming to an end, that our turn is almost over, and that we will soon all be gone.

Including Donald Trump.

And that is really just about the only thing that can cheer me up right now.

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: Chris F, Pexels

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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