Breadlines and Ballrooms

He’s burning history while America fights to feed itself.

The East Wing is gone.

Not under renovation. Not being restored. Gone. Flattened. Half the White House, erased as if it never mattered. I stared at that photo—dust clouds rising where history once stood—and something inside me split open. It wasn’t shock, not really. It was grief. A hollow kind of heartbreak that starts in the gut and crawls up your throat until it’s hard to breathe.

That picture ripped something out of me. It cut my feet from under me because I never expected it. None of us did. He never even mentioned it. When he first brought it up over the summer, he promised he wouldn’t touch the existing structure. But there it was—gone. The place where generations believed the best of us could gather, bulldozed for a monument to his ego. A ballroom for no one but him.

He said he wouldn’t touch it.

He lied. Of fucking course he lied.

A promise from him is worthless. It’s as empty as the space where the East Wing used to be. As meaningless as the vows he’s broken, the oaths he’s spat on, the Bibles he’s held like props. His word doesn’t bend or break — it disintegrates. The second he speaks it, it’s gone, like dust in the wind he’s created.

And in that moment, standing in my kitchen, phone in hand, staring at the rubble, three words filled my body like fire.

I hate him.

I’ve felt it for years, but I think I was afraid to say it out loud. Maybe I thought the words gave him power. Maybe I thought saying them made me like him—bitter, hollow, small. But this isn’t that kind of hate. It’s not born of spite or politics. It’s born of love—love for everything he’s trying to destroy. Love for decency, for democracy, for the idea that power should serve, not consume.

I. Hate. Him.

Because it wasn’t enough that he bragged about grabbing women by the pussy.

It wasn’t enough that he mocked a disabled reporter for laughs.

It wasn’t enough that he called Mexicans rapists and refused to disavow the KKK.

It wasn’t enough that he was accused dozens of times of assault, or that a court found him an adjudicated rapist.

It wasn’t enough that he demeaned women, immigrants, and the poor—anyone who couldn’t fight back.

It wasn’t enough that he divided this country until neighbor turned on neighbor.

It wasn’t enough that he watched thousands die during the pandemic, shrugged “It is what it is,” and went golfing.

It wasn’t enough that as refrigerator trucks filled with bodies, he smiled for the cameras and bragged about TV ratings.

It wasn’t enough that he crashed our economy once and is doing it again.

It wasn’t enough that he demanded Georgia “find” votes that didn’t exist.

It wasn’t enough that he unleashed a mob on the Capitol, watched them beat police with flagpoles, smear shit on the walls, and hunt his own vice president, then told them he loved them.

It wasn’t enough that he called those terrorists patriots, pardoned them, and welcomed them back as heroes.

It wasn’t enough that he mocked widows, insulted Gold Star families, and called the fallen “suckers and losers.”

It wasn’t enough that he praised dictators and spat on truth until truth itself became a partisan issue.

It isn’t enough that he uses ICE like a bludgeon to rip children from their parents while he smiles for the cameras.

It is never enough.

Because for him, cruelty isn’t collateral—it’s the whole damn mission. It’s the engine that drives him, the oxygen he breathes. Hurting people isn’t a side effect. It’s the point. It’s the only thing that makes him feel alive.

He’s every bully I’ve ever known, just painted gold and handed a flag. The kind who smirks while twisting the knife. The kind who measures power by how many people he can make kneel. He gets off on domination, on humiliation, on watching people flinch.

James Comey once said that men like him eat your soul in small bites. I believe that. I’ve watched him chew on the soul of this nation—one lie, one cruelty, one coward’s silence at a time. And I’ve watched the people who should’ve stopped him—his feckless enablers, his craven courtiers, his morally bankrupt apostles of power—stand by and feed him seconds. They hand him microphones and megaphones. They call his madness strategy and his malice strength. They laugh when he mocks the broken, cheer when he crushes the kind, and call it “owning the libs,” as if degradation were patriotism.

I’ve watched them sell what’s left of their souls for a photo, a soundbite, a seat at his golden table, as if proximity to rot might somehow make them whole.

I know the pain of being broken down. Chipped away at. Cracked and shattered. I know what it feels like to be muzzled and afraid, to live inside someone else’s control, to feel your power taken inch by inch until you barely recognize yourself. I know what it feels like to be wiped out like that White House wing — one day standing, the next reduced to dust.

I know abuse. I know what it sounds like when no one’s listening. I know what it feels like to live your life braced for the next explosion, rehearsing apologies for things you didn’t do. I’ve known it since I was a kid, when silence was survival and smiling was armor. I’ve known it as a woman, learning to shrink myself to stay safe, to disappear just enough to make it through the day. I’ve known it as a mother, teaching my children that kindness is strength, that power means responsibility, that love should never make you feel small.

I know what abusers do. I know how they charm, how they twist, how they rewrite reality until you doubt your own memory. I know the way they isolate you, how they turn your hope into a weapon and your empathy into a leash. That’s what he is. Every gaslight, every smear, every insult — it’s the same script. The same poison. The same sickness.

He is every abuser I’ve ever known, just painted orange, handed a podium, and given the nuclear codes.

So yes, I hate him. I hate the greed that built him, the rot that sustains him, the cruelty that pours out of him. I hate what he’s done to this country, to our spirit, to our shared idea of who we are. I hate what he’s normalized, what he’s excused, what he’s made people comfortable defending. But that hate isn’t the end of me. It’s the proof that I still care. The evidence that I still love this place enough to feel rage when I see it desecrated.

He’s suing us—every one of us—for $230 million. Think about that. He’s suing the American people while telling us we can’t afford pediatric cancer research. We can’t afford to feed starving children. We can’t afford to pay federal workers already showing up without paychecks. We can’t afford projects that make our communities safer. But somehow, we can afford his ego. We can afford his revenge. Because that’s what this is—it’s not a lawsuit, it’s retribution. Cruelty dressed in paperwork. Punishment wrapped in a court filing. He doesn’t want justice. He wants to make us hurt for ever holding him accountable.

And his party stands behind him, gaslighting us with grins, telling us this is normal. That this is leadership. That the destruction of our own house is just another headline. But they know. They all know. They know they didn’t vote for breadlines and ballrooms. They know they didn’t vote for this hollow carnival of cruelty and corruption. They just can’t admit it now. Because to admit it would mean seeing what the rest of us see when we look at that photo. Not just a building destroyed, but a mirror. A reflection of everything he’s done to us, to our systems, to our sanity, to our collective soul.

Most Americans don’t want this. They don’t want to watch children ripped from their parents while the cameras roll. They don’t want to see citizens thrown to the ground for existing in the wrong zip code or praying in the wrong language. They don’t want to watch the country they love reduced to rubble for a photo op. They don’t want a tyrant building a ballroom while families wait in food lines. They don’t want the lights of the White House glowing over empty fridges and unpaid bills. They don’t want cruelty sold as patriotism or hate disguised as faith.

I know I’m not alone in this. I feel it everywhere—in checkout lines, in the silence between neighbors, in the tired smiles of people still trying to keep hope alive. I feel it in the heaviness that lingers at school pick-ups and grocery stores, in the quiet looks between strangers who can’t quite find the words. Millions of us feel it—the exhaustion, the heartbreak, the love that refuses to die even when it’s wrapped in fury.

Maybe that’s why we say it out loud now. Because naming the hate reminds us it’s born of love. Because the only reason it hurts this much is because we still care. Because the pain itself is proof that we haven’t gone numb. We still want better. We still believe better is possible. And we still refuse—absolutely refuse—to get used to the horror.

He can bulldoze the East Wing, but he can’t bulldoze the truth. He can flatten marble, but not memory. He can silence walls, but not voices. Because this country doesn’t belong to him. It belongs to the people who still show up, who still march, who still believe there’s something sacred left to fight for. It belongs to those of us stubborn enough to keep standing in the dust, fighting for the light even as the air thickens with the wreckage he’s left behind.

The air will clear. The dust will settle. And when it does, we’ll still be here—hands dirty, hearts open, rebuilding what he tried to burn. Because love isn’t fragile. It’s feral. It survives ruin. It claws its way back through marble and concrete and memory. It doesn’t break; it roots. It grows.

And the sound that’s coming for him is louder. It’s the sound of millions of us waking up, rising up, standing up. It’s hammers and heartbeats and footsteps, all moving in the same direction. It’s the sound of a nation remembering who it is.

And when the light hits that rebuilt wing just right, our children will know we were the ones who stayed to fight for it—because he was never the storm.

We were.

And with that, today’s song:

I love you guys!

Stay strong, stay safe and stay in the fight!!

💙 Jo