R emember “Not My President”? I Imagined the Apocalypse Being Way More Fun

The night after the 2016 election, a young, passionate, and much more ideologically optimistic Alice that quantified outrage as an even remotely useful exercise took to the streets amongst a mob of “community activist partners” I found on Facebook. In a state of idealistic indignance that has long since been burnt out within me, I wielded a Dollar Tree posterboard I’d fiercely but aesthetically emblazoned with the bubble-font poem “NO KKK NO FASCIST USA” (the word “fascist” misspelled) and, on the front side of my sign that I’d wield while shrieking in the streets alongside bandana-clad kids with megaphones, the words I most needed to be true about Donald Motherfucking Trump: that he was “NOT MY PRESIDENT’.

To be quite honest, I got my wish. But although abdicating the seat which he so loves to hold for…honestly, I have no clue fucking what reason, he is still, technically its occupant. But make no mistake: Donald Trump has not actually governed not made any attempt to do so since the day he was sworn into office.

No, there has never been (nor likely will there ever be) a President Donald Trump. No, we have had a President Stephen Miller, a President Steve Banning, a President Jared Kushner, a President… [honestly, I don’t know, I can’t keep up with it anymore], but if we’ve ever had a single physically material individual leader, it has been the haphazard parroting of these… interests, “or you know, whatever”, and abdication of the role of the presidency of the United States (with the exception of an egotistical episode every six or so months suddenly innervating the empty chair in a constantly frustrated and unfulfilling act of actualizing a Great Idea I Had At 3 AM Last Night). Aside from this definitive and well-documented utter disinterest in performing the duties of the office which he holds and the arbitrariness with which he will randomly attempt to weaponize this power very en tempo quite full-motherfucking-stop-bro-I-just-did-three-lines-of-’some-incredible-fucking-I-mean-incredible-cocaine — then, in those blessed and cursed instances, we have someone at least trying to be president.

But to technically hold the chief office of the executive branch and technically have last call on the administrative functional enactment of the power it wields —“technically” being the operative term — while you, or whoever happens to temporarily occupy that empty chair, has theoretical “authority” on enforcement of these acts — that does not mean you are my president.

Donald Trump is most implicitly a public figure, but he has never been, been interested in being, nor made a solid attempt to be our president.

Just as the White House and its administration are characterized not by “Secretaries” of [Absolutely Magnanimous Instruments of Power], but by “Acting Secretaries” of these instruments of power. Donald Trump may in title alone be president, but in the wake of this historic public health crisis and in at least my personal psyche, New York Governor Andrew Cuomo is “acting” president of the United States.

Part III: What We Should Expect From All Our Bureaucratic Daddies

Donald Trump might be my abusive stepfather, but Andrew Cuomo — or at least my idealized version of him — is my father. In this political moment, he is America’s daddy, and he will get us those ventilators if we need them, or so help me god- actually, there is no “so help me God”, he will get me what I need no matter the cost. He will go to bat for his people. He will witness their suffering, and look up with uniquely non-politician-y tear-filled eyes to meet your eyes, so he can say to you — and only to you, directly to you — that if you are still suffering, he has failed.

This is probably bullshit. But regardless, it reminds me of what we expect from our elected officials and of the kind of leadership that is possible. When politicians say my parents should “sacrifice themselves” for the economy, to witness a constrastingly unapologetic and seemingly unpostured rebuke of such eugenics-y Lord Farquadism, in a manner that appears to be both authentic yet filled with genuine New York asshole outrage on our behalf, is uniquely comforting in stark contrast to the empty chair which “governs” us at this existentially significant and implicitly both traumatic and apolitical time.

I remember the moment when I first fell in love with Andrew Cuomo, before I started biting my lip and smiling coyly as I watch his press briefings every day due to the absolutely devastating toll of quarantine isolation due to which I’ve had zero options for getting laid, and thereby been extremely sexually repressed for over a month.

It was this one press conference with my most esteemed of fathers when I suddenly felt that I was.. taken care of, like I wasn’t cast out into the cold on my own to die for indigent Daddy Dow, abandoned by my leaders that I trusted, that there was someone who was down to be an adult in the room, someone to be my real daddy.

It was when I heard this clip of our acting president delivering a tearful speech in rebuke of the “sacrifice your grandparents” argument (a rhetorical stance which was briefly albeit catastrophically emphatically endorsed by the majority of our federal and much of our state governmental leadership), that I first fell in love.

Addressing his constituents in the “great state of New York”, addressing (arguably) the nation, and (when he digitally looks you in the eyes) addressing you and only you, he said, “You are not expendable. My mother is not expendable. We’re not going to put a dollar value on human life.” This kind of posturing, practiced in policy or not (in his case, it was practiced if not after the fact), is a starkly grim contrast to the kind of leadership we’ve seen from the White House and many Midwestern states — and the kind of accountability we should demand from our leaders.

He told me he did not want to kill my grandparents for the Dow Jones, and he sounded like he meant it — and that level of comfort from someone in power, that reassurance that the people whom we trusted with the power to protect us would actually fight on our behalf — that he would be firm, unrelenting, yet tender and kind, and be my daddy the way all our representatives should be our ideological daddies in how they advocate for us, talk to us straight, reassure us, tell us they care about our wellbeing, and admit that sometimes, they fail. It felt like a human being, not a self-interested political character, was protecting me. What stunned me most was the fact that when he spoke and said he cared, I felt like he wasn’t lying.

And goddamn — isn’t that a low bar for what we expect from our elected officials.

In regards to the controversial strict regulations he enacted in the state to slow the spread of the coronavirus, Andrew Cuomo said:

“If someone wants to blame someone, blame me. There is no one else responsible for this decision.”

In contrast, Donald Trump said verbatim, in response to a question about the administration’s belated response to the thread and the subsequent spread of the pandemic which has now taken tens of thousands of lives:

“I take no responsibility at all.”

I love it when hot men tell me they’re sorry, and while that’s a pretty high bar for the demographic, we ought to expect more from a significantly more important one — our elected officials. Admit when you are wrong. Don’t be dead while running for office. Say something, and mean it. Move the world on my behalf, at any cost, because I’m worth it. Stick up for me like every single one of your constituents is a person just like you. Tell me what is actually going on, and assume I’m smart enough to understand, and don’t presume that I don’t care. And if possible, please be my daddy.

Again, what a tragically low bar to set for our elected officials — for them not to be corpses, and for them not to lie. If you’re my elected representative, quite honestly, I don’t care that much about you in the context of governance. I care that you care about me.

We can’t have nice things, as is evidenced by the fact that the one most genuinely empathetic human being on this earth, the angel and cultural icon Bernie Sanders, is no longer in the running for the Democratic nomination nor the presidency of the United States, because he is, it seems, too pure and political hegemony is, it seems, too totalitarian brutal to those who didn’t grow up in Bel Air, and never wanted to.

But if I can’t have my diehard Malcom X-inspired Ghandi-esque idol of ideology, give me a daddy president.

Thank you, and good night.

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Conclusion & Notes

Note: The notably problematic public figure romanticized in this article due to the mentally disorienting effect of self-quarantine may or may not have caused the housing crisis.

Note #2: But like, he didn’t mean to. Isn’t it a statement on the gravity of our political climate that to me that is honestly not only a totally sufficient excuse but honestly borderline hot for the fact that it is not overtly violent? You can annihilate my economy by granting me risky subprime mortgages out of an attempt to expand housing access to low-income Americans anytime. You can destroy my economy for all I care. Give a fuck about me, or try to, even if you’re problematic, and even if you fail. Try on my behalf.

Or honestly, whatever- at least just pretend to. I’d rather have that than a friendly but 80% probably dead guy, or our current commander-in-chief — that most noble, shockingly racist, and astoundingly egotistical empty chair. The level of corruption we’re currently witnessing from untouched items of household furniture, much like the disused office of the American presidency, is honestly quite shocking.

The Real Big Takeaway

Donald Trump is just gonna run to the store to buy a pack of cigarettes. Daddy Cuomo walks into the house and says, here baby, I’d never ruin you with cigarettes- here’s a fat blunt with some dank motherfucking kush. And I’d say thank you, my father. To which he replies, you are so welcome, my beloved constituent daughter. If you smoke too much weed that your lungs singe into crispy leaf-bags of burnt-up shriveling ash shards of congealed apostrophied decay, I will make sure you’re so high you never even notice. And I will get you a ventilator from the federal government. Also, as your elected official, I do not think your parents should die for the Dow Jones. “Thank you father,” I will reply weeping. “That’s the sweetest thing anyone has ever said.”

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