I wasn’t even going to write this.
I’ve had these thoughts for years, watching from across the ocean as America cycles through the same patterns, the same shocks, the same denials. But then I saw President Trump and Vice President JD Vance sitting in the Oval Office, smirking as Ukraine’s leader pleaded for help.
I saw them mock Volodymyr Zelensky’s desperation, shrugging off his calls for support like he was just another loser in a game they had already won. I watched them sit, unbothered, while a man fighting for his country’s survival tried to explain why his people still mattered.
And it hit me: I’ve seen this before.
Because this isn’t new. Not for America. Not for Black people. This is exactly what America has done to us from the very beginning. A country built on a promise—all men are created equal!—but only willing to uphold it when it’s convenient. A country that will tell you it stands for freedom and justice, then mock you when you dare ask for either. A country that pats itself on the back for helping the oppressed, but only on its own terms, in its own time, and never at a real cost to itself.
Ukraine, right now, is learning a lesson that Black Americans have known for centuries:
America’s support is conditional.
It’s loud when it makes America look good. It’s full of moral outrage when it can be turned into a political win. But the moment actually standing by you requires sacrifice? The moment helping you starts to feel like a burden? The moment your suffering isn’t useful anymore? The doors close. The money dries up. The cameras move on.
And this is why I left.
Not because I hate America. Not because I wanted to disconnect. But because I saw the pattern. I understood the stakes. I didn’t need to sit around waiting to see if this time would be different. I already knew how the story went.
Ever since Trump’s first election in 2016, I’ve seen the same cycle play out among my white American readers. The shock, the confusion, the utter disbelief.
"How did this happen?"
"This isn’t who we are!"
"I thought we were better than this."
Then came 2020. Biden wins. The fever breaks. The nightmare ends. America has corrected itself.
Until 2024.
And suddenly, y’all are blindsided again.
"Wait, what? But…but after everything?" After Jan 6? After all the indictments? After the sheer incompetence? How is this even possible?
And look, I get why this is a tough pill to swallow. You thought the country had learned. You thought the consequences of Trump’s first term—the lies, the corruption, the open authoritarianism—would be enough to ensure it would never happen again.
But here’s the thing: a whole lot of us—especially Black folks—never thought that.
Because we’ve never been able to believe in America the way you do.
See, when you grow up Black in America, you don’t get the fairy tale. You don’t get the neat and tidy “moral arc of history” speech where everything bends toward justice if we just vote harder or be patient. You get the real version of the story. The one where every time progress starts looking too real—where the scales even start to tip in the direction of equality—there’s a swift and vicious backlash.
It happened after Reconstruction.
It happened after the Civil Rights Movement.
It happened after Obama.
And it’s happening now.
Because America isn’t just built on white supremacy. It’s built on the maintenance of white supremacy. And that means every time the idea of white male dominance is truly threatened, the system doesn’t just course-correct—it snaps back. Hard.
And that brings us to Trump.
Now, let’s be clear—Trump didn’t orchestrate this backlash. He’s no mastermind. He doesn’t have the intelligence, discipline, or ideological commitment to lead anything. He’s not some strategic genius pulling the strings behind the curtain. If anything, he was just the right kind of fool at the right kind of moment.
He didn’t create the wave—he got swept up in it. He rode that backlash like a casino whale on a streak, playing to the crowd, basking in the cheers, and never once stopping to ask why they were cheering.
Hell, I don’t even think he expected to beat Hillary. But once he did? Once he got a taste of that Oval Office power, once he saw that playing to white grievance was the easiest way to keep the applause coming? He leaned in. He started saying the quiet parts out loud because he realized the quiet parts got the biggest cheers.
And the people cheering? They weren’t duped. They weren’t tricked. They weren’t voting against their interests.
Trump was their interest.
Because the real promise of America has never been democracy or fairness or justice. It has always been that no matter how poor you are, no matter how much the system screws you over, if you’re white, you’re still above them. And for a lot of people, that’s worth more than democracy itself.
So when my readers (usually white, but sometimes even black as well...the propaganda is potent!) come to me, wide-eyed and bewildered, asking, How did this happen again? I have to bite my tongue. Because I want to say:
What do you mean again?
It never stopped.
And it won’t stop until you (and by you, I mean we) stop being surprised because shock is a luxury. Shock means you still think America is something it has never been. And if you’re still clutching your pearls in disbelief every time history repeats itself, then you haven’t learned the lesson yet.
So let me ask you—what did you learn?
Because America sure as hell learned something.
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