In four year’s time, none of us will be here. In four years, not a single editor I know will be left in this newsroom. By then, I could walk from Piano Row to Little Building and, for once, not recognize a single face.
But there will be people here. Making the newspaper. Walking down Boylston Street. Complaining about 8 a.m. classes and the dining hall food. Do we know who those people are? No, but they will be just like us. And though I’m not sure where I will end up, I know I will be somewhere. That’s the thing about the future—just enough about it is known to make the unknowns seem that much more daunting.
In four year’s time, Donald Trump will no longer be president of the United States. Do we know who will be inaugurated in 2029? No, but it won’t be him. With JD Vance set to inherit MAGA, that thought isn’t comforting as it should be, but let it be a comfort anyway in the knowledge that we will be free of Trump.
This is not to say that we should resort to escapism during this term, in fact, we should do just the opposite. We need to read the news, from more than one source, and we need to be aware of propaganda from all sides—propaganda already beginning to grace headlines.
The next four years are going to be incredibly taxing, and I won’t hide that. As a non-U.S. citizen, I know it all too well. I know that we’re going to see pain. We’re going to see hurt, we’re going to see all the same losses of hope and community that we saw during Trump’s first term. There will be days that are okay, and then there will be days that make us want to cry and scream at the wall, and then there will be days when we do cry and scream at the wall. On those days, I implore to remember one thing: Today isn’t forever.
The U.S.’s political climate, like everything else, is a cycle. It goes through seasons. Right now, we might be in winter, but that doesn’t mean we’ll never see the flowers bloom again: It just means we have to wait. Though that change could come sooner because in two years, 468 seats will be up for reelection during 2026 midterms.
We must take the next two years to continue educating ourselves and others. Since “the economy” was the most important voting factor in 2024, holding the Trump administration, as well as the Republican-led House and Senate, accountable for the promises they made (i.e., let’s see how much the price of groceries really decreases) could accelerate the change we need.
Great advice for dealing with a renewed Trump era will undoubtedly appear again and again in highbrow publications across the nation, but let my best advice come from “We’re Going on a Bear Hunt,” a great children’s book written by Michael Rosen: “We can’t go over it, we can’t go under it, we’ve got to go through it.”
The next four years are going to be hard, but they will come to an end. How they will end, we don’t know for sure, but we can spend the meantime ensuring it’s a good ending.
