One Day His Name Will Be Wiped Away

I picture a primetime TV event in which Donald Trump's name and portrait and likeness is removed from every single government building in D.C., a sort of ritual cleansing for a nation besieged by a metastasizing cancer that nearly swallowed it whole.

There's hooting and hollering. I'm pounding hard seltzers.

Watch as Trump's cursed name is stripped from the entrance to the Kennedy Center. Sit up in your seat as the name – chanted by his worshippers as an expletive, a five-letter threat – is taken down from the Institute of Peace. Feel yourself approach childish giddiness as the gold globs he's splattered all over the White House and federal buildings are ripped off and thrown away. It's the sort of thing, I think, that can be therapeutic for a populace that is largely done with all this fascist groove thing.

A year after corporate titans and cultural figures and world leaders treated Trump as an indomitable god-king risen from the political grave to rule the conquered earth forevermore, his support has cratered, the pro-democracy opposition in our competitive authoritarian situation is dominating elections, and the cognitive test-taking god-king is openly asking if he should step down from the presidency and be a TV host, the only thing he ever really wanted to be. There is, in fact, a space for political opportunity, and the price of grapes has not gone down.

As we enter 2026, you can (and should) take heart in understanding the extent to which Trump's support has eroded since the heady days of February 2025. The 2024 Trump electorate was an illusion, never real, generated by powerful social media algorithms used by his allies to usher him back into power. That winning coalition is no more: Latino men and zoomer bros are apparently out on the country's first tyrant. So we have that going for us, which is nice.

You can tell how poorly things are going for the Big Boy by the sheer number of treats his handlers are tossing his way. They're promising to build him fancy battleships and they're letting him slap his name on the Kennedy Center and they're letting him do national primetime addresses in which he rants about whatever crosses his addled mind. They might let him host his very own Hunger Games next fall. Treats on treats on treats.

They're giving him these treats because he's mad and collapsing in every conceivable way. This is why enemies of American democracy like Curtis Yarvin – the JD Vance whisperer – are dooming just one year into this awful second Trump term. The true believers like Yarvin – folks who want to boil the United States in a vat of toxic sludge – now know the people in charge do not have what it takes to do the damn thing. They're in it for the attention: The hideous photo shoots, the social media clout, the outrage from opponents of fascism. That is their payment.

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I can't wait for the day Trump's godforsaken name is stripped from our institutions. It will be our own tearing down of the dictator's towering statue. The appetite for this national purification in the post-Trump era is real and growing. We want to be delivered from this authoritarian nightmare in which an unelected white supremacist is acting as president while the elected president dodders around the halls of power, fretting that he won't be allowed to enter the pearly gates.

I don't know when that era will start or how many horrors both big and small we will have to endure to get there, but I know it's coming and I know it will be glorious. His stain will remain, but his name cannot.

In 2026 and beyond, don't lose your imagination for what a fairer, freer United States can look like. It's why I wrote Blog Posts From The Glorious Future. Fascists want nothing more than to kill your capacity to imagine better things; without accomplishing that, they can't bend the country to their hate-filled will. Don't give in, now or ever, as hard as that might be in these bad faith times.

Follow Denny Carter on Bluesky at @dennycarter.bsky.social.