I am devastated by the results of the 2024 U.S. presidential election; I’m gravely concerned about what a second Trump administration means for that country and our already turbulent world. I’m worried about the impact a Trump presidency will have on the sick, the disabled and the marginalized. As a survivor of ovarian cancer, my thoughts are especially with the cancer community.

If Trump is true to form, he’ll work tirelessly to achieve his detrimental campaign promises, his proposed policies would utterly decimate cancer research and health insurance coverage. I personally believe that basic healthcare should be a right rather than a privilege, maybe I’m radical that way—in that case, I’m proud to be extreme. If thinking that getting cancer shouldn’t be a leading cause of bankruptcy makes me a woke leftist, then so be it. 

Long before the COVID-19 pandemic, Robert F. Kennedy Jr. was building up a following with his anti-vaccine nonprofit group, Children’s Health Defense, and becoming one of the world’s most influential spreaders of fear and distrust around vaccines. Now, President-elect Donald Trump has chosen Kennedy to lead the Department of Health and Human Services, which regulates vaccines. Experts warn of what’s to come now that Kennedy has been placed in control, it’s especially worrying for children, the elderly and cancer patients.

Whenever I think about the American people choosing Donald Trump to lead them for the second time, a poem that I know immediately comes to mind. In 2007, Beat poet Lawrence Ferlinghetti wrote the poem Pity the Nation. He was inspired by Kahlil Gibran’s poem of the same title first published in 1933. Ferlinghetti wrote his version of Pity the Nation when he was 88. Putting pen to paper near the end of George W. Bush’s presidency, he saw much to protest and had a loud voice amongst the literary left.

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Pity the nation whose people are sheep
And whose shepherds mislead them
Pity the nation whose leaders are liars
Whose sages are silenced
and whose bigots haunt the airways
Pity the nation that raises not its voice
but aims to rule the world
by force and by torture
And knows
No other language but its own
Pity the nation whose breath is money
and sleeps the sleep of the too well fed
Pity the nation Oh pity the people of my country
My country, tears of thee
Sweet land of liberty!