I’m taking a couple days off.

Yeah, really. After this post, I’m stepping away for Thanksgiving weekend. I’ll be back in your feed on Monday, December 1st, caffeinated and furious.

But before I vanish into a pile of mashed potatoes and my own questionable life choices, let’s talk about gratitude — real gratitude — the kind where you say: “Hey, remember that thing we used to have? The thing called a right? The thing called basic human dignity? The thing called not living in a dystopian fever dream?”

Yeah. Let’s revisit those. Because a whole lot of them quietly wandered off this year like turkeys trying to escape the deep fryer.

DISCLAIMER: This is satire delivered with all the gentleness of a dropped carving knife. If you’re allergic to profanity, political honesty, or basic reality, please consult a physician — preferably one not recently banned by executive order.

PART ONE: A DOZEN THINGS WE HAD — BEFORE SOMEBODY TOOK THE AXE TO THEM

Let’s gather ‘round the Thanksgiving table of vanished rights, the cornucopia of “wait, didn’t we used to…?” the annual parade of liberties that got kneecapped while we weren’t looking.

Here are twelve we had — like, recently — and then poof, gone faster than RFK Jr.’s credibility in a poetry slam.

1. Driving While Brown Without Getting Pulled Over Every Third Block

We had a stretch — remember this — where racial profiling was shrinking. Where data transparency was increasing. Where the DOJ had civil-rights monitors in police departments.

Then came the new era of “Probable cause? Nah, man, he looked vaguely ethnic.”

We’re back to the 1950s, but with dashboard cameras.

2. Being Trans and Serving in the Military Without Needing a Permission Slip Signed by the Grand Wizard

For a while, America pulled its head out of its ass and let trans people serve openly.

 You know — like patriots. Like citizens. Like human beings.

Now? Rollbacks, purges, and a government acting like gender identity is a communicable disease.

Happy Thanksgiving, here’s a targeted discrimination campaign.

3. The Right to Protest Without Being Put on a Watchlist

Remember when peaceful assembly was protected?

Yeah, well the U.S. just got flagged as “deteriorating” on global civic-freedom indexes. When you land on the same list as Hungary and “Whatever the hell Elon is making X into,” you’ve screwed something up.

Protesting is still “legal,” the way a sandwich is still “food” after it’s been dropped in a puddle.

4. A Functioning Civil Rights Division at the DOJ

There was a time when the DOJ’s civil-rights lawyers were the country’s firewall against discrimination.

Now we’ve had a mass exodus of those same attorneys, like the legal equivalent of rats fleeing a sinking oil tanker. When the people whose job is “protect rights” resign because they can’t… that’s bad.

That’s. Really. Bad.

5. Anti-Discrimination Protections That Didn’t Require a Blood Sacrifice to Enforce

“Disparate impact” laws — the backbone of proving discrimination — survived five decades of attacks.

And now? Let’s call it what it is: Federal slow-motion euthanasia.

We didn’t repeal the law. We just unplugged the machine.

6. Privacy at Work That Didn’t Involve AI Tracking Your Bladder Schedule

There was a glorious moment where worker-protection laws tried to catch up to automation and AI. Where humans were treated as something other than breakable Roombas with pulse rates.

Cut to today: companies monitoring workers like zoo exhibits. Step away for a bathroom break? Congratulations, you’re “low-productivity fauna.”

7. Trans Rights Recognized at the Federal Level

Earlier this year: Protections. Recognition. Human dignity.

Now? Executive orders rolling back access to care, identity recognition, and protections.

We’ve gone from “basic equality” to “please present your papers at the gender checkpoint.”

8. Federal Union Protections for Workers Who Make the Government Function

Remember when federal employees had representation?

Then came: “Shutdown? No pay. No union. No bargaining. No rights. Clock in or get out.”

It’s like Dickens rewrote HR policy.

9. The Expectation That Having Autism, Diabetes, or Depression Wouldn’t Make You Ineligible to Simply Live Here

Once upon a time, medical screenings for immigrants meant communicable diseases.

Now? Visa officers — not doctors — can deny you for: diabetes, obesity, heart disease, mental health conditions, your kid’s disability, your grandma’s arthritis, oh, and don’t forget, your future hypothetical medical costs

“We don’t want your tired, your poor… especially if they need insulin.”

10. Equal Access to Public Education Without Needing an Exorcism, a Lawsuit, or Both

Department of Education civil-rights enforcement? Yeah, that’s been gutted.

If your kid has disabilities and goes to public school, good luck — the cavalry’s been furloughed.

11. Voting Without the Feeling You’re Running an Obstacle Course

Voting rights were supposed to improve. Modernize. Become more accessible.

Instead, we’ve got: Shutdown chaos. Voter-roll purges. Restrictive ID laws. Drop-box elimination. Bullshit “election integrity” commissions.

Democracy didn’t die — it’s being mugged in slow motion.

12. The Expectation — Silly Us! — That Government Exists to HELP PEOPLE

Shutdown. SNAP threats. Health subsidies held hostage. Court orders ignored. Immigration cruelty dialed to max.

And a president who says cost of living concerns are a “con.”

The only con is him.

PART TWO: THE GOOD NEWS WE ACTUALLY GOT THIS YEAR

(Because even in the Year of Our Flaming Dumpster 2025, hope found a few cracks to seep through.)

Let’s take a beat before we go back to screaming into the gravy boat and actually acknowledge something wild: a few things went right this year. Not many. Not enough. But enough to prove the country hasn’t flatlined yet.

For starters, Americans showed up to vote like the ballots were printed on winning lottery tickets. People stood in line in rainstorms, in the middle of shutdown chaos, and in towns where the only other excitement that week was the new seasonal flavor at the gas-station Slurpee machine. And they didn’t just show up — they made choices. Big ones. They flipped seats in Virginia and New Jersey, elevating grown-ups with functioning attention spans, the kind who can read a briefing instead of starring in one. They did it calmly, quietly, and decisively, like the country just grabbed the wheel and said, “Move. You’ve had your turn.”

And democracy — bless her rickety bones — kept going. Elections happened. Ballots got counted. Results were accepted without the usual chorus of howling about bamboo fibers and Italian satellites. The republic held a straight face and said, “You don’t get to call ‘rigged’ just because the results weren’t your favorite flavor this time.”

Courts outside of SCOTUS even did their job like absolute legends. Some of them struck down gerrymandered fever dreams, some protected access to the ballot box, and one glorious batch managed to remind a few elected grifters that, yes, actions do have consequences — even if you shout “witch hunt” loud enough to fog a mirror. And while the Supreme Court pretended not to hear any appeals involving human dignity this year, the lower courts quietly upheld marriage equality again. They didn’t make a big fuss. They didn’t grandstand. They simply said: “We settled this already, now go plan your wedding, we’re busy.”

Even state governments pitched in where the feds refused to. California took one look at the national redistricting circus and said, “Fine, we’ll do it ourselves — and we won’t need a clown car.” Voters there doubled down on basic fairness, proving that while the country can feel like it’s being run by a malfunctioning Roomba, there are still rooms it can navigate without eating the furniture.

And here’s the strangest blessing of all: in a year when the political winds sounded like a cat stuck in a leaf blower, everyday people kept pushing back. Not with riots. Not with torches. But with clipboards, turnout drives, legal challenges, and the world’s most stubborn optimism. It wasn’t a tsunami of victory. It wasn’t even a strong breeze. But it was a pulse — a good, steady, defiant little pulse reminding us that democracy still has a heartbeat, even when the people in charge seem determined to smother it with a decorative pillow.

PART THREE: LOOKING AHEAD—HOPEPUNK IN THE WRECKAGE

So where does that leave us, heading into the tail end of 2025 and the incoming chaos buffet of 2026?

Right back in the saddle of reality:

This is going to be hard.

This is going to be messy.

And this is going to require every single one of us to hold onto our damn humanity like it’s the last roll of toilet paper in a pandemic Costco.

Because the truth is: nothing about this year has been normal. Nothing about next year will be easier. But the thing that keeps the gears turning — the one thing that authoritarians never understand — is that everyday people keep pushing anyway.

Not all in the same way. Not with the same tools. Not with the same resources.

Some of us march.

Some of us donate.

Some of us volunteer.

Some of us organize.

Some of us write angry rants on the internet. 

And some of us simply survive in a world that wasn’t built with us in mind — and survival itself becomes resistance.

Because that’s the quiet truth strongmen can’t ever quite stamp out: Resistance doesn’t always look like a riot. 

Sometimes it looks like kindness.

Sometimes it looks like community.

Sometimes it looks like refusing to stop giving a damn.

Hopepunk has never been about pretending the world is fine. Hopepunk is about insisting the world can be better even when everything around you tells you to sit down, shut up, and accept the burn marks.

Kindness — real kindness, the kind that costs something — is rebellion. 

Compassion — fierce, stubborn, inconvenient compassion — is revolutionary.

Showing up for someone else when you don’t have much left in the tank isn’t weakness. It’s defiance. Helping your neighbors when the government won’t is mutiny with a smile. Telling the truth in a room full of liars is civil disobedience dressed as honesty. And refusing to surrender to cruelty — that’s the biggest middle finger of all.

The months ahead are going to test people.

They’re going to test institutions.

They’re going to test the very idea of America as a country that shares more than a flag and a ZIP code.

But you don’t need to save the world by yourself. You don’t need to carry the whole fight on your shoulders. You don’t need to match anyone else’s pace, impact, or privilege.

All you have to do is your part.

Your size.

Your shape.

Your way.

And when enough people do that — quietly or loudly, in sneakers or wheelchairs, in red states or blue states, in fear or in fury — it becomes something powerful enough to scare the bastards who think they’ve already won.

So here’s the hopepunk oath for the rest of 2025 and all of 2026:

Be kind.

Be compassionate.

Be inconvenient.

Be ungovernably decent.

And never, ever stop giving a damn — because the people making life hell are counting on your exhaustion far more than your outrage.