While I’ve lived in the UK for over 15 years now, I still, in my heart, consider America my home. It is where my friends, family - and, in the case of Popverse, my cherished colleagues - live, so watching my country make such a hurtful, baffling, obviously wrong turn toward fascism and authoritarian rule was… well, it has been a lot. Yet, I find it difficult to feel truly hopeless and lost. Not because things won’t get hard in the coming years, but because we will endure and we will protect each other. It’s what Monkey D. Luffy, the stretchy, goofy hero of One Piece would do in our place, after all.
That feels like a stretch (pun intended), but it’ll make sense in a second, I promise.
I had resolved, when I went to bed on Tuesday night, not to watch the 2024 election results as they came in. Living in the UK, things wouldn’t even start happening until the wee hours of the morning and I had a busy day ahead. Yet, as I sat in bed holding my son during one of his semi-regular sleep regressions (teething is the worst, folks), the urge to doomscroll became too great. As results came in and showed that we were indeed going back rather than forward, for my own sanity, I swapped my phone for my tablet and turned to a small comfort in these trying times – One Piece.
As I fired up the Shonen Jump app, I found that the last chapter I had opened was from the Skypiea Arc as I searched for reaction images. I considered jumping ahead to where I had left off, but this wasn’t about trying to catch up – it was about blissful distraction. So, I reread the last half of Skypiea rather than watch the world usher in a second Trump presidency. It isn’t the best One Piece arc by any measure, but it felt oddly appropriate for that night. In it, an amoral, self-proclaimed god ruled a once proud nation through fear, forcing its citizens to debase themselves for his amusement and to turn on each other for his favor. He has his close minions who follow him with absolute loyalty, which this god rewards by abandoning them to their deaths.
Maybe it was the sleep deprivation talking, but I felt a stronger kinship to the Straw Hats than usual as they banded together to punch the narcissistic and self-serving Enel straight to the moon.
I found it oddly comforting to read a One Piece arc from two decades ago that seemed to foreshadow the events of this week. The story of overcoming oppression and cruelty is one we tell so often because it is something we have done – and we will do – again and again. Because we must. As my esteemed colleague said this week, this is not a new story. It is not the first time we’ve fought this fight and it, unfortunately, probably won’t be the last.
Luffy’s place in the One Piece world is not just its hero and protagonist but as the embodiment of freedom, so this isn’t his first or last time punching a fascist in the face repeatedly. After eating until he is about to burst, it is his favorite activity. One more reason I admire him. He is simple, kind, and fearless in his pursuit of freedom. There isn’t going to be any rubber band man that shows up to save us from the mess we’ve made, but Luffy is still the perfect hero for the trying times ahead of us.
There are vulnerable people among us who are scared; those without the privilege and comfort that some of us have (cis white, middle-class man here), so we look out for each other. Luffy doesn’t abandon his crew and neither do we, folks. Shield those who need it when you can. We’ll get to the other side of this and we need to bring as many people with us as possible. The only way we do that is together.
We can’t punch our problems away like in most superhero fiction, but we can make ourselves a nuisance to those who would abuse their power. When Luffy shoots down the World Government’s flag, it isn’t because he thinks that will make the problem go away. It is because he knows it will put a target on his back – a target he can endure better than others. He has both the strength and the support network of allies to protect him.
Like Luffy, we will continue to find joy in life, even in our darkest times. Not to dive too deeply into spoilers, but he doesn’t always win. He loses, both battles and the people he loves. There is going to be heartache in the months and potentially years ahead, but we still need to smile. Joke. Laugh. Make art with reckless abandon. Finding joy is the greatest act of resistance we can make right now.
I don’t claim to have the answers about what we should do here. I wasn’t emotionally or mentally ready for a return to the Trump years, so I’m still reeling from election night the same as everyone else. And yet, I have to believe there is hope. A single hero isn’t going to come to save us – there is no perfect candidate or party that will end this cycle of anger and fear we’re caught in. But we don’t give up. We help each other, we endure, and we laugh when we can.
When the world feels like it is nothing but darkness, I ask myself “What would Luffy do?” and it hasn’t steered me wrong yet.