He Was Right, and I Hate That

I spent more than fifteen years believing truth and goodness would eventually win. I’m not so sure anymore.

Have you ever had a moment where you can close your eyes and picture yourself in that exact moment again? Not just remember it, but actually go back there for a second. You can see the room. You can hear the voice. You remember the expression on someone’s face with a clarity that makes no sense considering how many years have passed. I have one of those moments.

I was in my early twenties, not even old enough to legally drink yet, and somehow still completely convinced I understood how the world worked. I remember talking to him about people, about right and wrong, about what ultimately wins when everything else falls away. I told him, with the absolute confidence only someone that young can have, that the good guys always win in the end. He told me I was wrong. He said money and power will always win.

Photo by Heshan Perera on Unsplash

I hated that answer. I hated how final it sounded. There was no hopeful exception built into it. He did not say money and power usually win, or sometimes win, or win if people let them. He said they always win. And of course I argued with him. I told him there had to be something stronger. Truth had to matter eventually. Justice had to matter. People could manipulate things for a while, sure. Money could buy influence. Power could protect people. But eventually the truth came out and the good guys won.

I believed that. Looking back now, I think I needed to believe it. Because what kind of world are we living in if money can buy the ending? What kind of world are we living in if power decides who faces consequences and who simply walks away? I needed there to be a line somewhere. Something money could not purchase. Something power could not control. I thought goodness was that line. He did not.

At the time I thought he was cynical. More than fifteen years later, I sometimes wonder if he was simply paying attention before I was. That thought bothers me more than I can explain, because I have spent all these years waiting for the world to prove him wrong.

The truth is, I did more than wait. I built huge parts of my life around proving him wrong. It is part of why I got into politics. It is part of why I chose the degree I did. It is part of why I cared so deeply about government, systems, messaging, public service, elections, power and who gets to wield it. That argument moved my world for years in ways I did not fully understand at the time. I wanted to believe that if enough good people got involved, if enough people cared, if enough people paid attention, then maybe truth could still beat money and power. Maybe I could prove that girl in her early twenties had not been naive. Maybe I could prove him wrong after all.

Every election seems to bring that conversation back. Maybe because elections are supposed to represent the idea that ordinary people still have power. Everyone gets a voice. Everyone gets a vote. We tell ourselves that ultimately the people decide. And yet I still hear him telling me that money and power will always win.

I hear it when powerful people survive things that would destroy an ordinary person. I hear it when money determines whose voice gets amplified and whose disappears. I hear it when consequences seem to depend less on what someone did and more on who they are, who they know, and what they can afford. Most of all, I hear it when the truth comes out and absolutely nothing happens.

That may have been the biggest thing younger me did not understand. I thought truth automatically had power because it was true. Life has taught me otherwise. Sometimes everyone knows the truth and it changes nothing. Sometimes people get hurt, the facts are obvious, the damage is real, and the person responsible simply keeps moving through life untouched while everyone else is left standing in the wreckage trying to understand how something so wrong was allowed to happen.

And life continues. That is probably the darkest part. There is no narrator who steps in and explains who was right. There is not always some dramatic moment where justice finally arrives and everything balances itself out. Sometimes there is just what happened and the people who have to live with it afterward.

I did not understand that in my early twenties. I still thought life eventually balanced the books. Now I am not even sure anyone is keeping them.

For more than fifteen years, I have wanted to prove him wrong. I have imagined calling him one day and saying, “Remember when you told me money and power would always win? You were wrong.” I wanted that victory. I still do. I wanted enough examples of goodness, truth, justice and decency to finally win an argument we started when I was not even old enough to order a drink.

But the older I get, the less certain I am that I will ever make that call, and that hurts more than simply losing an argument. Because it means admitting that the girl standing there all those years ago may have believed in a world that never really existed.

I miss her sometimes. I miss how certain she was. I miss how quickly she rejected the idea that money and power could be stronger than truth. She did not hesitate. She did not compromise. She looked at him and told him he was wrong because, to her, the good guys had to win in the end.

There is still a part of me that desperately wants to believe her. But after more than fifteen years of watching the world, I am forced to admit something I never thought I would. He has a lot more evidence than I do.

Maybe someday that changes. Maybe someday I really do get to make that phone call and claim victory. But there is another possibility now, one I hate even thinking about. Maybe we both grow old still standing on opposite sides of that same conversation. Maybe I spend the rest of my life waiting for the good guys to win enough times for me to finally prove him wrong.

And maybe, in the end, he dies knowing what he told me when we were barely adults was true: money and power won. And I die still wishing they had not.