Two weeks before the election, Tom Hanks hosted Saturday Night Live. While there, he donned his sweater, looked into the camera, and addressed a nation that was “scared about what was going to happen next.” The bit was not that funny-there was that weird point when Hanks inserts his uber rich status by saying he has 230 Million dollars-but the point was welcome in October. Hanks assured us we would make the right choice, and that when we did, everything would be fine. Thanks pops.
Well, election day has come and gone, our deepest fears were confirmed: Our dad doesn’t know anything. Everything didn’t turn out fine. Hanks supported Hillary Clinton, and Hillary Clinton lost. Donald Trump and his team of misogynistic, racist, white nationalists won the White House, and the outlook for America is anything but fine.
Right on cue, Tom Hanks is back, telling Americans once more that everything will be fine. During a reception for Hanks at MOMA this week, the actor took a few minutes to repeat his soothing fatherly message: everything will be just fine.
We are going to be all right. America has been in worst places than we are at right now. In my own lifetime, our streets were in chaos, our generations were fighting each other tooth and nail, and every dinner table ended up being as close to a fist fight as our families would allow. We have been in a place where we looked at our leaders and wondered what the hell were they thinking of? We’ve had moments with administrations and politicians and leaders and Senators and governors where we asked ourselves, Are they lying to us? Or do they really believe in this? That’s all right. We have this magnificent thing that is in place, it’s a magnificent document, and it starts off with these phrases that if you’re smart enough, you memorized in school, or, just read it enough so you learned it by heart, or, you kind of watched those things on ABC where they taught you little songs, and the song goes like, [sings] “We the People … in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice and insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defense, promote the general Welfare,” and it goes on and on. That. That document is going to protect us, over and over again, whether or not our neighbors preserve and protect and defend it themselves.
We are going to be all right, because we constantly get to tell the whole world who we are. We constantly get to define ourselves as Americans. We do have the greatest country in the world. We may move at a slow pace, but we do have the greatest country in the world, because we are always moving towards a more perfect Union. That journey never ceases. It never stops. Sometimes, like in a Bruce Springsteen song, one step forward, two steps back. But we still, aggregately, move forward. We, who are a week into wondering what the hell just happened, will continue to move forward. We have to choose to do so. But we will move forward, because if we do not move forward, what is to be said about us?
We will be alright because we get to tell the world who we are? What does that even mean Tom? What are you saying, really?
It’s time to recognize that this banality is a problem. Saying America is the best country in the world doesn’t actually make it true. Saying that America is the best country in the world doesn’t mean that everything will be okay. Saying that the Magnificent Documents of our founding will protect us doesn’t for one second mean that we are protected from the worst aspects of a Donald Trump presidency.
The only thing that will protect us is us, doing the hard work of democracy, and protecting ourselves. Take the clue from David Frum (I know!) and stop telling us everything will be alright.
The lovely American confidence that "everything will be all right" has itself now become a serious danger to everything being all right.
— David Frum (@davidfrum) November 10, 2025
Tom Hanks probably has his heart in the right place (in his chest, center-right) but it is not up to the privileged elites to tell the rest of the nation that things are going to be alright. Instead, listen to the people who have real skin in this game: people of color, the poor, refugees, muslims, LGBTQ folks. Ask them if things are going to be alright before you pretend to be our national dad.
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