A Cockroach Moment
SAM (FALCON): Whelp, here we are. Happy birthday, Steve.
STEVE (CAPT. AMERICA): Thanks, Sam. Though I’d hoped it would be under happier circumstances. And yet, here we are. Trump unequivocally elected.
SAM: A conservative Supreme Court locking in executive power and conservative values.
STEVE: Cuts to health care access and vaccines.
SAM: Rollbacks to climate policy, manufacturing jobs, social safety net.
STEVE: ICE as a growing extralegal police. Iran and Israel.
SAM: So what next, Cap?
STEVE: We keep going forward, Cap. The hardest part of fighting a bully isn’t the moment when you call them out. It isn’t even when you stand back up after they knock you down. It’s when you look them in the eye and tell them that even though they knocked you down, it doesn’t make them RIGHT. That they can keep hitting but they’re still in the wrong. Bullies think they can win through intimidation. So we stand firm, and we PUSH BACK.
BUCKY (WINTER SOLDIER): It’s not just intimidation, Steve. They make your life small. They make it hard to ask questions. They make it that the only choice left is to follow orders.
SAM: But you did ask questions. (“The man on the bridge … who is he? Why do I know him?”) And more importantly, you’re still here. They tried to erase you but you outlasted them. And that’s what counts. Forget everything else, because it’s fucking EXHAUSTING. I’m tired of trying to stay positive. Tired of trying to understand the people who refuse to do the same for me. I’ve lived in a politicized and marginalized body my entire life. And what counts is that I’m still here. They want us to give up. They want us to forget. Because then they can claim they were right all along. Well guess what? I refuse to disappear. They don’t get to make America petty and small-minded, not on my watch.
STEVE: So you’re saying that we should plant ourselves like a tree beside the river of truth and say, “No, you move”?
SAM: Actually, I was gonna say, “Be a cockroach, stare them in the eye and say ‘fuck you, I’m still here,’ but your thing sounds better.”
(clinking glasses)
SAM: Fuck yeah.
STEVE: To being a cockroach, then.