Timing is everything, and from what I can tell, Wonder Woman 1984 was timed perfectly. That’s not to say it was perfect, or even on time. It was delayed multiple times actually, and it was far from perfect. It was by no means the movie we deserved, but it was the movie we needed.

The movie opens with a teachable moment for a young Diana, who, tasting defeat for likely the first time, succumbs to the temptation to cheat. She is denied her laurels because she refused to accept an unfortunate truth and tried to live a lie into its place. Hundreds of years later, she makes the same mistake, and finds virtually all of humanity right along with her thanks to the machinations of a business mogul whose ambition is only rivaled by his impeccable blond coif.

If the film’s reimagining of comic villain Maxwell Lord is, as I suspect, a subtle riff on 80s era Donald Trump, it’s a refreshing take. A superficial analysis reveals unmistakable parallels to the caricature of the man who has dominated headlines for the last five years: the insecurity, the substitution of slick photogenics for actual business acumen, the overcompensation that ultimately endangers all mankind.

Not so superficially, the movie’s climax in many ways also resembles current events. The scenes of chaos and lawlessness that underpin all the troubles wrought by Lord’s mischief could easily have been taken from any given riot last year. Multiple nuclear launches and abundance of Porsches notwithstanding, the confluence of unfettered wishful thinking portrayed in the fictitious Washington weren’t too far off from what we saw in the actual Washington just this week.

The real villain in both instances, the culprit that brought a functioning society to the brink of chaos, wasn’t a the caricature of greed we are led to believe. It was the vain belief that we can get everything we want, that wish fulfillment is a valid substitute for hard truths.

America must face some hard truths now. The government was broken long before Donald Trump took the reins. Had he succeeded in holding onto them, he couldn’t have steered us out of this mess. Taking the reins from him, by hook or crook, won’t solve the problem either. The reins are the problem.

Some of our founding fathers recognized the hard truth that a free society requires the possibility of strife. Others insisted that they could order society in such a way to largely head it off, and empowered government to that end. That conceit–that government edict can offset human nature or substitute for the hard work of achieving societal harmony–has given generation upon generation the expectation that wishes, empowered by the monkey’s paw of controlled violence that is government action, can come true.

Some wished for social justice. The monkey’s paw ostensibly granted it, but took our ability to understand and get along with others to truly achieve it.

Some wished for economic parity. The monkey’s paw purports to offer it, at the mere cost of opportunity to achieve our own heights of prosperity.

Some wished for a white knight to vanquish the vile inhabitants of the swamp. The monkey’s paw produced one, only for his advocates to yearn for him to exercise power they’d fight to the death if wielded by another.

Some wished to be rid of a perceived demagogue. The monkey’s paw cast him out, in exchange for the dissolution of any vestige of the integrity our country’s institutions once held.

Some wished to have their voices heard. The monkey’s paw broadcast it for the world to hear, albeit distorted into something fearsome and abhorrent.

There is no hero that can save us. Our shortsighted wishes have led us to this frightful impasse, and only a renunciation of them can pull us back. We must realize that government can’t make people get along, that trying to do so by force is the surest way to further entrench hatred; that forced attempts at universal prosperity will only ever produce universal misery. We must realize that Donald Trump isn’t a white knight or a demagogue. He is a lightening rod for hundreds of years of deferred responsibility, a nexus for our collective wish for a shortcut to a just and free society.

It is time to renounce the wishes and put in the hard work of figuring out how to earn and sustain the society we want.