Pam Bondi and Kristi Noem, welcome to reality.

It was always going to end this way.

We tried to warn you.

Those of us who’ve been paying attention for the past two hundred and fifty years here pleaded with you not to be distracted by the seductive pull of proximity to power, because it was never going to be permanent with those men.

Your elevation in their midst could never be anything but temporary, because the Patriarchy will always discard you.

No matter how enticing the invitation is on the front end, no matter how effusive and flattering the initial pitch, when the chaotic turbulence becomes too great, when the scalding tongues of criticism come too close, when a ceremonial sacrifice is required, it will always be heads like yours upon the chopping block.

We told you that to the fragile, jittery man-children pulling the strings, you were provisionally useful but ultimately expendable. Once you had served your purpose, once the feigning of equity had accomplished its goals, once the appearance of progress had taken root enough to satiate the naysayers, things would always revert to their natural baseline.

You refused to listen; the shouts of your ambition and internalized misogyny too loud for you to hear anything else.

Despite their grotesque body of work, despite the dehumanization they have trafficked in, despite their prolific misogyny, you told yourself a story that they were different, that you were different, that this was different.

None of it was different because these men are vile creatures of hateful habit who are incompatible with evolution, allergic to change, and in contempt of your ascension.

You think you’re the first woman here: temporarily lulled into believing yourself truly accepted, imagining that your inclusion is unconditional, feeling that you will be the sole exception to the violently insecure man-made rule?

The road to Patriarchy has been littered with those who deluded themselves into thinking they could be agents of change in a cancerous system that would ultimately devour them and spit them out. You may have imagined that your whiteness insulated you, but gender will always trump pigmentation, so you were never truly safe.

For a few months, you felt the cheap and fleeting intoxication of being picked by career predators who have built their empires on the backs of millions of other women who implored you not to be fooled by the rented influence you were being handed.

In spite of the red flags and the recent past and your own eyes, you insisted on carrying water for men who believe that God is a man and that women are baby machines, and so we shouldn’t feel sorry for you, but a bit of us does. We know it’s quite possible you never saw this coming. You believed lies up close that you should have recognized from a mile away.

The voices of your parents and your pastors and your politicians groomed you since birth to be manipulated in these moments, told you you were less-than, and convinced you that you were not worthy, so that when the highly-conditional offer was extended, you simply couldn’t refuse.

You bent the knee, you kissed the ring, and you willfully perpetuated the injury of generations of girls and women, whose subjugation you were complicit in, whose lives will be more difficult because of your presence. You collaborated with predators and conspired with rapists, oblivious to the irony or in too deep to extricate yourselves.

And now, here you are, joining the ranks of other women who could not foresee that with these men you chose to partner with, this was always a matter of time.

As expected and as we predicted, here’s your pink slip from the Patriarchy.

Hopefully, whatever you got for your soul was worth it.

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Pam Bondi, Kristi Noem, and Pink Slips From the Patriarchy