Tbh I don't think having the protag say something like that would be enough these days... definitely combine it with the author's note XD Let people who get it automatically complain that it's too on the nose or something if they want to.

You're so right about Trump being a symptom. All of these things were devastatingly huge problems under Biden, under Obama, going back literally to Washington. Thinking we just need to get rid of One Bad Guy is why we got a Biden presidency and then many people stopped being activists - status quo was never a good thing. I think hypothetically I would give some specific calls to action + a little bit of anarchist theory in the author's note to nudge people in the right direction? Maybe some people would say that I should let fiction be fiction, but it's my book ¯_(ツ)_/¯ And I'm thinking if I can catch people at their most open and thoughtful, ie right after that final page, maybe they'll intake the moral message a little more?