It appears all but confirmed that Donald Trump will be the 47th president of the United States, a real worst-case scenario for millions of Americans who hoped that a Kamala Harris victory would mark an end of the Trump era of politics.
It is difficult to remain optimistic about where we stand as a nation from my perspective. I was not a big fan of Harris and considered her merely the only viable alternative to a man that I truly hold in the lowest possible regard.
This feels like a terribly grim moment in the history of our country and I honestly do not know what to say.
It seems clear that the struggle against climate change is effectively over. With Trump promising to “drill baby drill” and bring our energy efforts back to fossil fuels and away from renewable energy, the world will soon follow suit and the ticking clock for substantial change to avert disaster will inch ever closer and pass us by and the most vulnerable will suffer the worst consequences.
Despite the fact that the universally held opinion by climate scientists all over the world is that climate change is the single greatest threat facing humanity today, the official climate stance for America on the world stage will be the belief that climate change is nothing more than a hoax conjured up by the radical left and not worth taking seriously.
In what every human rights organization in the world has labeled a genocide of the Palestinian people by Benjamin Netanyahu and the Israeli government in their war against Hamas, Trump has gone on record saying that Netanyahu should “do what you have to do.”
I can only take this to mean that we will continue to fund these atrocities that have left tens of thousands dead, hundreds of thousands injured and millions displaced. The people of Gaza will continue to suffer and we will continue to supply the bombs that decimate their homes, universities and hospitals.
This is not even to mention the plans to end the “migrant invasion” that allegedly plagues our country.
This will involve a proposed mass deportation that will see millions of people rounded up and placed in detention camps, where I am sure the humanitarian conditions will be abysmal as the Republican party’s continued rhetoric and official platforms deem migrants as subhuman trash, worthy only of imprisonment or death.
The only proposed economic policy that Trump has put forward is a flat 20% tariff on all imported goods. This will no doubt cause American companies to raise prices on all imported goods and pass the higher bill off to American citizens who gleefully welcomed the new regime last night in mass.
This is an unequivocal failure by the Democratic party.
Their inability to combat an overtly fascist billionaire who, every chance he gets, tells us the type of man he is and the type of country he wants to lead should have been a slam dunk.
It is an indictment on Joe Biden for not stepping down earlier. It is an indictment on Kamala Harris for her refusal to adopt any meaningful policy solutions that would differentiate her from Biden. She even went as far as to acknowledge the border as a major issue and adopt right-wing border policies in order to appeal to the so-called median voter, making herself appear as a moderate in a country that has been trending further and further right for nearly a decade.
This, along with her refusal to change her stance on the genocide in Gaza alienated her progressive voter base who merely wanted a candidate to acknowledge the atrocities being committed and promise to do something to address it.
Instead, she rode the fence, deflected questions and allowed perceived social media momentum to ensure herself of victory.
And now here we are, with a man who will put an anti-vaxxer in charge of public health agencies and place the man-child CEO of Twitter into an actual government position to help him trim the deficit and reduce government spending.
Social security will likely be slashed and Medicare will be attacked and maybe even repealed if Trump has his way and I see no evidence to indicate that he will suddenly stop getting what he wants now.
His legal troubles are a thing of the past. He will no doubt pardon himself of his numerous felony convictions and walk away from the White House with a clean slate and walk into the sunset after having appointed a few more conservative justices who are a more appropriate age to shape the landscape of the country for the next 40 years.
The people have spoken though. We as Americans, or should I say, the electoral college have decided that Donald Trump is the best man to lead us forward and we must live with all of the mayhem and chaos that will surely bring.
I find it hard to not say that we are screwed. I mean unequivocally and completely and utterly screwed.
I know I will be fine. I am a cis, straight, white man and I am a part of the class of people that are deemed acceptable to the new regime.
I fear for my minority and LGBTQ+ friends. I fear for those I do not know and I fear for the women in my life who will likely lose control over their own bodies. I fear for the nation that we will become and I dread the day that that orange despot ever rode down that escalator what feels like a lifetime ago.
I still have hope. It is a small hope and even now I feel the crushing weight of apathy and dismay threatening to stamp it out.
I can only stay determined to protect myself and those that I care about from a system that may soon deem them public enemy number one.
I guess that is all anyone can do in these increasingly dark and strange times.
Categories: Opinion
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