The Trump presidency featured a wide range of cruel and immoral speech and actions, including separation of children from their parents/guardians who came to the US seeking asylum in violation of national and international law, then not keeping the records to reunite them; suppressing scientific COVID information while spreading misinformation that contributed to higher rates of death and illness in the US than in other nations with comparable medical systems; speaking approvingly of authoritarian governments while criticizing our allies; bullying and firing government officials he deemed insufficiently loyal to him personally; and lying about his election loss, filing baseless legal challenges, and fomenting an insurrection.
It was a difficult, dark time for the country that laid bare and worsened existing divisions along racial/ethnic, religious, partisan, gender, and geographic lines. The Republican party has devolved into a party driven by grievance rather than one dedicated to governing for the common good of all the people.
Donald Trump is the front-runner for the Republican nomination for president in 2024 while under indictment on 91 federal and state felony counts. There is a planning operation underway for a second term, dubbed Project 2025, through a group of right-wing think tanks that seeks to politicize the Justice Department to seek revenge for political views, to deport millions of immigrants and refugees, to invoke the Insurrection Act to allow the US military to operate domestically, and to give the president additional powers that are not subject to checks by the courts or Congress. Trump’s rhetoric during the primary campaign includes him talking about seeking revenge and retribution against members of the Biden family and administration and against Republicans who don’t agree with him, including former members of his administration. He has raised the possibility of the death penalty for former chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff General Mark Milley. He is using overtly fascist language, such as calling his perceived enemies “vermin.” Trump’s verbal attacks, both via social media and in person at campaign rallies and interviews, seem to be increasing threats of violence against those Trump targets, such as Judge Engoron and his law clerk in the New York civil fraud trial.
What is most alarming is that many Republicans in government and many Trump supporters are openly embracing anti-democractic, unconstitutional, and illegal actions, such as doing away with birthright citizenship, limiting voting rights for people who disagree with them, using the military against the public, and outlawing abortion and birth control. I am appalled that there are those characterizing the United States as a white Christian nation, when it is, in reality, a pluralistic society made up of people of many races and ancestral heritages with a wide range of personal beliefs.
I know that I will not vote for Trump or any candidate for office at any level who supports him and his dangerous ideas. I will try to get the word out as best I can what those dangerous ideas are because some of the people who support Trump only hear his rhetoric and not the countervailing facts. For example, I encourage people to read the indictments against Trump, which lay out a lot of the underlying evidence. It’s also helpful to read the report of the House Select Committee on the January 6 Attack, as well as the Mueller Report. I also am supporting voices and organizations that are working to uphold democracy, the rule of law, and the common good.
I’m also worried and scared about violence, oppression, and losing my free, if flawed, country to demagogues, authoritarians, and fascists.
This post was difficult to write, in part because I am so disturbed about what has been happening and in part because I know I’m just a small voice in a very large and loud media environment. But I had to try. The future envisioned by Trump and his acolytes is just too terrifying to silently ignore.
Photo credit: Photo by Lucas Sankey on Unsplash
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Joanne Corey 
Your voice should be one of the majority! It should be loud with others equally loud. My country is too close to yours and I fear that America the Good may become America the Horrible.
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Thanks for your support. I think that I am part of the majority and wouldn’t be so worried if our presidential election was popular vote. Because of the peculiarities of the electoral college system, small states have much more power relative to their populations and, in conjunction with voter suppression, gerrymandering, throwing eligible voters off the rolls, election interference by foreign governments and dark money groups, and straight-up lying, a president can be elected even if they lose the popular vote by millions of votes.
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If just one person hears you, consider it a win. It’s very difficult to get through. I hope they manage to get him off the ballot before the election.
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Thanks, Linda. The case for ballot access in Colorado is the furthest along with a case currently on appeal. The judge found that Trump had engaged in insurrection but declined to bar him from the ballot because the presidency is not explicitly cited in the 14th Amendment. The appeals court will be reviewing the constitutional aspect of the case, not the insurrection finding, so there’s hope.
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It would be a hard post for me to write because putting it in writing would make it so real. I can hardly creep up on thinking about it, so I admire your courage. A second Trump term would be like an infection when you stop taking antibiotics before the infection clears, and it roars back twelve fold. Lord, help us.
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It is terrifying and, for better or worse, my brain is wired to collect as many facts as possible and look to future scenarios to both see how I might be able to impact what happens and to make preliminary plans for various outcomes. Granted, it works better for local or personal issues than for national or global ones but a second Trump term would have huge personal impacts for each of us, as well. Thank you for reading and commenting on this difficult post.
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Preliminary plans is better than whistling past the graveyard, which is what I’m doing right now!
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Mindfulness teachers are always telling us to be in the present moment. That might be a better way to think of it than “whistling past the graveyard.” 😉 I’m not very good at the mindfulness thing…
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Trump is talking about invoking the insurrection act on day one and using the justice department to go after his opponents. I believe what he is saying.
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