Today is a day of despair, and it would be useless to tell those who fear and mourn what is coming to America that everything will be okay. It would also be dishonest: many of us, in truth, will not be. Donald Trump decisively won the US elections. He and his Republican allies have promised mass deportations that would ruin lives and separate families; have threatened to dismantle the Affordable Care Act and appoint anti-vaccine conspiracy theorist Robert F. Kennedy Jr. to a public health authority. They promised deep cuts to Social Security and Medicare, persecution of dissidents and a violent crackdown on Trump’s political enemies. There will almost certainly be a national ban on abortion, further degrading women’s citizenship, stripping them of their dignity, robbing them of their dreams, and ruining their health.
For those of us who are aware of what Trump is capable of doing, this morning has plunged us into a kind of cold pang of anticipation. There are people in the United States who read the news with concern, who prepare for repression and unrest, and who will inevitably have their anxiety confirmed; that they will discover that they have even more to fear from the next administration than they currently realize. I think of all the ordinary Americans living today, thriving or struggling in this declining country, whose lives will be destroyed or cut short by what is coming.
