In all honesty I’m not really sure where to start with this. Initially my plan for this week was to do a New York City travel blog, but given the nature of & the events of the week doing so feels dismissive & entirely subversive of the way that so many, my self included feel. I then contemplated not doing a blog at all, but I’m sitting with this incredibly palpable bag of emotions & hurt & I felt the need to come on & express that here with you all. I don’t know what form that will take or what path this blog will end up going on, as at the moment the tangents in my brain are fighting for dominance. I guess my goal in all of this is to make those of you out there who, let’s face it, probably have checked out &/or aren’t going to read this at all, understand a little bit more of how a lot of us who find ourselves in communities deeply effected by the results of Tuesday’s election feel & on the other side of that coin, show those of you who find yourselves in a state of deep mourning & pain feel seen & heard. I am here to express my pain & my undeniable fear of what if probably to come. I’m going to start by relaying all of this to myself & my personal sphere, because let’s face it, that’s what I know best.
I am someone with a deep understanding of policy & politics. I typically know who is saying, doing, promoting, regressing, whatever in most of the chambers & branches of The US government. I got this way because at the turn of 2016 I found myself with limited knowledge of anything that had transpired or anything that was going to transpire around the election that had just occurred & I regretted that sorely. I then spent what has been the last eight years deeply engaged in the ongoings & inner workings of the government because I never again wanted to feel like I wasn’t in ‘the know.’ The frustration part of that is that I then had friends & family members come to me with political questions that were quickly dismissed when the answers didn’t fit their narrative for what their specific party or belief on an issue was or is. Additionally, my upset when damaging policy came down the pipeline was met with patronization & deemed too emotionally driven or “just what I believe” instead of being deeply rooted in fact & statistics. I was told I was over reacting, or the topic was changed to other unrelated policy altogether, or it devolved into outright gaslighting. So, following the results of 2020, I receded. My family, friends, & acquaintances seldom heard about my politics because it had become clear to me that despite knowing leagues more about them than others, my intelligence, interest, passion, & knowledge were an annoyance that did little, if anything, to move the needle of what had been deeply engrained in their belief system; no matter how bat shit or rooted in propaganda, wishful thinking, outright racist/heteronormative/unscientific/regressive/xenophobic/etc those beliefs were/are.
Turning the page to this year. I don’t think, compared to previous elections, I was as vocally outspoken on the interwebs as I have been in the past, & maybe that was my mistake. No politics were brought up to my family, unless they were brought up to me, because I knew it was wasted breath because as the post that’s going around this last week so lovingly says “I don’t know how to convince you care about other people.”
Election day was horrible for me, even before the results started rolling in I was anxious to the point of it making me sick. I think in total I slept around 2-3 hours that night, waking up as so many of us did around 4 AM with an ultimate sense of dread even before peaking at my phone. From there my anxiety grew & also gave way to severe hurt & depression because I knew what was coming down the pipeline. I knew where we were headed & I saw the cataclysm & damage like a tidal wave barring down on all of us, whether those who voted for this want to see & accept that or not.
I had at least hoped that if Trump was reelected, despite the myriad of reasons he is beyond unsuitable for the presidency a first, much less a second time, that the legislative branch of the government would at least remain as a safeguard to the atrocities to be passed down. My hope was & has been since extinguished & the reality of the collision course we’re on rushed over me & sunk me for days. I instantly started research into expatriating.
I’m sorry if I lost you on that last sentence, I’m sorry if, to you, that seems too extreme or like I’m being a ‘sore loser,’ but I’m going to walk you through my reasonings & try to make you see why that’s where I landed. Additionally, this is my blog, my feelings, my life. Yes? My feelings & motivations are my own. Please bear with me.
I’m going to start talking policy which is typically where I start losing people, especially if that policy does not align with your inherent understanding. Again, please bear with me & have an open mind, a little empathy, & try to understand. We’re going to start out talking about (hold! hold! hold!) Roe V Wade & Project 2025.
I’ve laid out my arguments in favor of Roe many a time. It is not just a case that allowed for abortion but also granted women the right to bodily autonomy. Its overturning has been detrimental to the health of women across the country & continues to escalate in that direction. I don’t think that states legalizing the right to abortion will end up mattering unfortunately & I think that the Trump era nationwide ban is on the horizon. BUT I’m not here to talk specifically about Roe, but am instead here to talk about the precedent that it set within the conservative majority Supreme Court.
Roe V Wade was a ruling brought about through right to privacy. It is the same avenue that cases like Obergefell V Hodges used to legalize same sex marriage, the same avenue that Griswold V Connecticut used to allow married couples rights to contraceptive & later Eisenstadt V Baird used to allow unmarried couples right to contraceptive. It is the same exact avenue that Lawrence V Texas used to make sodomy laws illegal & Loving V Virginia used to instate the legitimacy of interracial marriages. All of these items used the same path of ‘personal privacy’ as the vehicle for which to get each of these respective issues legalized or decriminalized. Then came the overturning of Roe, what the Supreme Court has hinted at & outright spoken about being the first of these rulings to fall.
If right to privacy falls, & many of those statues with it, same sex couples, interracial couples, non-married (or even married) couples engaging in protected sex, will all be considered criminal almost overnight. Sounds archaic, I know, because it is & that’s just the highly insinuated Supreme Court side of things. Let’s shift lenses to Project 2025.
Project 2025 is a plan for a conservative held federal government that has been laid down by the vast majority of the right wing conglomerates out there. The Heritage Foundation, the AFA, the Claremont Institute, Moms for Liberty, etc etc etc. It was disavowed by Donald Trump after his initial endorsement of the project because it polled as incredibly unpopular, even amongst conservatives. A lot of those on both sides of the aisle were not overly concerned about the instating of Project 2025 because there would of course be “checks & balances” within the government, which of course holding all branches of the government, there are none. His allies have since stated, post win, that Project 2025 is & was the plan all along. Shocker.
So what lives within the policies of Project 2025? Let’s list a few shall we? Dismantling the Environmental Protection Agency (bye bye safe guards on clean air & water), dismantling the Department of Education (deuces special education programs), end no fault divorce, ban contraceptives (see supreme court section), eliminate worker unions & OSHA regulations, end the Affordable Care Act (what allows millions of Americans to have healthcare), end climate protections & re-incentivize the fossil fuel industry, end marriage equality (see supreme court), defund the FBI & Homeland Security, end birthright citizenship, eliminate the FDA (cuz who needs their drugs tested & regulated?), eliminate NOAA (where 99% of our weather data comes from), end civil rights & DEI programs, ban books (anything ‘non-christian’ this also includes books about slavery), ban African American & gender studies at ALL levels of education (including colleges), cut Medicare, cut Social Security, raise the retirement age, provide additional tax breaks for the 1%, increase taxes for the working class, end school lunch programs, leaving NATO (say hello to the Russian invasion of Europe), the list goes on & on & on & now, there is nothing in the way to stop it.
I know that may sound extreme, it may sound a bit like fear mongering too, & I also understand that there will (hopefully) be people within the Republican party who stand up & prevent these things from happening, but if 2016-2020 were any indication, I don’t think I have much faith in that. I challenge you to think of the generational harm that all of this will do even if half of that list is accomplished. Even if a forth is accomplished. We have been steered into a maelstrom to which there is no course correction & those who were out here telling you all “I told you so” will be the one who pay the price the dearest for this folly.
I want to touch on a few more things before I leave you with my closing remarks. Those being what Trump has promised to make the incepting blow of his term; tariffs, immigrants, & trans individuals.
First tariffs. Trump plans to impose a 60% tariff on any goods coming from China & a 10% tariff on all other goods coming from other countries. Where do we get most of our tech from? China. Where do we get most of our steel from? China? Who pays for the tariff? ChiWRONG. You do. The consumer does. The price of most goods in the tech & metal work field are projected to go up around 40% minimum in cost. Nissan has already laid off 9,000 workers in anticipation of the tariffs. A steel company in Pennsylvania has reported that they are striking Christmas bonuses this year in order to stockpile resources before the tariffs take hold & their costs go up. Enjoy your grocery items & every other items you purchase going up in cost.
Now immigrants. Another of Trump’s day one agenda items is the deportation of around 20,000,000 immigrants from The US. A logistical nightmare to say the least, part of this deportation will also include the denaturalization of many immigrants whom the administration also plans to…somehow deport or place into camps. The horrors of that aside, immigrants make up around 50% of the food & manual labor workforce. Without them the literal bottom of the food supply chain barrel & infrastructure barrel falls right out & sweeps the rest of us off with it. The economy will crash & the dollar will be a wash.
Lastly, transgender individuals. The Trump administration wants to inshrine the existence of two genders into the constitution. They also want to force individual to be only able to go by the gender of the sex they were at birth & they want to penalize any & all healthcare workers providing gender affirming care to trans youth. This includes capital punishment for those caught performing gender affirming surgeries on individuals under the age of 18, a practice that isn’t happening anyway.
I’m going to be entirely frank with you all. I’m not very hopeful for the four years going forward. I know there’s another election in two with the midterms but I foresee a whole lot of damage being done before we ever even get the change to get there. I’ve seen a lot of sentiment of “well, you survived the first Trump presidency” going around & I want to remind you all that millions didn’t. Because of his policies, because of his COVID response, millions are now dead & that was with ‘checks & balances’ in place, of which there are now no guard rails for ‘King Trump.’ We have shown this man & his goonies that not only is he above the law as a treasonous, rapist crook, but that it is encouraged. The range & scope of what he will do will increase & things are going to get very bad for a lot of people very quickly.
I’d be lying if I told you all I wasn’t terrified. Not just for Evan & I but for the friends we have who fall into the crosshairs of the Trump administration. I am scared to the point that it sent me to urgent care where we speculate I may have developed an ulcer from stress. These are the policies so many of you voted in favor of. These are the policies that many who call yourselves ‘friend’ or ‘family’ have inflicted upon us & I’m having a really had time seeing how that can be loving in any way. How you can claim to love someone or want what’s best for them & then turn around & vote for someone who hates us. I don’t know how that’s loving, much less how you can classify yourself as someone who is Christian after doing that. Christ said embrace the immigrant, love your neighbor & your enemy, help the needy, feed the hungry, care for the sick, & so many of you who profess that as the anchor for your life went & besmirched that. Not only that, but then you turn around & try to gaslight us into still being connected with you. You claim it takes the bigger person to disagree & still be friends but we are not here disagreeing on how our taxes get spent, we are here disagreeing on who has the right to life, liberty, & the pursuit of happiness all for a man who has made his life around swindling & conning his way to the top. I honestly don’t know how they can be justified.
I’m leaving you all here. I am sorry I don’t have a message of hope for you all, but at the moment I am far from hopeful, in fact I am feeling entirely lost. I hope to God I am wrong about all of this. I hope I am, truly, but for now Evan & I wait on bated breath to GTFO before it becomes too late for us to do so. & that is our reality. I’m sorry if this blog was too emotionally driven, I tried my best to keep it grounded but I am at a loss, I am heartbroken & scared & incredibly hurt by those around me who claim love for me but that I know voted against mine & Evan’s livelihood.
-C