Today is a day of despair, and it would be useless to tell those who fear and mourn what is to come in America that everything will be fine. It would also be dishonest: many of us, in truth, will not be. Donald Trump has decisively won the US elections. He and his Republican allies have promised mass deportations that will 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 position of public health authority. They have promised deep cuts to Social Security and Medicare, the persecution of dissidents and violent repression of Trump’s political enemies. There will almost certainly be a national ban on abortion and this will further degrade women’s citizenship, rob them of their dignity, rob them of their dreams and ruin 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 anticipatory pain. There are people in the United States who read the news with concern, who are preparing for repression and unrest, and who will inevitably find their anxiety confirmed; that they will discover that they have even more to fear from the next administration than they now know. I am thinking of all the ordinary Americans who are alive today, thriving or struggling in this declining country, whose lives will be destroyed or cut short by what is coming.
#day #despair
