If Donald Trump wins the U.S. Presidential election is not a subject that I cherish writing about, as my readers will have gathered from previous blogs. However, if polls are to be believed – which I don’t, by-the-way, there is a real possibility that it could happen.
I should add here that my skepticism of polling was explained in one of my blogs last week, so I won’t reiterate it. Suffice to say, the system is flawed in so many ways as to be totally useless, and therefore dangerously misleading.
If a Donald Trump win is even remotely possible, the potential consequences should be considered for all people living under the American flag. Yes, they should be considered while there is a small amount of time left before election day but, at the this stage more importantly, what can we expect as a result of his win, what, if anything, can be done to curb his more outrageous plans and, finally, what, as individuals and individual families, should we be planning to do ourselves…like emigrate, quickly.
Let’s start with a list of what he has plainly stated he will do: (1) Arrest several million illegal immigrants, and put them in camps before deporting them (where, on both counts, we might ask); (2) Arrest and jail anyone who disagrees with him, or has ever said anything against him (do we have enough jail cells for, maybe, half the country?); (3) Cut taxes to the billionaires who have contributed to his campaign; (4) Put down any dissent to his plans using the National Guard and the U.S. military; (5) Cut off all military aid to Ukraine and publicly announce that he will not do anything to stop Putin’s expansionist plans (tacitly including invading Poland, probably); (6) Instruct, publicly, the U.S. Navy, and military in general, to do nothing to stop China from invading Taiwan, and North Korea invading South Korea; (7) Abolish the U.S. Department of Education and bring the U.S. Department of Justice directly under his control, along with most other federal government agencies that he feels might contradict his wishes – witness the EPA for example; (8) Institute a nationwide ban on abortion, with no exceptions, as agreed with his evangelical pals; plus many other steps that abolish democratic principles, ignore the U.S. Constitution, the right of free speech, and America’s position as a world leader and influencer. I may have missed a few hundred other atrocities that he is likely to try and implement, including passage of a law to make him dictator-for-life (we are somewhat fortunate that he is 78 years old and must be terminally ill, based on his diet).
I repeat, if Donald Trump wins, what can we, as individuals and families, do? It will be too late to actually stop most of what he plans to do. We procrastinated too long, whether through stupidity that says he won’t really try and do all those things, naivete that he will actually follow through on his promises to billionaires, evangelicals and other Trump fanatics, and that he couldn’t really do those things anyway, because the U.S. system is strong enough to stop him. IT IS NOT, as the rise of every dictator the world has ever known has proved to their naïve subjects.
The easy answer to my fundamental question of what we, as individuals and families, can do ourselves is nothing, or emigrate. We probably will, eventually, not be able to stand all his dictatorial efforts to the point where doing nothing is not palatable.
The answer, then, is emigrate…but where to, and who will accept thousands of American immigrants?