How bad will it be? I hope I was wrong

I really thought Harris would win. Yes, I knew that all indications were that it would be close, but still, it felt like the campaign had caught the public’s eye about women’s health, and there seemed to be a lot of enthusiasm. 

Obviously, other factors dominated, and unfortunately, my intuition was wrong. But while I didn’t think a lot about a red sweep, a cautionary tale motivated me and so many others: what Trump would do if he returned to power. If he was elected, we thought, he’d have fewer guardrails, and would be so full of malice, that many of the terrible things he promised would come to pass, outcomes far beyond those from his first term.

Now, as I contemplate the next 4 years, I hope that I was wrong about what comes next. And I do think that there will be limitations to what he can actually do, given his incompetence and those instruments of opposition that remain (think, ACLU). And I do have high hopes for a further check on his awfulness in the midterm elections. But I want to acknowledge fears based on goals that Trump has made clear (well, as clear as he ever is). 

I hope I was wrong when I feared that

• he could decimate the civil service, including the class of non-political experts in key positions in government agencies, drawing us away from evidence-based policymaking;
• in particular, with reversals in climate policy, we could pass the tipping point for halting the coming disaster – no longer even slowing the slide into climate catastrophe;
• with RFK Jr in charge of health, we could see a reversal of vaccine development and use. Previously suppressed diseases like polio would return in force. We would start seeing kids in iron lungs again. And infectious diseases like measles would run rampant. We would be even more vulnerable to pandemics than we were last time;
• women’s health would significantly decline – with enough support in Congress, there might be a national abortion ban that would remove all safe havens for women. Fewer OB-GYNs would stay in the U.S.;
• Millions of immigrants would be deported, potentially including many legal immigrants who lacked sufficient documentation. Child citizens with undocumented parents would be deported with them. A veritable police state would be required;
•  the tariff regime could be as extreme as Trump has said, raising prices on almost everything;
• the economy overall would tank due to losing immigrant labor and imposing widespread tariffs, causing reduced financial activity (and heightened unemployment) plus high inflation;
• The modest reduction in income inequality over the last few years would be reversed, making the rich richer and the poor poorer;
• with the encouragement of white nationalists and other extreme right-wingers, there will be greatly increased violence and discrimination against a wide range of our fellow Americans;
• the courts, from top to bottom, will be packed with Trump loyalists, biasing the judicial system for decades to come;
• the one that would affect all other issues: the end of our democracy. That he would either ignore the 2-term limit (“You’ll never need to vote again”), or that he would so weaken our system that the U. S. would be a democracy in name only, including the weaponization of the legal system (starting with the Department of Justice), imprisoning or financially ruining his perceived enemies.
  
  This is far from a complete list, which would include potential dangers for racial groups, LGBTQ+ people (especially trans) and many international consequences that are worthy of their own articles. But this article is already long enough. Suffice it to say that there are huge risks there, beginning with the impact on Ukraine’s defense against its Russian aggressor .

How bad will it be?

I think that some reversal of progress will be inevitable given this changing of the guard, so my only question is, how bad it will be? Were the more extreme versions of these changes hyperbolic? Did we make a mistake in taking Trump literally, and not just seriously? Was Project 2025 just a wet dream for the far right, or is it really a strategic plan for the administration?

Of course, most or all of the actual retrograde actions will be opposed by other forces in our society, particularly in the courts. We have to hope that even judges appointed by Trump will do the right thing, as they did for election denial cases after the 2020 election. And Trump’s Dunning-Kruger syndrome may prevent him from allowing others to make his actions more effective despite his incompetence. 

We can hope that my fears are overblown. But ultimately, we’ll see. And we have to be prepared to be an effective opposition. He is likely to lose significant ground in the midterms, and he doesn’t need to lose much for a lot of his agenda to be stalled.

And now

In the meanwhile, a friend in Switzerland said we could come stay there, and another friend has pointed out how pleasant Mazatlán is (and how Mexico already HAS a female president). Nice thoughts. But for now, we’re staying here. And while we’re here, we need to take a breath. And then we must be prepared to work hard once we’ve had a chance to recoup our energy.