The Sum Of All Fears

I guess I should state once and for all what an unmitigated disaster the last few weeks have been which culminated in the calamity of Tuesday night. I fear for our democracy when I hear chants of “lock her up” even after the election is over. I fear for our rights when the FBI, the most powerful investigative body in the country, has become a clearly political organization and the Supreme Court rules in favor of suppressing specific kinds of voters. I fear for our Muslims, LBGTQ community, and all immigrants, legal and illegal, for they will be even more of a target for hatred. I fear for all the women who will lose access to abortion when Roe v. Wade is overturned. I fear for all those, like myself, who may lose access to health insurance. I fear for those people around the world that we will abandon as we retreat from our alliances while having an unstable narcissist with his finger on the nuclear button and exporting those weapons to other countries. I fear for all the creatures on this planet as we allow global warming to remain unchecked. And I despair in the knowledge that there is very little I can do to prevent any of my fears from being realized.

The only hope for the vision of America that I now have is that the policies of Trump and the Republicans will be so disastrous that the people who believed they were making America great again will realize the foolishness of their choice. That the millions who will lose their health insurance will have a change of heart. That those who finally realize the jobs they once had are never coming back and that new jobs will require a real investment will change their mind. When they realize the tax breaks are all once again going to the rich, they will see they’ve been had. More likely, they will just double down again. But all that is hardly worth wishing for as the collateral damage for them and the rest of us will be enormous.