There was a movie that came out in 1983 called The Day After. It was about what would occur if a nuclear bomb hit the United States. As one might imagine, it was a little frightening as there has, and always is, the possibility (though not probable) of a bomb hitting us at some point. I just remember all of the discussion, and some fear, after the movie aired on TV.
That is what it feels like right now—the day after. Voters, the day after, not before when it would have meant more, were Googling. Some of the highest searches were Project 2025 and how to change one’s vote. A day late and a dollar short as I heard as a child. The deed of electing someone who has openly and loudly proclaimed he wants to be a dictator from day one, wants to have a purge-like day for extreme violence to occur, and to take the country back to the good old days, the Jim Crow days, was done.
And voters, and non-voters through their non-action, chose this man to lead our nation. At last count, 56% of white men, 52% of white women, and increasing numbers of latinos and other people of color chose this man.
Even those within my own family, circle of friends, and work colleagues, voted for this man. To my dying day I will never understand how they could equate the two candidates as the same or in any way not see Trump doesn’t care about them, he cares about himself and himself only. Life will not get better for anyone other than those who are already doing quite fine at the top of the food chain. The rest of us are expendable and are about to find out just how expendable we are.
I keep thinking about the people in my family, my friends, and my colleague’s lives.
Did they truly believe Trump wouldn’t, now that he is in office, wouldn’t follow through on what he and his sycophants were broadcasting the past eight years, doubling down while campaigning? They even put it in writing with Project 2025 and Plan 47.
I wonder what they will say or do when their sons-in-laws, daughter-in-laws, and grandsons and granddaughters are deported because they are immigrants, even though they are here legally to use their vernacular. What will run through their minds when their grandchildren are languishing in a holding camp, possibly forced to work the fields to keep food flowing?
I wonder what they will do when a daughter or granddaughter gets pregnant and the fetus isn’t viable, but must be carried to term, putting their daughter or granddaughter’s life in jeopardy. When a doctor can’t and won’t perform a lifesaving procedure until she is at death’s door, when it may be too late to save her.
I wonder what they will do when an aging parent living on Social Security finds that this safety net, a fund the parent paid into their entire life, is taken away along with Medicare. How will that parent survive without an income, let alone without healthcare? What about others who need the social safety net just to survive, such as disability covered by SSI?
How will they feel when a relative who works in education loses their job due to the closing of the Department of Education and schools? Or how they will feel when their children and grandchildren can’t go to a public school because private schools, who don’t have to accept all students, are taking in most of the funds available to education? Who will take care of those students when school isn’t possible?
When life-saving vaccines are outlawed and all research conducted by the CDC and NIH is stopped, how many funerals will they need to attend because diseases that had been essentially eradicated due to life-saving vaccines make a come back, killing people of all ages? How will they deal when loved ones are in pain and debilitated from lack of healthcare?
What will they do when they themselves, as women, become targets of harassment and assault, and have to bear the child of the man who raped them, and have no recourse because of a belief by the men around them of “your body, my choice?” What about when their mothers, their daughters, their granddaughters in a highly abusive relationship, can’t leave or get a divorce because divorce is no longer an option?
How will they feel when loved ones, who happen to be gay, lesbian, or a part of the LGBTQ+ communities have their marriages dissolved and are harassed, sexually assaulted and abused, beaten, and/or killed?
How will they view the scenes of law enforcement after they are granted immunity, meaning they are unfettered in how they treat any of us, especially their black family members, although they themselves may be white?
Will they even notice, or even care, when people begin to just disappear?
I know I sound very doomsday. That is because I have studied history and we are repeating the worst of it. Fascism, nazi-ism, white-christian nationalism, authoritarianism can and is happening here. Experts in autocracy warned you. People who worked directly for Trump warned you. Loved ones warned you.
Yet you still listened only to him.
Believe me when I say I hope in three months, in six month, in twelve months, that I can sit back and laugh at myself for being so paranoid. That I’ll have to tell my Trump, and apathetic voter, colleagues, friends, and family that I got all riled up for nothing. That I was wrong.
I wonder though, if it is even worse, because experts are saying it will be even worse than anticipated, that they, if we live in a nation, or even world, where it is still possible, they will come to me and say we believed, and we were wrong.
We shall see…
Personal Reflections of a Middle-Aged Man 