Earlier this week I was talking to a friend. She was expressing her concern for the employees of a large employer in my state. My reply was to wonder what happened to decency and people of conscience.
It is the loss of those two things that caused me to realize that when I left home on Thursday on a trip, I was still living in a democracy. When I return to my home on Monday, I’ll be living in an autocracy.
What will that life be like?
A while ago I wrote that life will go on as usual in many ways, living in an autocracy. In fact, it is possible that we won’t notice the change at first. We’ll still get up in the morning and get ready for work. We’ll drive the same route we always have to our place of employment. Our daily duties will be the same. At the end of our shift, we’ll go home or meet friends for a drink. Once home, we’ll take the dog for a walk, wave to a neighbor, make dinner, watch a little TV, read a book, then off to get ready for bed. This, for many will remain the same even as it gets worse.
But one day, we’ll notice a small shift.
It may be the colleague who, after being out for a few days, returns being no longer outspoken as they used to be, and has a few bruises that he is reluctant to explain.
It may be your favorite program’s cast has changed. There are only white actors. Plus the storyline seems much more favorably biased towards those in political power, and an increase in racial slurs or denigration.
It may be your favorite news host just disappears with no explanation by anyone, or they have done a complete about face in terms of how they speak about those in power.
It may be you wake to see your neighbors, who happen to be a gay couple, or a black couple, or a Muslim couple being violently dragged out of their home by a gang of secret police the government has formed to deal with those kind of people.
It may be your child’s best friend, and other students, who happened to be from Mexico, or Panama, or Costa Rico, or Somalia, or Iraq, are just gone from school, never to return.
It may be when you go for a job interview and you are asked who you voted for in the last election, and as a stipulation in getting the job, you must sign a loyalty oath to the leader of the country.
It may be when you next go to vote, that the person who checks you in, hands you a ballot that has already been completed, for you to sign and scan as if it was you who filled it out.
It may be any and all of those things, and even much much worse.
Because we have a national political party whose sole purpose is to bow down to the newly elected president, pledge their loyalty to him regardless of the Constitution or legality of his actions, who abdicate their own oath of office in order to serve one person, Trump, and to line their own pockets with money, and to gain and keep power, that none of the above is very far-fetched. These Trumplicans will do anything to stay in the good graces of one man, rather than the people and the country. For that reason, we are entering a period of autocracy that might last generations.
They have no need, nor no care, of anyone other than themselves or Trump, with Trump as the priority over even themselves.
For this reason, we are about to enter some very dark times, some violent times, some horrific times, some terrifying times, with no one coming to save us from the Fascists as Americans did in liberating Europe not too long ago.
In my heart, I hope I am so very wrong about what is to come and that I may have to hear being told I was wrong for the rest of a very long life.
Sadly, I don’t think I am and am quite afraid of what is to come for my daughter, my marriage, my grandson, the non-white people I call friend, and my very life.
Our democracy is about to end; it was a great run while it lasted.
Personal Reflections of a Middle-Aged Man 