Free from this

I can't be the only one who really remembers 2016, right?

A screenshot of an NPR article about the appointment of Fox News host Pete Hegseth to lead the U.S. Defense Department, one of a number of Trump appointees with what many are terming "limited experience."

As the world adjusts to results of the U.S. election, I think it is important that we not kid ourselves about what we're in for--and by "we," I mean, the world.

There is nowhere, not one place on the planet, that does not feel the effects of changes in the governance of the world's major superpower. It's just the way it is.

But I'm not going to lie that I am relieved that my immediate family and I will be watching this Trump term from here and not there. We were there first his first term and it was chaos from start to finish.

I wrote in this piece for Medium that I feel like most of the country got amnesia during COVID.

People from all across the political spectrum who should remember better, are again writing things like, "I don't think he'll really be able to" Or, "maybe he won't actually try" to effect this or that proposal that he explicitly campaigned on doing.

Then, you have the Washington Post going full Gaslight and retconning Trump's meandering statements about forcing other countries to bend to his will or turning the U.S. military against his opponents at home as "a platform of restoring peace to a war-torn world."

If the best predictor of future behavior is past behavior, it's going to be bad. It's going to be worse than you even think it's going to be.

When he won the Electoral College victory the last time, I told a friend, "We just elected a fascist."

And even then I didn't foresee how bad it would be.

I was honestly shocked and horrified by the Muslim ban, then by the families separated at the border, by the constant lying, and criminality, by the revolving door of officials in his Cabinet, by the truly abominable response to the pandemic.

I marched in the Atlanta Women's March, then protested and wrote letters to save the Affordable Care Act. I donated to direct action organizations to help provide legal asisstance to immigrants and protestors, and for healthcare to people who lost coverage. I volunteered in voter registration drives, and canvassed for Democratic candidates for office.

In return, I was characterized as un-Christian and un-American by friends (now former friends) and relatives. I watched as, after several mass shooting tragedies all over the country, elected leaders proudly posed for pictures holding automatic weapons and then targeted the victims of those shootings as "crisis actors" and leftist agitators.

Those gun-worshiping leaders are still in office. Many will be part of this new administration.

I got vaguely threatening anonymous letters in our mailbox in response to my "No Human is Illegal" sign and my campaign signs. I took all my bumper stickers off my blue Nissan Leaf after one too many close calls with angry pickup drivers "rolling coal" and cursing me out their rolled-down windows.

A Ford F-450 monster truck stopped on a rural road "rolling coal", or blowing large clouds of dark grey diesel smoke. Photo credit: Salvatore Anone via Wikimedia Commons CCL.

It was then that I began to understand that this was no longer a country I wanted my children to grow up in.

Gun violence– including accidental shootings and suicides as well as murder--is the leading cause of death for U.S. children and teens, resulting in more deaths annually than those from car accidents or cancer.
Average life expectancy in the United States lags behind other high-wealth countries, largely due to the impact of chronic disease and the opioid epidemic.
Women nationwide have lost the right to bodily autonomy and are dying because of it.
Half of all American families cannot afford to buy a home at the median price for homes across the country.
Stagnant wage growth and cuts to public funding for education, mean that many young people see no future that doesn't involve poverty or going into debt.
Severe weather events linked to climate change have repeatedly devastated communities across the country, yet Trump and the Republicans have pledged to again withdraw from the Paris Accords and expand drilling and fracking to harvest fossil fuels.

To be fair, neither presidential campaign focused on these issues in any substantial way.

Trump this time ran largely on a proposal of mass deportations to magically solve both the housing crisis and fight crime and inflation (even though both crime rates and inflation rates are near historic lows). None of the other issues are even on the agenda, unless it's to make them worse.

I don't really know what else there is to do, at this point. He won the popular vote. There is no silent majority that is not being represented. If we march, if we write letters - who are we even talking to?

I intend to still use my voice as a communicator to call out lies and misrepresentations, to highlight alternative ways of being. And I will focus on making financial contributions to mitigate harm to vulnerable people and communities I care about.

Democratic governors are taking steps to protect their residents from the worst of the federal policies to come. And Democratic advocacy groups are working on legal challenges and cooperation at the state level. I think this is wise.

But the world is about to enter some dark days.

The best we can hope for now is to survive. To try to take care of the people around you.

Since the election, I have seen a flood of inquiries from Americans from all different backgrounds inquiring about leaving the country. I posted some advice for people who may be looking at Germany over on my newsletter, Alte Frau, New Life.

Laura Skov, an American who moved to Sweden with her family in 2019, posted a more comprehensive 'how to' on her newsletter, Notes from Exile.

And Gregory Garretson of Living Elsewhere has written a thoughtful piece about questions to ask yourself before considering whether you might want to take that step.

'Getting out' won't magically solve everything--as I wrote above--nowhere is immune to the aftershocks of U.S. economic and foreign policy. Germany is already discussing the potential implications of a U.S. withdrawal from NATO and the potential upcoming trade war.

But it's also not at all true that it's "just as bad" everywhere. Even though I can't vote here, I am glad to live in a country where balancing economic growth with the expense of shifting to green energy is a main topic of political debate, instead of things like lies about immigrants eating pets.

But I'll save my thoughts on that for another post on a better day.