Like many others, I feel rage, depression, and anxiety each time I read reports of another Trump decision that will make America and the world a far worse place to live for the vast majority of people. The latest report to make my blood boil is that Trump is doing everything he can to support the fossil fuel industries and to stop action to slow or stop climate change, which is mainly caused by burning fossil fuels for energy. That means we will be subjected to more and severer floods, forest fires, heat waves, droughts, and illness. It beats me how this can Make America Great Again, though it’s obvious that it will make the world safer for investors in fossil fuels.
Because Trump is responsible for so many evils, it’s hard to know what to focus on. Lots of us want our borders more secure and our immigration policies more reasonable, but do we want to see people who are responsible hard-working parents who make significant contributions to their communities rounded up by mobs of masked people and then deported without having an opportunity to explain or defend themselves, whether they are in the U.S. legally or illegally?
Do we want economic chaos and higher prices due to ill thought-out tariffs imposed by a president who increasingly looks mentally unbalanced?
Do we want a government that can’t stop lying? (For example, the claims that climate change is a hoax and greenhouse gases are not a threat, that all immigrants are violent criminals, that vaccines are not necessary for public health, that grocery prices are down, not up.)
Do we want a president whose primary objective is not to promote the common good but to increase his own power, wealth, glory, and fame? Do we want a president who rules rather than governs and who usurps the authority and power of Congress?
Do we want to support a party (the Republicans) that has supinely abdicated its responsibilities and allowed Trump to usurp the power of Congress? A party that votes for tax cuts for the very wealthy, most of whom have already mastered the art of tax avoidance, and for cuts to Medicaid and food stamps for the very poor. For a party that has given lifetime seats on the Supreme Court to six reactionaries who twist the words of the Constitution to give Trump everything he wants, including power that legitimately belongs only to Congress? For a party that blatantly devalues knowledge and education and that seeks to undermine people’s ability to reason?
I wish I knew how to help those who support Trump to see him and his policies and party for what they are and to answer “no.” But I don’t know how. Does anyone? Consequently, I fear for the future of my country and the world, for those who will still be here 25, 50, 75 years from now. I desperately hope that people will wake up before it’s too late.
Emmett Barcalow lives in Amherst