As the presidential election that could determine the fate and future of our republic gets underway, I find myself torn between two attitudes. The first is positive and hopeful voters will do the right thing in preserving the rule of law, electing Kamala Harris and giving us a Democratic majority in the House of Representatives. While control of the Senate is more questionable, I can only be optimistic almost Democratic control of it as well.
My other outlook, however, is not as sanguine. If the convicted felon gets installed for another term, this country is going to look very different. While some dismiss the adjudicated rapist's bellicose pronouncements as mere bluster, we must take seriously threats of revenge and a hostile takeover at the federal level from the highest office that controls the military and has the authority to influence the Justice Department and appoint federal judges. Even if the former host of Celebrity Apprentice is a blathering blithering lunatic, as president he would be a powerful one.
One of the authoritarian pronouncements he is making is a promise to prosecute his enemies. Just reading this, you can probably tell that includes me. Maybe even you.
I have considered possibly immigrating to Canada, but I just turned 50. Selling the house, quitting my job five years from retiring, uprooting my family for a country that isn't mine is easier said than done. It's expensive and logistically complex. Not impossible, but unrealistic. If something were to compel me, though, say, being forced out of my job because the intelligentsia are always targeted first in fascist regimes, I would have a stronger case for re-locating.
But what if it came down to the choice of either fleeing or being imprisoned for my political beliefs? Sitting here in my home, rights intact, my wife and kids safe upstairs, it's facile to claim I would stay and resist. Anyone who has studied history knows there's a fine line between one's decision to push back against authority and the power that authority has to impose itself upon us. If "they" come for me, what recourse will I have? I'm not a violent person, so responding with violence is not an option. It's also futile. A weak, violent public never wins against a well-armed state.
That brings me back to emigrating. Suppose I successfully manage to get myself, my wife and kids out. Where would we go? Canada is the most prudent option. It's driveable. We could be in Montreal in about five hours. Suppose we're permitted entrance, have met the entry requirements and are granted asylum. We will officially be refugees in a foreign country. While we might be able to blend in, we will nonetheless be immigrants with all the baggage and unfortunate stigma it entails, and we would have left behind our beloved, beleaguered country.
The possibility of becoming a refugee has been heretofore unthinkable, yet today we must consider it. While I could learn new skills, I'm not handy, so getting a job that keeps my family out of poverty would be challenging. I don't suspect my state teaching license would be valid anywhere else. There are stipulations about working with immigrant visas. Moreover, we would inevitably witness the discrimination immigrants experience when assimilating into another culture in addition to the kindness and acceptance of strangers.
Let's say, though, Canada is an impossibility. Suppose it closes its border to us for fear we're going to "overrun" the country, which is the same xenophobia driving a lot of countries' right-ward shifts. Where, then? Mexico? A South American country? Costa Rica is nice: universal healthcare and tuition-free college. But, again, we would encounter immigration bureaucracy, which often entails lots of money and years of waiting around for the paperwork to get sorted out. Plus, there would also be a language barrier making our assimilation harder, or susceptibility for discrimination greater. We could go to one of the European social democracies, like Germany, France, or a Scandinavian country, but would run into the same obstacles. Not to mention, we would be flying across the Atlantic with nothing but the clothes on our backs. We would be homeless.
People have, of course, given it all up to begin again in new lands. That's the story of America, after all. It's possible. Contemplating it seems incredible, though. The notion the great land to which so many have sacrificed so much to come descending into an authoritarian hellscape seems like the stuff of dystopic fiction. Yet, here we are, having to consider it.
Then there is the choice to stay and fight. In a hypothetical, perfect, purely academic scenario, this is heroic and expected. We teach it to our children in school: the American colonists rebelled against the English and won; Doctor King and other intrepid civil rights workers got the Civil Rights and Voting Rights bills signed; we defeated fascism during World War Two. We make it all look like flipping a switch. Nothing to it. But the reality isn't so rosy. It's simple to assert in a place of comfort and certainty we would go all Rambo on those who presume to infringe on our inalienable rights. Let's face reality, though-most, out of self-preservation and/or desire for power, will fall in line with the new regime no matter how odious or dictatorial. We have a preternatural capacity for accommodation. Those who historically pushed back are exceptions no matter how much we advocate for their emulation. After all, most of the early American colonists did not favor seceding from Great Britain; there were isolationists and Nazi sympathizers all over America in 1930s, some within government; MLK was not the revered icon we hold him up to be today. He was the FBI's public enemy number one.
If the government flips fascist, I fear most won't care-if they even notice.
What to do then?
I will feel like I've abandoned my country if I leave, but how far I will get resisting is uncertain and potentially futile, fatal even.
