I’m disappointed in you, America. You gave President-elect Trump a decisive win in both the electoral college and popular vote. After several years of financial pain, you followed every other developed nation and punished the governing party for challenges beyond their control. I’m disappointed because you allowed yourself to react to past events rather than plan for a better future—a future where democracy and long-term progress matter more than short-term frustrations.
I understand the anger and pain you feel. I live in a rural household where both adults work in education. I had to go on unemployment for a month last year. Our family often pays for our basic goods using high-interest credit cards. We’ve gone from purchasing healthy, local, organic food to generic store brands. Like so many others my age, I pay to support both my pre-teen child and my septuagenarian parents. Additionally, as a Vermonter, I pay among the highest property taxes in the nation. I have felt and experienced the difficulties of our post-pandemic economy.
So I get it. Things suck; kick the bastards out.
Unfortunately, once you kicked the bastards out, you decided to try your hand with convicted con man who has told you exactly what he plans to do.
A Bad Bet
President-elect Trump’s tariff plan will (according to the right-center Tax Foundation) increase the prices of imported goods and force Americans to purchase higher-priced protected goods, reducing the after-tax value of your income. Where the candidate you rejected promised to go after price-gouging corporations, President-elect Trump’s tariff plan will allow American firms to sit back and enjoy higher profits thanks to that protection. If you continue to believe that the American firms will let those higher profits “trickle down” into higher wages for American workers, I have a collection of substandard home loans to sell you.
According to the left-center Los Angeles Times, his immigration plans will “deprive California of more than 7% of its workforce, potentially cripple agriculture and construction, divide families, and disrupt communities.” His newly announced person “in charge of all Deportation of Illegal Aliens back to their Country of Origin,” Tom Homan, has said that large-scale workforce raids will resume in the new administration, and he has also said “there is no price tag” for implementing the deportation policy.
With a potential loss of eight million laborers, employers around the country, who are already struggling thanks to the Biden Administration’s low unemployment rate, have warned that they’ll have to raise their prices to pay for the wage increases they’ll need to attract workers from other employers, increases that will ripple through the supply chain.
When you factor in all the food that will be left to rot in the fields due to a lack of farm workers and the price increases agricultural companies will need to implement to cover those losses, the day-to-day effects of President-elect Trump’s immigration policies will be felt in more kitchens than just migrants’.
It’s not just construction workers and farm workers, though. As (left-center) CNBC reported, “This ripples into tech workers and engineers. We don’t have enough skilled talent there either to fill the jobs… The tech industry relies heavily on immigrants to fill highly technical, crucial roles.” The report continues, “changes could reach consumers in the form of increasing prices, supply problems, and restricted access to goods and services.”
The Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget (right-center) estimates that President-elect Trump’s economic plans will increase the federal deficit by $7.75 trillion (that’s the mid estimate; the high estimate is $15.55 trillion). The tariff plan will, according to the mid estimate, pull in $2.7 trillion, but the extension and modification of his first term’s tax cuts will cost $5.3 trillion, blowing through any potential federal gains to the tariffs. His tax breaks for individuals and corporations will reduce federal income by another $4 trillion, plus he plans on increasing the Defense budget by another $400 billion. He also plans on erasing $700 billion in Biden-era environmental and energy spending, which means cutting a $700 billion investment in American jobs and our children’s environment.
To put that debt in perspective — President-elect Trump’s plan is estimated to drive our national debt to 143% of GDP by 2035. Within three years of Trump taking office, the debt-to-GDP rate is expected to exceed its highest mark ever, which 102% back in 1946 (you know, after World War II, when we financed the rebuilding of Europe).
(To be fair, the Harris Administration was expected to increase the deficit by $3.9 trillion, but even that ludicrous amount is significantly less than $7.75 trillion.)
The Gains Won’t Be Trump’s
Regardless of which candidate won the election, President Biden’s policies, which have made the United States the fastest recovering economy in the post-pandemic world, will continue to pay dividends. According to (left biased) The New Yorker, President Biden’s American Rescue Plan shored up union pensions, invested $88 billion in infrastructure, and $350 billion to state and municipal governments. True, the American Rescue Plan’s $400 billion in $2,000 checks sent directly to Americans contributed to the mass inflation we witnessed during the Biden Administration, but as I mentioned a couple of weeks ago, all of that money has now been spent, so electing Mr. Trump instead of Vice-President Harris has no inflationary effect in that regard.
President Biden’s Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act, the CHIPS and Science Act, and the Inflation Reduction Act have invested roughly $2.5 trillion in America, from bridges, roads, and harbors to semiconductor factories to non-carbon producing energy sources. He also installed pro-consumer and pro-worker watchdogs in many of the executive departments and included pro-worker regulations in the investments made from all those acts (for example, any construction company receiving federal funds to build those semiconductor factories must provide company-paid childcare to its workers, and all of the workers in those factories must receive it too).
President-elect Trump’s term will benefit from these investments, just as President Biden’s term was harmed by the Trump Administration’s policies on immigration, climate change, foreign affairs, and the Supreme Court.
So yes, kick the bastards out, but remember, the bastards actually did some incredible things that will continue to pay out for five, ten, and fifteen years.
Choosing The Economy over Democracy
My main disappointment, America, is in the way you prioritized your short-term economic pain over long-term democratic stability.
Let’s look at what President-elect Trump has promised to do.
Prioritizing Revenge
First, he has vowed revenge, retaliation, and retribution against his foes. The Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (left-center) analyzed over 13,000 messages posted by the President-elect on his social media accounts and found that he has threatened to go after President Biden with FBI raids, investigations, indictments, and jail time. He’s attacked senators, judges, and non-governmental organizations. He talked about a “Pandora’s Box” of retribution and the gloves coming off. He said he wants to see President Biden handcuffed and hauled out of the White House, NY Attorney General Leticia James placed under citizen’s arrest, and for Special Counsel Jack Smith to be locked up and “throw away the key.” He wants to persecute former President Obama for “capital murder,” prosecute Mark Zuckerberg for cheating during the 2020 election, and arrest poll workers from 2020. As Vice-President Harris often said, “He’s coming to the White House with an enemies list.”
His supporters will argue that President-elect Trump is only promising to do what the Democrats did to him, but the difference is that President-elect Trump was clearly guilty. Now, if President Biden is clearly guilty of corruption and anti-democratic actions, then I’m all in favor of convicting him. But a years-long investigation into his family and administration resulted in a big nothingburger.
As the (least biased) Lawfare Institute wrote, “Substantively, it’s not really clear what to take away from [the House Oversight, Judiciary, and Ways and Means Committees’ final report], which accuses Biden of ‘impeachable conduct’ but includes precious few specifics about what the president is personally alleged to have done.”
The Lawfare Institute’s analysis highlights how, despite, “no serious substantive comparison to be drawn between the Trump impeachments, which responded to serious abuses of power, and the largely manufactured concerns raised in the impeachment report against Biden,…the apparent willingness of House Republicans to drop the impeachment matter entirely when pursuing it no longer paid major political dividends certainly suggests” an increased willingness on the part of the Republicans to weaponize the government for political retribution.
With Republican control of the Senate and probably control of the House (as of today), President-elect Trump will have carte-blanche when it comes to weaponizing the government against his foes.
Expanding Executive Power
Second, President-elect Trump has promised replace career civil servants with individuals who are loyal to him. As reported by (left-center) Protect Democracy, “In October 2020, the Trump Administration issued an executive order that would have stripped protections from civil servants perceived as disloyal to the president and encouraged expressions of allegiance to the president when hiring.” The executive order, if it hadn’t been repealed immediately by President Biden, could have affected the jobs of up to as many as 50,000 federal workers (though some of have said 50,000 is a floor, not a ceiling).
President-elect Trump promised to reinstate the rule on “day one.” Even the (right-biased) American Enterprise Institute called the promise “another ominous signal for American democracy.” They continued:
Under the Constitution, presidents are supposed to exert control over policy making within the agencies they oversee. However, it is also critical for federal offices to serve all citizens fairly and without regard to their political affiliations, to be free of corruption, and to cultivate the requisite professionalism and technical skills needed for critical functions. In other words, there are competing objectives in play, which require the kind of balance and perspective that Trump’s approach lacks entirely.
A functioning, non-partisan bureaucracy is probably the defining characteristic of a healthy government. As a nation, we’ve dealt with the opposite before.
A Brief Digression on the History of Political Corruption Among Presidential Administrations
- The Grant Administration saw officials taking bribes from railroad companies, defrauding the treasury out of tax revenue on whiskey, cornering the gold market, corrupting the NY Customs House, creating retroactive bonuses, corrupting the award of postal contracts, accepting bribes to not prosecute corporations, taking extortion money from defense contractors, and even framing innocent civilians for uncovering corruption.
- The Harding Administration (which also favored high tariffs and immigration restrictions) saw major corruption in the Departments of the Interior, Justice, and Veterans Affairs (then known as the Veteran’s Bureau); conspiracy theorists have long argued that Harding was murdered in office due to the fall out (I don’t agree).
- The Nixon Administration (which served as the de-facto training ground for Trump’s nefarious mentor) saw its vice president convicted for income tax evasion and kept an enemies list, asking in an internal memo, “how we can use the available federal machinery to screw our political enemies” (a memo that included ideas such as tax audits, grant availability, federal contracts, litigation, and prosecution). This period also saw massive weaponization of the FBI (see COINTEL PRO) against minority organizations and activists on the political left. And of course, Watergate. Basically, what it comes down to in the Nixon Administration can be summed up by a note written on July 1, 1971 by Nixon’s Chief of Staff, H.R. Haldeman: “We serve a different morality.“
- The Reagan Administration, in the Iran-Contra Scandal, sold weapons to our enemies in one part of the globe to finance aid in another. As the Congressional Committee investigating the scandal reported, “The common ingredients of the Iran and Contra policies were secrecy, deception, and disdain for the law…the United States simultaneously pursued two contradictory foreign policies — a public one and a secret one…. The first covert foreign policy initiative was the continued support for the…Contras against the…Sandinistas in Nicaragua in a time when Congress had cut off funds to the Contras [due to human rights abuses]. The second covert foreign policy initiative was the selling of arms to Iran in exchange for the release of American hostages held by Iranian allies in Lebanon. The two policies intersected when profits from the arms sales to Iran were used to support the Nicaraguan Contras through third parties and private funds.” Or, in short, officials in the Executive Branch, up to and including President Reagan, willfully and knowingly broke the law and went out of its way to hide it.
- The Clinton Administration had several scandals (former President Clinton’s affair with Monica Lewinsky being foremost among them) but the only one that had any teeth beyond the president’s sexual history included his director of White House personnel improperly requesting and receiving FBI reports on several hundred individuals, including White House employees of Republican administrations. The Special Counsel investigating the case exonerated former President Clinton and his First Lady, but two Clinton officials resigned over the matter.
- The Bush II Administration, which came to office through a partisan Supreme Court decision and through his brother’s purging of the Florida electorate in the summer of 2000 (90% of those purged were illegally removed), protected Saudi Arabia by redacting multiple pages in the 9/11 Commission’s report having to do with the kingdom’s involvement in the September 11th attacks, left New Orleans to die during Hurricane Katrina due to incompetent crony-appointment as the director of FEMA (“Brownie, you’re doing a heck of a job!), redirected American anger over 9/11 from Osama Bin Laden to Saddam Hussein to establish American hegemony in the region and retain our status as the world’s only superpower, worked to benefit Bush-aligned military contractor such as Halliburton, staffed up its executive advisory boards with corporate cronies (see Cheney Energy Task Force), hollowed out the EPA by appointing corporate insiders to regulate their former employers, appointed a lawyer/lobbyist for American Petroleum Institute to be in charge of environmental policy, tortured prisoners, bullied whistle blowers, appointed a Wall Street darling to chair the Securities and Exchange Commission, tried to silence government scientists’ statements on global climate change, and so much more.
While America survived those corrupt and semi-corrupt regimes, President-elect Trump’s determination to install only those employees who are faithful to his desires ensures more incompetency and corruption than we’ve ever seen before. If you think Brownie was bad at his job, just imagine what will happen when MAGA takes over the V.A.
Attacking Protesters
I think everyone on the left and right can agree that the First Amendment is damn crucial to the functioning of our government. People ought to be able to think and say what they want without fear of governmental reprisals. They ought to be free to worship as they want (or not want). And they ought to be able to critique their government en masse.
I think everyone on the left and right can also agree that the military should not be used against American citizens, with exceptions for insurrection and violent rebellion. Originally enacted in 1792, the Insurrection Act governs those exceptions:
- When there is an insurrection in a state against its government and the state’s legislature or governor asks for Federal assistance
- When the President considers that an unlawful obstruction makes it impracticable to enforce the laws of the U.S. in any state
- When the President believes it necessary to suppress in a state any insurrection, domestic violence, unlawful combination, or conspiracy, if it hinders the execution of laws within that state or opposes or impedes the execution of the laws of the United States
- When the President considers it necessary to order insurgents to disperse or retire peaceably within their abodes
The Posse Comitatus Act, originally enacted in 1878 to protect white supremacy in the American south and west, prevents federal military personnel from interfering in the affairs of civilian governance.
Unfortunately, the National Guard stationed in D.C. is not considered a federal force, and since the District is not a state, that branch is always under the president’s control. Additionally, a state’s contingent of the National Guard can be utilized by governors under state command and control, regardless of whether the Feds are paying the bill or if they are actually serving the federal interest.
In 2020, then President Trump used the DC Guard against civilians in the city who were protecting police brutality and racism. He also asked state governors to deploy their own Guards into D.C. (over the objection of the city’s mayor), and eleven states complied, giving the Trump Administration de facto control over a large military force to be used for law enforcement purposes in an American city. According to Secretary of Defense, then-President Trump told his military officers to shoot Black Lives Matter protesters in the leg; thankfully, they refused his order.
As the Brennan Center for Justice explained, “That is exactly what the Posse Comitatus Act is meant to prevent.”
America’s acceptance of the use of military force in civilian affairs signals a worrying erosion of our democratic ideals. President-elect Trump has argued (despite the facts) that American cities are a violent hell-scape. His rhetoric justifies an installation of military forces in our major metropolitan areas, cities that are (generally speaking) Democratic strongholds and the seat of many of the left’s activists. Placing the military in these cities will have a chilling effect on our First Amendment rights, and when you attack the First Amendment, you attack American democracy itself.
Here is the President-elect in his own words:
I think the bigger problem [than undocumented immigrants] are the people from within. We have some very bad people. We have some sick people, radical left lunatics. And I think they’re the — and it should be very easily handled by, if necessary, by National Guard, or if really necessary, by the military, because they can’t let that happen.
But it’s not just about his use of the military. During the campaign, President-elect Trump encourages vigilante violence: “One rough hour — and I mean, real rough.” He wants police to go beyond the bounds of the law, crowds of his supporters to attack his opponents and journalists, and “fight like hell.” He also wants to shoot shoplifters and execute drug dealers.
In short, the words, actions, and policies of President-elect Trump encourage a political atmosphere fueled by fear and violence.
Re-asserting The American Caste System
In the days after the President-elect’s victory, high school students in a rural Vermont high school scrawled on on a stall door in the bathroom, “Rights R 4 Whites.” Male right-wing commentators started spreading a new anti-feminist slogan, “Your body. My choice.” In “a widespread and coordinated attack,” Black people in twenty different states received text messages telling them they “have been selected to pick cotton at the nearest plantation center” and that “our executive slaves will come get you in a brown van.” Calls for a repeal of the 19th Amendment, which asserts a woman’s right to vote, have also increased.
The next Trump Administration will enact policies that strengthen America’s caste system, which sees the dominant caste as White Americans (divided internally so White men dominate White women, and heterosexual Whites dominate LGBTQ+ Whites) and the subordinate caste is Black and Brown Americans (again, divided internally with men over women, straights over gays, etc.).
They have promised to eradicate federal support for Diversity, Equity, Inclusion and Belonging (DEIB) initiatives, remove all DEI bureaucrats, and go after educational institutions for attempting to establish equity among historically marginalized communities, all in an effort to “protect” the dominant caste from what he sees as “anti White racism.”
Giving men control over women’s bodies is part of this project, as is giving society control over the bodies of trans individuals and the civil rights of homosexuals. The next Trump Administration promises to dismantle services for LGBTQ+ individuals whenever possible, whether that means making it more difficult or impossible to adopt, cutting support for gender-affirming care, forbidding the CDC from tracking statistics related to gender identity, rescinding regulations on sex discrimination, forbidding the sale of medication abortion drugs, prohibiting Planned Parenthood from accessing Medicare funds, repealing policies that recognize nonbinary and transgender identities in schools, as well as policies that protect sexual assault victims.
If he follows Project 2025’s advice, President-elect Trump will also stop the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission from collecting data related to race and ethnicity.
All of these efforts — and many more — will strengthen the American caste system and ensure that our democracy returns to a system dominated by and acting only in the interests of white straight males who own property.
It’s Your Fault, America
In the wake of Vice-President Harris’s defeat, some want to blame the rubes who are devoid of critical thinking skills and alienated from the political machinations of America’s two-party system, the “low information” voters that strategists talked about endlessly in the last month of the election.
Others want to blame Democrats in the elite of the party — the politicians, the donor classes, and the political consultants — who are so out of touch with the day to day reality of so many millions of Americans that they genuinely thought a member of the incumbent administration had a chance.
Others want to blame President Biden (see: me) for insisting he had the wherewithal to serve a second term instead of bowing out last year and allowing a Democratic primary to establish through democratic means who the party’s standard bearer actually ought to have been in 2024.
But the reality is: it’s your fault, America.
The rubes are Americans. The Democratic elite are Americans. President Biden and his advisors are Americans.
And so are the millions of Americans who voted for President-elect Trump in the Republican primary, despite his anti-democratic actions and rhetoric, his criminal convictions, and his failed coup on January 6, 2021.
So are the Republican Congresspeople, military officers, and intelligence officials who kowtow to this wannabe dictator’s every whim.
So is every American who flew a Trump flag, who prioritized your 401(k) over the future of your children, grandchildren, and the planet, who stayed home on Election Day, who didn’t give your employees the time off to vote, who ignored President-elect Trump’s denigration of your service in the military, and every American who refused to do a Google Search for “what caused the inflation.”
All of you —all 78,845,444 of you—who marked your ballot for Donald J. Trump, you are to blame for what happens next.
And it’s up to the rest of us—all 71,259,277 of us—to stand up now and stop it.