I sent an email (original article – below) to my newsletter list on the day before this week’s midterm elections. The results of the election, to be frank, were mixed. While Donald Trump certainly didn’t achieve “total victory” as he claimed on the day after, the Dems did lose some high profile governor and U.S. Senate races. The most heartening result for me and many like-minded people is that the Democrats regained control of the U.S. House of Representatives. This result may serve to present some of the worst outcomes of a Trump victory that I specified in my letter. However, Trump didn’t even wait 24 hours to “accept the resignation” of Attorney General Jeff Sessions and thereby place in doubt the future of the Mueller investigation.
The following is a numbered list of the dire outcomes I listed in my letter. This list should enable us to keep score and compare notes as developments unfold. The original letter I distributed is just below that. The highlighted items on the list are ones that have received action by Trump already, within just 24 hours of the election result. Hopefully the newly constructed Congress will help prevent or restrict further action.
- The end of the Affordable Care Act and its protections for people with preexisting conditions
- More racial division and cultural chaos
- Dismantling of the Mueller investigation and the end of any semblance of congressional oversight
- Enormous, destructive budget deficits and/or significant reductions in Social Security, Medicare and other key programs
- Abandonment of human rights advocacy
- Abandonment of efforts to rescue ourselves and the world from the disastrous effects of climate change
- Even stronger embrace of dangerous authoritarian leaders
- More trashing of our own institutions like the FBI, CIA, State Department, etc.
- More destruction of core international alliances
- More demonizing the press as the “enemy of the people”
(original article, distributed on 11/6/2018 at 5:00 AM)
Donald Trump has made this election about as simple as it can be.
He has insisted that this election is about HIM, and that a vote for any Republican candidate is a vote for HIM and his agenda. He’s not pretending or sugar-coating or dancing around the issues. Donald Trump wants to take this country even further down a very different path, and he’s asking for our permission to do so. If we say YES, we will be acknowledging that we want to be a very different country than the one we have aspired to be for the last 250+ years. If you are okay with that, it is your right to vote for the candidate HE wants you to vote for. I will pray for you, and for the country. If you are NOT okay with that, please vote for every Democrat you can, not because you love every Democrat, but because that is the only way to stop this madness before it is too late.
Here are just some of the things we can look forward to if Trump gets his way:
- The end of the Affordable Care Act and its protections for people with preexisting conditions
- More racial division and cultural chaos
- Dismantling of the Mueller investigation and the end of any semblance of congressional oversight
- Enormous, destructive budget deficits and/or significant reductions in Social Security, Medicare and other key programs
- Abandonment of human rights advocacy
- Abandonment of efforts to rescue ourselves and the world from the disastrous effects of climate change
- Even stronger embrace of dangerous authoritarian leaders
- More trashing of our own institutions like the FBI, CIA, State Department, etc.
- More destruction of core international alliances
- More demonizing the press as the “enemy of the people”
Overall, we can look forward to further devolution toward a value-less and truth-less society, one that loses its status as a respected international leader. This loss will cost us deeply in the long run, in both financial and geopolitical terms, and will swamp out any economic benefits derived from last year’s tax-cut-for-the-rich. Our children and grandchildren will be the ones who suffer most.
The choice we have today is clear. We can give our permission to let Donald Trump change the fundamental character of our country, or we can say NO by voting for Democrats. I plan to say NO, and will continue to do so no matter what happens. This is not a matter of Republican or Democrat, it is a matter of right and wrong. I won’t be swayed by a few near-term dollars to abandon every principle I have learned since birth. I hope you won’t, either.
Sincerely,
David