I’ve already mailed in my ballot, and I volunteered to be a poll worker (though they haven’t gotten in touch). With a week (maybe two) to go before we get the result, I feel caught in a limbo. It feels more important to me to be copying my important documents and organizing go-bags to be ready for a crisis than it does to do anything at work. I also recognize that that is probably a reaction to stress and anxiety and isn’t helping me. That said, I’m part of many groups that the right-wing hates and is openly threatening, so feeling unsafe doesn’t feel unreasonable either.
How are you all holding up out there? And tips for me to deal with this better?
Planning my Amerexit. I don’t want to leave, we have a decent country, but if Trump wins this place is going to go to hell fast.
Come to California. We’ll be the center of any resistance.
And it seems like Canada isn’t far behind us either… Though maybe there will be a backlash up there once they see what Trump is doing down here.
I doubt it, Trudeau really has pissed off most Canadians and their Conservative Party is also corrupt as hell. It’ll be better than here for a bit but Canadians in general feel politically stuck and that might not end well. Similar issue in Germany.
Where are you planning to go?
Not the person you asked, but I’ll give my answer: I don’t know where I’d go, but I’ve been learning French for the last few years, in part, to increase my options.
(The other reason I picked French is that I’ve also been considering getting a sailboat and becoming nomadic, and France owns a whole bunch of tropical islands.)
Depends how quickly things devolve. If things get bad too quickly, I may move to China for a bit. Yes, really. I know that’s a bit ironic. But I have family there, so getting residency is trivial for me. Day to day life is chill there, just don’t piss off the party. In America, I’d be considered a political enemy if the Republicans go full fascist, so ironically it would be safer for me.
I’d hate to lose American working opportunities, salaries, my house, my friends, and my family. But if things devolve really quick I don’t want to be here and that’s my fastest way out.
If there’s a fair bit of time to move, Japan, Spain, Netherlands, even Germany would all be decent picks for me.
My long term goal is honestly Japan - competent society, free and open, outstanding food, low pollution, safe for kids to be independent with good educational opportunities, few drug addicts, and high social respect.
We survived one term, this one will be worse, but if we stop being idiots and let them distract us with 1000 tiny controversies then we can solve anything.
He had nearly unlimited power last time and we did OK, though McCain helped and that corporate tax cut was brutal.
I think America has become politically lazy, sometimes you have to take a stand for your principles, and we’ve gotten used to expecting the idiots on TV to do that for us.
If he ‘wins’ and we put 10m people on Pennsylvania Avenue, I think we can make it clear that he serves us, not the other way around.
But we won’t do that, we’ll expect everyone else to instead…
Last time there were a lot more guardrails, though. It also wasn’t entirely clear if he was going to be a fascist either.
Honestly a reasonable person in 2016 could consider Trump to even be a moderate Republican (yes, really). Corrupt and lazy, sure, but I was expecting the American equivalent of someone like Rob Ford, not some insane idiot who is begging people in his party to literally rig the vote in his favor.