Flight or Fight?

 

This past week, watching one of those old-fashioned  linear cable TV news shows, I saw a story about some Americans wanting to leave the US in the wake of the recent election. It may come as a surprise that we are not welcome everywhere else as permanent residents, but some countries have a population imbalance and are welcoming immigrants, especially young people. This is not a new concept. I remember when Australia, a few decades ago, was recruiting Americans to fill its need for certain professions.

Most of my friends who voted for Kamala Harris don’t want to, or can’t, leave the country, and some are just tuning out the news from sheer exhaustion now. Believe me, I get it. But trapped in the depths of my loser liberal silo, I have reached the conclusion that this is what the opposition wants us to do.

We can’t undo the result of this presidential contest,  but voting is not over. There will be advise-and-consent hearings, and votes, in the US Senate on Mr. Trump’s nominees for important posts. The Republicans are in the majority, but will they all vote to confirm nominees considered to be unqualified or with serious problems in their past?

Going forward, some of the President-elect’s signature initiatives have enormous price tags and may require a vote of Congress, which holds the purse strings. Using the military to round up and deport illegal immigrants could face court challenges. There are things that can’t be done just by the wave of a presidential wand.

But we do have to be realistic. Donald Trump’s victory, and the Republican control of both houses of Congress, entitle him to a fair chance to implement his policies, as long as they are lawful. They will be tested, and If they don’t produce the positive results he has touted, there will be a response long before the next presidential contest, such as in Congressional elections two years from now.

This is America, and even if Mr. Trump wants to become a dictator for even a day, he can’t expect our institutions to just disintegrate. The media he has problems with won’t be cowed easily. Americans do not have a tradition of staying silent when things they don’t like are happening.

I now live in earthquake country, near a city with tall buildings. Those likely to stay standing in a major quake are supported by pylons driven deep into bedrock. The United States is supported by a legal framework that has stood for almost 250 years, and it will take a lot to bring it down. Unless those of us who disengage let it fall.