An American flag flies upside down during an anti-war demonstration near the United States Capitol on September 29, 2007, in Washington, DC. (Photo by Brendan Smialowski/Getty Images)

Today I feel like a new America, one I don’t recognize. One that doesn’t make sense. One who has abandoned the promise of our great country. One I now fear. One I cry for.

We have transformed from the shining city on the hill to a monument to the grotesque, an experimental empire destined to be destroyed in a madness of our own making.

Donald Trump’s rise to the presidency in 2016 was terrible and ushered in all kinds of national embarrassment, scandals, destructive policies and political violence, but his defeat in 2020 left us believing that America realized that He had made a mistake and he corrected his mistake. course and the nation would resume its course toward the exceptionalism that had defined us for more than 200 years.

This is different and demonstrably worse. In 2016, no one knew exactly how Trump would govern, or that his incompetence was constantly an impediment to his worst instincts and prevented him from implementing the most harmful parts of his agenda.

Not anymore. This is a new and much more dangerous Trump, bent on revenge and backed by a conservative movement that has turned him from a morally bankrupt real estate mogul and reality TV peddler into a deity. Those allies have spent the last four years dedicated to ensuring that he can carry out every terrible thought that crosses his mind and any other radical policies they want.

Trump has told us all this and has been frighteningly explicit about what he will do as president this time, particularly in the final weeks leading up to yesterday’s election.

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It will seek to eradicate all undocumented immigrants in a “Bloody” and violent mass deportation. he will do it build concentration camps. he will do it institute ideological tests for legal immigrants and end birthright citizenship.

He will end the proceedings he faces for fomenting a coup d’état on January 6 and illegally hoarding classified documents, and sic the Department of Justice in his political enemies. he will do it forgive his violent supporters who ransacked the Capitol in 2021 to overturn an election he lost and attempted to kill members of Congress and Trump’s own vice president.

Will use the army to violently repress dissent and corner “the enemy within,” which is equivalent to anyone who criticizes him. Will deploy soldiers to take over cities run by Democrats.

he will replace the civil service with its cronies to ensure that there is no resistance to implementing their policies, no matter how un-American or unconstitutional, and to dismantle the government from within.

He will supervise he implementation of a national abortion banundoing the will of the voters in Arizona and other states, many of them deep red, that voted decisively to guarantee the right to abortion.

We have transformed from the shining city on the hill to a monument to the grotesque, an experimental empire destined to be destroyed in a madness of our own making.

He will name Lunatic anti-vaccine conspiracy theorist Robert F. Kennedy Jr. to monitor public health.

he will do it target transgender peopleparticularly children, and try to erase your existence from American life. he will do it aggressively attacking LGBTQ+ rights.

he will impose General rates of 1,000 percent that will cost the average American family an additional $3,954 per year and eliminate 1.4 million American jobs.

he will do it eliminate the Department of Education and Withhold funding from American schools that teach truths.whether they are about the nation’s history of racial inequality or the existence of gay and transgender people.

he will do it withdraw from NATO and give Vladimir Putin the green light to attack our NATO allies. he will do it cede Ukraine to Putin and abandon a critical ally in the fight against the Russian dictator’s desire to reestablish the Soviet Union.

It will scrap policies that aim to mitigate climate change and accelerate the use of fossil fuels, which drive the United States further into crisis with worsening droughts, deadly heat waves, dangerous winter storms and hurricanes becoming more intense and frequent. It will reverse incentives for electric vehicles, which are a key part of reducing carbon emissions.

It will do nothing to stop gun violence and instead target existing policies such as expanded background checks and ghost gun regulation.

He will remake America in his fascist image.

Arizona will be the epicenter of any deportation effort, with families torn apart. We just passed a constitutional right to abortion that federal action will nullify or make irrelevant. Our increasingly scorching, never-ending summers will become more extreme, with more deaths, higher utility bills, and less water. Our indigenous brothers and sisters, who the Biden administration has prioritized like never before in the United States, will once again be left aside and, at best, ignored.

And Americans, it seems, can’t wait. Arizona and all the other battleground states have gone all in on Trump and decisively given him a second term. My colleague recently wrote about The deeper meaning of the “promise of America” that Kamala Harris invoked during the election campaign.

But that United States is not the country we live in today. This America is cruel and ruthless, uninterested in equality or justice and instead determined to satisfy its vilest desires.

I hope my children inherit something similar to that “promise of America.” But I’d be lying if I said I think, at this point, we will.

But America’s greatness has always been our resilience and our commitment to truth and justice. We may not be upholding those ideals right now, but I have to believe that we will once again find our way.

If we don’t, then there won’t be much of a country worth saving.

Arizona Mirror is part of States Newsroom, a nonprofit news network supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Arizona Mirror maintains editorial independence. Contact editor Jim Small with questions: [email protected]. Follow Arizona Mirror on Facebook and unknown.