I really don’t have anything to say about Donald Trump, or our life over the next four years. What is there to say? What will there be to say?
I am heading into my sunset. I won’t be here to see the world bake and end. I don’t want that to happen. But to prevent that, the generation after the generation after mine had to care enough to vote to save their future, and while many of them did, in the most recent election, they moved decisively away from the fight.
Voters aged 18 to 29 moved by a ten-point margin towards Trump, and now a near-majority support him.
Women overall moved towards Trump as well, and young women moved significantly, by seven points, despite his decisive role in destroying Roe.
I care a lot about climate change, it’s my number one issue. I also care about abortion rights. I will keep voting to save the planet and I will keep voting for women’s rights, but it is not my fight, fundamentally. If young people do not care enough about the future of the planet to save it, and if women do not care enough about reproductive rights to vote to protect them, I am not about to lecture them. It is for them to decide.
Back in the 1960s, Vietnam had a civil war. Arguably, the U.S. was on the “right” side of the battle. But whether we were right or not made no difference, because the people of Vietnam wanted something else for themselves. So when we sent troops over there, we did not fight alongside the Vietnamese people, we fought against them. It was their decision to make, not ours.
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Over the next four years, there will undoubtedly be more destruction and more Trumpian idiocy. No one believes that he’s going to invade Greenland, but his threats to do so undermine the international order, to the extent that there still is an international order. I won’t need to opine on any of this, because many many other columnists will, day after day. None of this will be a surprise to anyone. Either you’ll love this or tolerate this — and now something like 51.5% of America loves this or tolerates this — or you won’t, and nothing I might say would make any difference. Nothing will surprise you.
Except this.
Both parties now seem to recognize some kind of “truth” that illegal immigration is out of control, that the border is a mess, and that something needs to be done to stanch the flow. There is now a consensus on this that bridges parties and ideologies.
This consensus is wrong. We do not have too many immigrants. We do not have enough.
In the 19th and early 20th century we had something very much like open borders, and it worked. Today, open borders in the U.S. could lower inflation and boost the economy by filling workforce gaps, fostering innovation and entrepreneurship, counterbalancing an aging population, increasing tax revenue, driving GDP growth, reducing enforcement costs, leveraging global human capital and promoting economic equity.
Nothing is less American and more damaging to our economy and our national values than closing our border.
In this one area, I do think that getting the facts to Americans might make a difference.
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A few years ago, I was a writer with two acclaimed novels in print and a third under contract with Chickadee Prince Books. Then, Steve Acunto’s CINN Global took over CPB, and today, I have no books in print and my third novel may never be published. These things happen to everyone, I suppose, from time to time. But does someone in my position sit down at the computer and write another novel, knowing how difficult it is for even more-established authors to get a foothold.
I will have something to write, I am sure. No one has been able to shut me up. Maybe I will just write about The Chopped Liver Brothers day after day and week after week. I will write about something. But today, inauguration day, at the dawn of another year without a book coming out, I am not sure what it will be.
^^^
Alon Preiss is the author of A Flash of Blue Sky (2015) and In Love With Alice (2017), which are out of print, but were originally published by Chickadee Prince Books. His third novel, I Knew Her Once/Long Ago, was originally under contract to be published by Chickadee Prince Books.