Last night my wife (out of genuine concern) suggested:
"maybe we need to put off that plan we have today after work to go buy the stuff we need to make raised garden beds ... in case Turnips SOTU speech has something so bad we need to just immediately pack and flee for our lives.."
I struggled and stammered - I said:
"If something he says is so egregious that we genuinely have to flee for our lives, then the $300 or so we were going to spend on that is a drop in the bucket - we'd be leaving everything we own except maybe our teardrop camper and the clothes on our backs..."
The sad thing is we can NEVER AGAIN say "Oh that will never happen" ... no matter how insane, no matter how cruel, no matter how unprecedented or illegal or unconstitutional; none of that matters to the people for whom the cruelty - both performative and real - is the point.
That was all it took for the entire wall / the entire facade of me managing to muddle through the day to utterly collapse. I felt my soul break like the Key Bridge in Baltimore. I broke down in uncontrollable sobbing.
I've always been a "plan for the worst, hope for the best" person. However, this timeline we're in: there is no bottom to the worst. There is no limit to the cruelty. I am not exaggerating when I say that it feels like we're in 1934 Germany except we have a crystal ball and we know what is coming and are powerless to stop it.
I can't stress enough just how hopeless this feels.
We have seriously examined options to move out of the US (love it or leave it, right?) but we have no path to permanent residence or citizenship (no recent documentable emigration on either side that would get us into countries like Ireland or Italy etc...). We don't have the kind of money to be able to "buy our way in" (some countries fast track you if you're planning on starting a business with some number of millions) etc.. or outright sell citizenship, but I'm fairly sure that's a sign of corruption (I mean the Manchurian Cantaloupe just seriously proposed a pay for citizenship scheme)
Even if we started a year ago and had time to sell everything we owned, it would likely have been at a staggering loss... and I can't help but feel that even in the best case scenario, selling our home to just run to another country would be asking to burn all the equity without any promise that wouldn't end up homeless, penniless (having burned through that money on rent or hotels), and end up deported back here, now without even a roof over our heads.
We have so very much to lose. I am well aware that currently that still puts us in a massive position of privilege compared to where many Americans are. Still, just immensity of the situation. We already carefully thought through this and had decided we would hunker down and do things to make our home as self-sustaining as possible: start a backyard garden, install rain barrels, join a food coop, ensure we had a well stocked pantry, purchase any longer term durable goods sooner rather than later, look into getting rooftop solar to avoid unstable energy prices, etc...
However, my wife honestly asking / considering / being so worried set me on a spiral. I don't blame her because no cruelty, no matter how crazy is impossible at this point.
I have always been the type to plan for various contingencies and have valued stability and long term goals, but how can I plan for such things? "The worst" is so existential, so unthinkable, and yet here we are.
I'm losing hope.
Ok, I ended the article there, but that's kind of a bummer. So alright; what, if anything, can we do?