How best can I put this? This is not a good time to be an American. Down the street from me I have a neighbor with a flagpole in their front yard. They’re proudly flying a black flag that says “ULTRA MAGA”. The number of “Stars and Bars” flags flying in the local area have been increasing rather precipitously too. By looking at the area now you’d never think that this was one of the hotbeds of abolitionism at the time of the Civil War and one of the northern terminii of the Underground Railroad.

We have two very old men running for the office of President of the United States. One of them is effectively a cult leader. His followers locally are kinda sorta fanatical. I can’t prove it but I do think some of the county central committee for the GOP were in the vicinity of the events of J6. After all, the Facebook page of the county party was used for coordinating transportation to the coup attempt in part. These are people locally that are willing to use force.

That’s probably why I’ve stopped with any letters to the editor locally. I would like to not see my house burned to the ground with me in it. We’ve had a wave of mysterious arson cases lately and I don’t want to be the next victim. This technically means I have been successfully intimidated, though.

Yes, I am one of those people looking at options to flee if Donald John Trump wins the presidency again. I have rare and odd medical issues to worry about. I stand a fairly decent risk of being deemed expendable and not worth treating if the plans outlined in the Project 2025 playbook get adopted. No amount of increased personal responsibility will help me avoid what is effectively a genetic condition. Work requirements don’t accomplish much when you wind up needing a whole lotta multi-systemic cancer screening a wee bit earlier than the general population does. Since the diagnosis in March 2023 it winds up being the case that any visit to the doctor’s office now has the potential to turn into a general article if the presenting issue is sufficiently weird. The healthcare section spends a bizarre amount of time discussing the Assimilative Crimes Act and how it is to be used to ensure that criminal law bans on abortion in certains shall apply in federal facilities in those states by choice of the administration-in-waiting. Fleeing an incoming Trump administration would be to ensure I have access to the care I need.

Again, I don’t like this mess. We have a bunch of heretical fanatical maniacs that want to run the country in the fashion of some warped and twisted facsimile of “the way things were” that bears no connection to reality. I get that “Weimar feeling” day by day lately as we see Trump spew nonsense and increasingly look like he’s not well.

Going to Canada is not an option due to problems with the health system there. Australia or the UK would be the options that would at least keep me connected to the combined research group for The Condition. Melbourne & Sydney have researchers there that have previously worked with the combined group. There is a researcher in the UK in Southampton who has also worked with the group. The main body of researchers is based at Cleveland Clinic, of all places. I’m located just a short drive away now from the leading researchers on the planet but we’re all in an area that could get very dangerous as the year continues.

What a mess…