1. United States
2. N.Y.
3. Letter

We are losing America to our love of war, to our racism, to our xenophobia and our violent reactionary inability to recognize basic human dignity. If Trump wins, I will likely lose more of my rights, as will women and Muslims and immigrants and LGBTQ people across the country. If the current administration continues to support the genocide in Palestine, and the violence against students protesting said slaughter, then we have no discernable conscience or pretended moral high ground from which to stand against such a right wing wave. Trump has promised violence if he looses, there will no doubt be violence if he wins, but the other option is funding genocide. We are at an impasse. Voting was already feeling fraught, a choice between the lesser of two evils. Now it is seeming the lesser of two self-damnations. What do we think we're doing? Turning police against students as though we are at war, training police alongside IDF soldiers, tearing down forests in Atlanta to build cop city, destroying the planet as we are destroying ourselves? It is no wonder we are in a time of crisis - mental illness, hunger, poverty, forced childbirth, children here growing up with ptsd from active shooter drills at school, while our tax dollars pay for war crimes we think we are somehow above judgment for. America is not, and never has been, great, or even good, based on our powers of destruction. America was supposed to be great on the dreams of freedom and innovation, but here we are funding fear, feeding evangelical Christian nationalism and taking our cues from some imperial ideologies full of visions of Stepford tradwives rather than learning from our mistakes how to do better by all of us. If we do not stop this unwavering, unquestioning, uncritical support of genocide, if we do not take our fuel from the fires of this slaughter, we will lose the election. More of what is happening now is not hope, even in contrast with Trump. More of what we have now is just despair.