More than a quarter of Americans fear a civil war could break out after this year’s Presidential election, according to a new YouGov survey. The survey found most voters – 84 per cent – felt America was more divided than 10 years ago. Twelve per cent of respondents said they knew someone who might take up arms if they thought Donald Trump was cheated out of victory. Here, Lena Stewart, from Michigan, says she fears Trump would be a ‘dictator’ from day one, and curtail her rights. She is preparing for the worst.
It started pretty much as a joke in 2016 – none of us took Donald Trump all that seriously back then. I voted for Hillary Clinton – I didn’t want Donald Trump to win – but we didn’t know he would actually get anything done if he was elected. This was a guy who had never been a politician, after all.
If I talked about emigrating to, say, Canada back then, it was a joke. I was in university anyway – I had no money, no real skills, nothing to take with me if I did try to emigrate. And as even the most perfunctory Google search will tell you, it’s not actually nearly as easy to emigrate to Canada as most of us in America think it is. You can’t just pack up a truck, drive over the border, and decide “oh, I live in Canada now”.
Things got a little bit more serious in 2020. It was during that election when the Republicans railroaded Amy Coney Barrett onto the Supreme Court (cementing the court’s Republican supermajority) that my partner and I started actually discussing what we might do – and where we might move – if Donald Trump won again.
Things were pretty scary at that time, and we were seeing things go to a really bad place even before the January 6th attacks on the Capitol. The insurrection really showed how desperate Donald Trump was to maintain power, or to secure it again. I think he would curtail our rights in his effort to hold onto power again, and that’s the end of our democracy as we know it.
So this time, I’m a little more prepared. I plan to be ready to move if Donald Trump wins again. The first step was to realise Canada isn’t really on the table. I’d love for it to be an option, but given how many Americans would go for it as their first choice, it would be really competitive.
I’m looking a bit further afield: I’ve been looking at the various countries in the English-speaking world, but I’ve been working on improving my German language again, because I learned it in school, which opens up Germany, Belgium, Switzerland, Austria. Knowing a local language gives you a better shot, and a lot of folks in America only speak English.
Most Americans have no idea what is involved in moving to another country. You don’t just have to convince someone to employ you, you have to convince them to sponsor you for a visa, because you need to have experience that the local workforce does not have. I have a bachelor’s degree in economics, but I work in the US health insurance industry – and our health insurance is very different from all the others in the world.
I’m hoping the fact I’m in data analytics, and I manage a team, means that I’ve got skills someone would want to pick up. I’m even building a resumé that will work in Europe (you do them very differently there, and don’t even call them resumés, I’ve learned) and have started a profile for an EU blue card work permit.
It feels strange talking to other people in my life about moving if Trump wins, but I don’t mention it very much. I live in Michigan – a swing state – and have worked on some reproductive rights campaigns here. We’ve managed to enshrine the right to reproductive healthcare in our state constitution.
I’ve mentioned offhand that I plan to move if Trump wins again – he’s saying he’ll be a dictator from day one, that people won’t need to vote again – but other people seem to think it will be peaceful.
I get it, though. It’s tough to leave your home, your family, everything you know and love, and have to get a new job too. There are all things I don’t really want to do, but they’re things I can do because I’m probably in a more privileged position than the average person in the US.
I’ve got some money in my bank account, I’ve got a degree, and all of that, and I don’t have kids. I’m a childless cat lady – like the ones JD Vance insults on stage – and that helps me out here.
What is difficult is that my partner doesn’t want to move, even if Trump wins. So our plan is that we would go long-distance: he’ll stay and I’ll go. There are upsides as well as the obvious downsides to that, though. It means that he’ll still be in the US and could take over the expenses of the house we have together – and look after our cats.
That leaves the options open, a little bit, for us both. If I move overseas and it’s much more difficult than I expected, or if things in the US are a lot less dicey than I fear, then it’s a lot easier for me to move back this way. And if things are worse than my partner expects, I’ll have moved ahead of him, which would hopefully make it a lot easier for him to follow.
I am feeling a bit more optimistic since Joe Biden dropped out. The Kamala Harris campaign is visiting Michigan. She’s got union support. I feel like she might be able to stop Donald Trump.
I guess I’m optimistic – I’m hoping for the best, but it hasn’t stopped me preparing for the worst. Even if Harris wins, I’ll be holding my breath until inauguration day on January 20th, given what Trump attempted last time.
As told to James Ball
