“It is our attitude toward events, not events themselves, which we can control. Nothing is by its own nature calamitous – even death is terrible only if we fear it.”
Epictetus
Less than two days after the 2024 presidential election, my friends and I started making plans. We looked into getting dual citizenship and finding safer ways to keep our money in case things took a turn for the worse.
We weren’t the only ones worried. Many of us still remembered the January 6th attack on the Capitol. One of my friends had said back then:
“Watching it felt like sitting in a college class about the fall of a democracy.”
And now, Americans had voted Trump in for a second term—this time, he was even more confident and determined than before. Still, we had to ask ourselves: Were we overreacting? The Cook Political Report said that over 77 million people voted for Trump in 2024. Maybe we were just being paranoid.
But our fears seemed more real just weeks after Trump’s 2025 inauguration. He quickly signed a wave of executive orders, each one more extreme than the last. Within his first 30 days, he:
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- Pulled the U.S. out of the World Health Organization (WHO).
- Made a policy recognizing only two genders and blocked passport changes for transgender people.
- Ended diversity, equity, and inclusion programs in the federal government.
- Canceled over 70 executive actions from Biden’s presidency, including ones that supported racial equality.
- Pardoned January 6th rioters, including people with violent criminal histories.
- Tried to force out over 2 million federal workers by offering questionable benefits.
- Gave Elon Musk access to sensitive taxpayer information, even though he wasn’t officially appointed.
By early February, some federal judges had already stepped in to block a few of these orders. This gave some of us hope that the courts could stop Trump from going too far. But then, JD Vance called those court rulings illegal. That brought back our biggest fear:
If Trump ignored the courts, who would stop him? Who actually has the power to enforce a ruling against a president?
This uncertainty had many thinking about moving to Canada. If things kept getting worse—if, as some put it, democracy turned into a joke controlled by a dictator or a group of wealthy elites—then we needed a backup plan.
That’s why I started this blog. The worst hasn’t happened yet, and maybe it won’t. The courts are still active, and we still have elected leaders, even if they’re influenced by big corporations.
And so far, the Constitution hasn’t been thrown out under some fake “immigration crisis” excuse for martial law.
But as responsible liberals preparing for the worst, we know it’s better to get ready now rather than wait until it’s too late. The best time to plan was during Biden’s presidency, but the second-best time is now.
It’s my hope that this blog can help others think ahead and prepare for whatever comes next.
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