Dear US voters, in the spirit in which I would beg a dear friend not to get a facial tattoo, I’m writing to ask you not to vote for Donald Trump. While the decision to do so would make a statement, signalling your justifiable anger about the pain you have suffered, it is likely to disfigure you, damage your life chances and prove irreversible. In the wake of his rally at Madison Square Garden, no one can now doubt what he intends to do to you.
I can guess where you think I’m coming from, but I have no love for the Democrats. Unlike the UK Labour party staffers campaigning for Kamala Harris, I have no affiliations. While there have been some improvements under Joe Biden, for decades, regardless of which party was in power, the value generated by the middle and working classes has been mopped up by the very rich. This is the result of 45 years of neoliberalism, a life-sapping programme to which both parties subscribe. I share the horror and disgust many of you feel towards Biden’s foreign policy, especially his support for the Israeli government while it pursues its genocidal onslaught in Gaza and invasion of Lebanon.
But all these things would be worse under Trump. Of Benjamin Netanyahu, Trump said last week, “he’s doing a good job” but “Biden is trying to hold him back … and he probably should be doing the opposite, actually”. Earlier this year, he said of the Israeli government, “They’ve got to finish what they started.” If, as Trump allegedly threatened, he “will not give a penny” to Ukraine in aid, Vladimir Putin could do to Ukraine what Netanyahu has done to Gaza. Any prospect of peace on either front would shift from improbable to impossible.
For all their faults, at least Biden and Harris seek, however unevenly, to shield the people of the United States from the worst aspects of capitalism. But Trump is the worst aspects of capitalism, condensed into human form: the greed, the lies, the rip-offs. While he remains vague on the detail, a collection of rightwing goons, under the aegis of Project 2025, have laid out the road he will most likely follow. During his first presidency, Trump attempted, but thankfully failed, to destroy the Affordable Care Act. If he wins again, he will fail less often. His team will rip down the threadbare public protections for the middle and working classes. Trump’s plans would hasten the insolvency of social security and Medicare. He will gut the government, replacing experienced officials with loyalists. Head Start, which provides childcare and preschool education, offering at least a prospect of opportunity for all, will be erased: if you are born poor, you will be even more likely to remain poor.
Never underestimate the vengeful nihilism at the heart of this movement. The glitter-eyed fanatics behind Project 2025 and other such programmes will smash whatever is most precious to you, partly at the behest of commercial interests – but also to enjoy watching the pain it inflicts. They will crush beauty, joy, community and hope precisely because other people value them.
Even if, in 2028, Trump or his designated successor somehow permits a change of government, which seems unlikely, some of the impacts of another single term will be irrevocable, particularly as his team attacks the living world.
His climate policies will rush us even faster towards the Earth systems horizon. There will be no recovery of the beautiful wild places he will hand to fossil fuel extractors, to mining and ranching companies, to construction firms. When catastrophes strike, he will not be there for you. During his first term, Trump, a modern-day Nero, withheld disaster aid from states he deemed insufficiently loyal to him. His callous and chaotic response to the Covid-19 pandemic helped cause the death of 350,000 Americans in 2020. Contrast this, for instance, to Taiwan, whose highly effective policies ensured that only seven lives were lost that year. This is the iron rule: Trump serves only himself.
Some of you might gain from a new Trump presidency, but only at the expense of others. His is, and has always been, a zero-sum game. His friends may rise, but only as his enemies fall. And the nature of the enemy will constantly evolve.
Already, you can see the net widening. Trump has made it clear that people who don’t originate from “nice countries” – he listed Denmark, Switzerland and Norway – are “poisoning the blood” of the US. Your blood, in his worldview, becomes no less “poisonous” over time. Already, he has lined up Jews as the scapegoats if he loses the election, a gambit as old as the hills.
Perhaps you are white and Christian. But you might discover, some years down the line, that you are the wrong kind of white, or the wrong kind of Christian. Gay? Disabled? Long-term sick? It may not be long before you too are “poisoning the blood” of the country. As his capture of the judiciary advances, women will be reduced once more to second-class citizens whose primary purpose is to serve men. Who is the “your” in “I am your retribution”? Trump is careful never to spell it out. But of one thing you can be sure: the answer will keep changing.
It is not hard to see the militias supporting Trump mutating into death squads if he wins, protected by sympathetic police, a tame judiciary and presidential pardons. If so, they would be used to instil terror into his opponents. Every outrage will blunt the edge of the next one, until you are so inured to outrage that you have no remaining capacity to respond. And as Trump is now empowered by almost full-spectrum immunity, there will be nothing anyone can do to stop him.
The rest of the establishment and the less extreme media, the professions, government officials and legislators – will they seek to protect you? Most will fall into line, out of fear and favour, the two forces to which almost everyone in public life succumbs. This is how it works, and has always worked.
Men like Trump, damaged, frightened, pathologically insecure, resistant to love and therapy, can relieve their pain only by inflicting pain on others. Compassion is a foreign concept to him. There is no curiosity, no wonder, no kindness, no connection with the hearts of others, no lightness of spirit. In their place are ego, rage, resentment, impulsiveness and cruelty. Those who are not at peace with themselves destroy other people’s peace.
We need to build a world in which one can gain without another losing, a world in which kindness, decency and community prevail, where the fortunate help the less fortunate to avoid disaster. The Democrats will deliver less of this than they should. But Trump will make everything worse. Please, dear friends. Don’t do it to yourselves.
George Monbiot is a Guardian columnist