If Trump wins in 2016, I'm not actually going to do anything.
I might tell people that I'm moving to Switzerland, but that's a flat-out lie.
The reality is, my life wouldn't even suffer much under a Trump presidency.
Sure, he disparages anyone with a vagina, anyone who isn't straight and anyone from any other country besides the United States, but fortunately for me, I was born on the right side of all of those issues.
In other words, I'm a heterosexual American man. Plus I'm whiter than good weed.
Trump loves guys like me.
As a straight, white American guy, I'm one of the few people out there with whom Trump might consider breaking bread. Then again, I'm not a billionaire.
He would probably just call me a clown...
Based on the way I look, though, one might very well mistake me for a misanthropic Trump supporter.
Take yesterday for example. I was eating lunch at a dollar pizza place in Hell's Kitchen. I was wearing an American flag pin on my jacket, when the cashier, who was Hispanic - I think - noticed it, and asked if I was voting for Donald Trump.
"Only if Trump changes his mind about everything," I told the cashier.
He didn't seem to believe me. And realistically, I wouldn't have believed me either. After all, I was wearing an American flag pin. I looked exactly like any other closet-homosexual chanting "white power" at one of Trump's rallies.
It sucks though, being white. I bet if I were black, the cashier wouldn't label me a Trump supporter -- or a Republican, for that matter. It's like assuming a German millennial is anti-Semitic. Just because I'm white, doesn't mean I'm a lying sack of shit like Donald Trump and the rest of those carnies.
That's what I should have told the cashier...
But seriously, that's what it feels like to be white in America. It's embarrassing. It's like I'm tied to this endless string of hatred and depravity, dating back to the beginning of time. It's a history that continues, too, bringing me back to Trump.
If indeed the Devil exists and Trump wins this election, at least I won't have as much to lose as that cashier. I can't imagine that he makes more than minimum wage ringing up dollar slices of pizza. And we all know that Donald Trump won't raise the minimum wage a penny. But that's the cashier's problem now.
That's why I'm not going anywhere in 2016. I'm protected by the same privilege that got Trump to a position where he could shit on everyone without it.
But if I were a foreign-born cashier at a pizza place, making minimum wage, I'd have little choice but to flee this democracy or be flung from its walls.
Because that's what we do in 2016. We catapult our hardest-working people over the border, and build walls so that they can't climb back.
Come to think of it, maybe it's a good thing -- for democracy -- that Trump wins.
Sure, millions of Hispanics and Latinos will lose their homes. Sure thousands of women will lose their right to have an abortion. Sure our country's top-secret nuclear launch codes will rest in the hands of a billionaire sociopath. But perhaps it's the last reality check that people of privilege need to finally admit that the land of the free is just about fucked up beyond repair.