Dear Millenials and Gen Z:    Bored with politics?  Grumpy about the Democrats running an old man?  Thinking maybe you’ll just check out and not vote?   Planning to hunker down in Ft Greene and bake some sourdough? 

Consider this.  By early next year, if Trump is elected, he’s just promised you’ll be seeing red state national guard troops, federalized and answering to Trump, marching through your neighborhood rounding up folks for mass deportation.  Think you’ll be able to ignore that? 

You didn’t think this was all real?  Tonight blue state governors all over the country are scrambling to analyze whether they can keep control of their own state’s national guard troops, and legally use them to confront the red state troops rounding up people in the streets of blue state cities. 

[Hint to blue state governors:  read Christian Nation, Chapter 13:

“Can they really take over the New York Guard?” the Governor asked.  I answered.

“Yes.  Since 2007, a Governor’s consent is not required for the President to assume command of the Guard in a state.  What we need to do is ensure that all the senior officers are loyal to you, sir.  If they are not, we must replace them while we can. . .”]

So maybe it’s time to reconsider sitting this one out.

When I wrote my dystopian novel, Christian Nation, it was not difficult to predict what Christian nationalists and their puppets would do upon obtaining control of the Federal government.  In part, because they’ve told us what they will do (as Trump continues to do), and in part because a quick legal analysis reveals the steps that would be required to implement their agenda over the vigorous objection of the majority of the population and all of the blue states.   I’m sorry to say it, but every scenario ends in violence:

On the Tuesday before Thanksgiving, the Feds advanced up through New Jersey and the formidable Joshua Brigades from Oklahoma, Kansas, Alabama, and Colorado took up positions up and down the west shore of the Hudson, from the George Washington Bridge in the north down to Bayonne Island.   Manhattanites lined the east bank of the Hudson staring across at the alarming sight of tanks and artillery all poised to shoot across the River at the full length of the island.  In a symbolic gesture, the Holies occupied Liberty Island from the Jersey side and draped the base of the Statue of Liberty with the “Christian flag”.   At the same time, a small unit of Marines landed at Stony Brook on the North Shore of Long Island, and proceeded south to secure McArthur Airport in Islip.  We watched nervously as huge C-17 transports streamed continuously in and out of MacArthur Airport all afternoon, discharging troops, tanks, vehicles ,and supplies.   The next morning, the City was transfixed by the strange sight of tanks and armored personnel carriers streaming west along the otherwise empty Long Island Expressway and Southern State Parkway.   The defense perimeters at the City’s eastern edge were pierced following a brief skirmish.  A brave unit of Guards briefly halted the advance around Kennedy Airport using only three old tanks brought down from Camp Smith in Peekskill, until helicopter-fired missiles destroyed each tank.   The Governor pulled all our forces back to Manhattan, and deployed them at the bridge and tunnels exits, which were relatively easy to defend, and to reinforce the troops at the most obvious spots for amphibious assault around the island’s perimeter.   By the end of the day, the same formidable line of tanks, artillery and troops lined the east bank of the East River all the way up to the South Bronx. 

It gets worse.  But it doesn’t have to happen.  All that is needed is for turnout percentages of independents and Democrats to approach those of Christian fundamentalists (typically around 85%).  The decision to disengage and stay home is a decision to welcome MAGA shock troops to the ‘hood and send 5% of the American workforce back where they came from, leaving the economy in a shambles.  It’s your choice.