Paul Jablon’s Oct. 18 My Turn clearly exposed the enormous costs to the U.S. economy if Donald Trump tried to deport, as he has repeatedly promised to do, all undocumented immigrants [“Trump’s deportations would cost us dearly”].

As Jablon explained, looking at this from a purely selfish point of view, not only would the cost of rounding up, encamping and removing all those people cost taxpayers billions of dollars, but the loss of the majority of the people who do the gritty, dirty, difficult jobs that feed, shelter and care for us would bring our economy to its knees.

In addition to this, Trump’s tariffs (“the most beautiful word in the dictionary”) would raise the cost of almost everything we rely on for daily living. If you found prices high in 2023-34, imagine paying 10-20% more for clothes, shoes, produce, fish, meat, cheese, wine, beer, bottled water, furniture, medications, cars, steel, construction materials, etc., since so much of what we consume on a daily basis comes from abroad.

Trump and Project 2025 have stated plans to cut back on Social Security, Medicare, and government agencies responsible for keeping us safe like the Environmental Protection Agency, the Education Department, the Department of Health and Human Services. They want to reduce every effort to slow climate change and push, instead, to expand drilling for oil and other fossil fuels, making money for themselves and destroying our planet at the fastest pace possible.

They also plan to cut way back on disaster relief funds so that, when those climate disasters strike, the people and communities affected will be left on their own to try to recover.

Do you remember the rolls of paper towels Trump threw out to the people of Puerto Rico after their disastrous hurricane? That is likely to be the extent of a Trump administration’s level of assistance to all of us. Did your life improve when the Clean Water Act was clawed back in the first Trump term? Did Mexico pay for his “big, beautiful wall?”

Were you impressed when immigrant children were torn from their parents, housed in open cages with only aluminum blankets for warmth and no records were kept regarding whose children they were? Was his administration moved by the outcries for justice and mercy? Is this man who mocks people with disabilities, who calls soldiers “suckers” and “losers,” who freely lies about immigrants eating people’s pets, and who refuses to divulge his health records or his taxes the person who should be running this country?

Did you watch the Jan. 6 attack on the nation’s Capitol? If so, you know perfectly well that it wasn’t a “day of love” but rather an attempt by the then president to hold onto power any way he could. How can you imagine that he will give it up in 2028? Like he told that crowd of “beautiful Christians: “You will never have to vote again!”

You may be thinking that we are once again facing a choice between two candidates you do not like, but there is a clear and resounding difference between Trump and Kamala Harris. Trump will end democracy and life in America will be changed forever.

Louise Amyot lives in Greenfield and appreciates living in a democracy, and dreads the possibility of being a powerless subject in a dictatorship.