Donald Trump has threatened to hunt me down like a rat.

I do not think it is necessarily wise to allow a minority of private citizens to own nearly all of the resources humans depend upon for survival. Their ownership of said resources decreases individuals’ capacity to be self-reliant. They are then free to charge us a market price (sometimes thousands of times more expensive than the true cost) for the products that are the result of the hard work of people like us. This class of owners is largely composed of inheritors, and they get to enjoy ludicrous wealth. Meanwhile, people suffer in multitudes. At the very least, such a predicament should be remedied by regulations to hold the elite owners of industry accountable to health and safety, especially given their track records of shirking these moral obligations. Furthermore, such individuals should be taxed in a manner that respects the needs of society and puts into perspective the contributions of the workers who truly generate wealth.

These are essentially socialist ideas. I assert my right to have these ideas. Anyone is free to disagree with them. But before you lay the sins of Stalin at my feet, know that I do not condone violence for national gain, nor do I support any form of government that is not democratic. In fact, our nation’s own democracy does not meet my standards. Politicians in our country are too easily swayed by the elite capitalists mentioned before, gerrymandering is open-air corruption, and structures like the electoral college and senate take power away from the people and lend it instead to the abstract notion of statehood. Furthermore, we have an embarrassingly simple “one person, one vote” system, which fails to truly give Americans the freedom to vote outside the two major parties without the fear of benefitting the one they oppose most. Nor is our voting system as proportional as its motto makes it seem; many elections in our country go in favor of a candidate receiving fewer votes than another.

You might disagree with my opinions. But do I really deserve to have my neck snapped in a trap because I don’t blindly trust in the benevolence of corporate shareholders?

Trump has plans to accomplish this sort of persecution. His strategists have touted “Schedule F”; a scheme to make the entire federal government his personal lackeys. He has proposed being dictator for a day (the “cute” thing about being a dictator for a day is that one could dictate that they be dictator for life and, presumably, such a decree would stick because, after all, it was issued by the dictator). The right wing even has a plan to rewrite the constitution, which could happen, without litigation, if Republicans gain simple minorities in both houses of Congress (research the American Legislative Exchange Council, or ALEC, if this is news to you). There are even some who want to get rid of due process.

Persecution is real. Do not take freedom for granted. Vote wisely.