“The moment we no longer have a free press, anything can happen. What makes it possible for a totalitarian or any other dictatorship to rule is that people are not informed; how can you have an opinion if you are not informed? If everybody always lies to you, the consequence is not that you believe the lies, but rather that nobody believes anything any longer. This is because lies, by their very nature, have to be changed, and a lying government has constantly to rewrite its own history.” –“Hannah Arendt– from an interview with Roger Errera in 1974 in what turned out to be her last public interview.”

We are doomed. Is that too strong a word? We, as in, are residents of the United States of America. This is certain based on the messages circulating in the right-wing echo chamber. I’m beginning to grasp the hysteria, finally acknowledging that I have been ignoring the reality before me all this time.

I’ve been told incessantly that the real problems of this nation are these people: Immigrants (does it matter if they are legal or not), Trans people (I’ve learned that they aren’t people at all but monster shape-shifters), Gays, and Lesbians and all the other gender-fluid people (I’ve been brainwashed into the use of pronouns and initials like LGBTQ+), Communists (that’s anyone left of Donald J Trump), Racists (no, not them but those who call themselves victims of racism).

They are all such whiners, and there’s an even longer list of Venezuelans, Haitians, and others who are not from Europe and pose a constitutional threat to the good old American way of life. Those individuals, along with anyone else we can identify, are the enemies we should fear, agonize over, and burden ourselves with anxiety because if we don’t pay attention, this country, our country, will no longer be the country we all know love.

Don’t you just love how the Fear and the Loathing of Human Beings is so easy?

I must admit that another form of anxiety occasionally grips me with fear. This relates to relatives I have on the Puerto Rican and Dominican side who also believe in the truth that the real problem we face is, you know, those other people, not us. We were born here, or we’ve become resident aliens ( a lot of good that seems to help) or citizens, and we have adopted this country as our own and have sworn our Americanness.

Sometimes, I get this crazy idea that because we cannot trace our roots back to Plymouth Rock or any country in the British Isles or the European continent, some of our fellow MAGA cultists may not be so quick to accept us as fellow travelers. I read that we are welcomed as long as we are willing to suspend reality in favor of whatever theories of life and conspiracies come to mind, regardless of whether they were found in a sewer, the eye of a hurricane, or a Fox News television studio.

I think deep in my heart that it is just a simple Accept those terms, and you will be validated as fellow MAGA cultists, and no one will care about my ethnicity, race, heritage, class, religion, lack of it, or cultural DNA. It’s true. All will be good as long as we support the presidency of a man whose track record of accomplishments is sketchy at best and a damn lie at worst.

That support can take various forms: collaboration, acquiescence, surrender, or silence regarding his willingness to threaten anyone and everyone, to distort, lie, cloud, besmirch, and call out individuals who may merely have a simple policy disagreement or believe, based on eyewitness accounts of his past behavior spanning forty to fifty years, that he may not be qualified to be the President of the United States of America.

I mean, I could be wrong, and I will have to trust that some slightly less than fifty percent of those who voted (not all those eligible to register to vote and chose not to) can’t be entirely wrong.

As I mentioned earlier, perhaps I’ve been the wrong one for a long time.

Earlier this year, the Pew Research Center published “Who likes authoritarianism, and how do they want to change their government?” by Laura Silver and Janell Fetterolf. Apparently,

“…a median of 31% across 24 nations are supportive of authoritarian systems, according to a recent Pew Research Center survey. The survey asked about two authoritarian models of government: a system in which a strong leader can make decisions without interference from parliament or the courts (“authoritarian leader”) and a system in which the military rules the country (“military rule”).”

I sh*t you not: the support for at least one of these government models ranges from 85% in India to 8% in Sweden. In this MAGA nation, thirty-two percent of those surveyed stated that governance by a strong leader or the military would be an excellent approach.

Reflecting on the past three months, I must consider what I can accept. We had our chance to elect a bi-cultural, bi-racial woman whose only real experience is as a prosecutor, United States Senator, and Vice President, capable of speaking in complete sentences that are logically structured and, let’s admit it, does not require an explainer in technical language.

But was it inflation, that damn invasion at the southern border, her support for Trans people, or worse, that she was a bi-cultural, bi-racial woman? There’s no way it was the last one. I mean, this is the United States of America, where we claim to be colorblind, or is it that we’re just blind?

Instead, we are confronted by a cheater, liar, bully, manipulator, heartless, fear-mongering, anxiety-inducing, narcissistic, selfish, self-centered, hateful human being who professed from day one that he would become a dictator.

I’m not fearing and loathing. I mean, what are the odds that one day, ICE agents are going to show up at my front door and ask me questions about being the Bronx-born son of a Puerto Rican father (an American citizen by birth) and a Dominican mother who became a citizen? There is no chance that I or people who resemble my relatives or siblings, all of whom were born U.S. citizens, will be rounded up, right?

No, I believe he and his MAGA supporters understand what they are doing.

P.S. You see how easy it is. All you must do is shut your heart and mind and fall silent.