This essay was originally published on October 11, 2024, one month before the election that returned Donald J. Trump to power. Thanks, America.

“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, what turned out to be her last public interview.”

We are doomed.

We, as in, we, the residents of the United States of America. This is certain according to the messages being passed back and forth in the right-wing echo chamber.

I’m beginning to understand the hysteria.

To finally acknowledge that all this time, I was ignoring the reality in front of me.

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 (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. Such whiners), and a longer lists of Venezuelan, Haitian, and people who are not from Europe who pose a constitutional threat to the good old American way of life- these people and whoever else we can identify are the enemies we should fear, agonize over, fear, shower ourselves in anxiety because if we don’t pay attention, this country, our country, will no longer be the country we all love.

I must admit that there is another form of anxiety that grips me with fear now and then. This has to do with relatives I have on the Puerto Rican and Dominican side who are also believers in the truth that the real problem we have is attributable to, you know, those other people, not us.

We were born here, or we’ve become resident aliens, or we have adopted this country as ours and have taken a citizenship test attesting to our Americanness.

Now and then, I get this crazy idea in my head that since 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 might not be so quick to accept us as fellow travelers on the road to the White House.

I mean, I read that we are welcome as such during this magnificent campaign for the hearts and minds of anyone, any breathing, mentally stable (we can argue that point later) human being who is willing to sacrifice honor, truth, self-respect, intellectual curiosity, a willingness to suspend reality in favor of whatever theory of life and conspiracies come to mind, no matter that it was found in a sewer or the eye of a hurricane or in a Fox News television studio, well, I’m sure it will validate me as a fellow MAGA cultist and no one will care what my ethnicity or race or heritage or class or religion or lack of it or cultural DNA as long as I support the election of a man whose track record of accomplishments is foggy and unclear as to why anyone would vote for him if we were to measure his first presidential term objectively, his 2016, 2020, and 2024 campaigns, his willingness to threaten anyone and everyone, to distort, lie, cloud, besmirch, call out women and men who may just have a simple policy disagreement or just believe based on eyewitness accounts of his past behavior going back forty-fifty years that he may not be qualified to be the President of the United States of America ever again.

I mean I could be wrong and I will have to trust that some forty, forty-five percent of American voters can’t be entirely wrong.

As I stated earlier, maybe I’ve been the wrong one all this time.

What a naive fool I’ve been.

I thought the answer was freedom to be who you wanted to be, that undemocratic left- or right-wing governments were not a good thing, and that we should all advocate for an open, transparent society where our minds are open to truths and facts; where we are willing to use peaceful means to effect change in a nation that respects our fellow Americans.

But I’ve recently learned that I am the odd person out on this perspective.

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: those that support at least one of these models of government range from 85% in India to 8% in Sweden.

In this MAGA nation, 32% of those surveyed said that rule by a strong leader or the military would be an excellent way to govern. Listening to Trump rallies and seeing how many people attend and how the mainstream media keeps shoveling our faces into them, that figure seems low.

I think it’s much higher (evidence? I don’t need any stinkin’ evidence).

So, my choices in 2024 were: a bi-cultural, bi-racial woman whose only real experience is as a prosecutor, United States Senator, Vice-President and able to speak in complete sentences that are logically deductive and let’s admit, doesn’t need an explainer in crypto languages, OR the cheater, liar, basher, manipulator, heartless, fear-mongering, anxious-producing, narcissistic, selfish, self-centered, hateful human being who professes that on day one he will become a dictator and deport all those illegal immigrants because he knows for sure who those people are.

There is no chance that I or people who look like my relatives or me, including my Puerto Rican half, who are born U.S. citizens, will not be included in that deportation.

Well, America made its choice, and we all have to live with it.

For now.

Thanks, America.