I previously wrote about why authoritarians gain support, but taking control of the most powerful nation on the planet is another matter entirely.
This election result is a gut punch to the values so many of us immigrants believed were foundational to America. My wife and I came here, leaving behind every friend and family member we had, and built a life through sheer grit and perseverance. We sacrificed, took on mountains of student debt, graduated from top schools, and built companies that employed countless American citizens. We’ve emulated the conservative ethos of “pulling ourselves up by our bootstraps”, yet are now told we’re told we’re “poisoning the blood of America” — not because of our contributions, but because of how we look and how we worship.
Too many people I know voted for their own personal interests and turned a blind eye to what they were truly enabling. The core of the MAGA movement is, and always has been, hate: racism, xenophobia, misogyny, homophobia, and cruelty. Yes, there are certainly some valid policy differences, but to support MAGA for personal gains is to willfully ignore, condone, or enable the hate that fuels it.
This isn’t just uncomfortable rhetoric; for families like mine, it’s a lived reality. Since the results, we’ve faced racist text messages and public harassment from groups spewing MAGA rhetoric with the aim of intimidating us — loudly to ensure my wife and two young children could hear every vile word. When we travel, my family is routinely pulled aside and questioned about our immigration status. Our boarding passes are regularly marked with “SSSS,” ensuring additional TSA screenings, and we’re too often sent to secondary CBP screenings upon entry. My multiple degrees reside in my carry-on luggage — not in frames on my wall — so I can present them to an immigration officer when questioned.
Most of you can’t imagine what I’m talking about, so it's easy to brush these episodes off as being “too sensitive.” While that may assuage your cognitive dissonance, failing to acknowledge & accept this reality is precisely the problem; tolerating it allows hate to insidiously proliferate everywhere.
And my family’s history knows this all too well. Just a few generations ago, my ancestors were shipped by boat to Caribbean sugar plantations as indentured laborers by the British. My grandparents’ Hindu marriages were not recognized by the colonial governments, so my grandmother defiantly tattooed her forearm to signify hers; however, that couldn’t stop my parents from having the word “illegitimate” emblazoned on their birth certificates. After they emigrated to Canada, I grew up as one of very few minorities in a white, working-class town in the ’70s and ’80s. Despite trying to follow every cliché like “being so good they couldn’t ignore us,” we were still constantly insulted, dismissed, and discriminated against. But we persisted in the hopes my children wouldn’t have to constantly prove they belonged.
So, I feel deep betrayal when fellow minorities like Vivek Ramaswamy, Nikki Haley, Usha Vance, and Kash Patel became spineless sycophants and turn a blind eye while colleagues, like Josh Hawley, espouse “Christian Nationalism”. You’d expect they would be the first to recognize and condemn it. Instead, they desperately ingratiate themselves into the power structure to mask their own insecurity and self-loathing. The real hypocrisy is theirs: to benefit from the struggles of those who paved the way for them, while perpetuating the cycle of discrimination against their own. And for what? MAGA views them as nothing more than puppets & props…and deep down, they know it too.
So while many made “business decisions” for tax policy, crypto regulation, or their pet issue, they’re tacitly fueling a movement built on child separation, rampant corruption, normalized disinformation, weaponized incompetence, politicization of the military, environmental destruction, outright cruelty, and of course gross government overreach into women’s healthcare. When my wife needed emergency surgery for an ectopic pregnancy, I was thankful she could rely on Harvard-educated medical professionals and not the whims of Ted fucking Cruz.
But for many, it seems that accumulating wealth & power usurps dignity & humanity — while demonstrating complete indifference as to whether folks like me exist without fear in the country we’ve worked so hard to call home. I don’t want to hate, but I feel hated. I want a future where my children feel they belong without facing the resentments and barriers I did. Instead of carrying the skepticism and mistrust I’ve been programmed with, I want to instill their hearts with kindness, compassion, and empathy. I want them to be courageous to do what’s right over what’s expedient. This isn’t about politics — it’s about our core values as parents, as friends, as neighbors, and as a society.
The ugly truth is that for too many Americans it’s easier to look away and enjoy their spoils, rather than confront the uncomfortable truth that they are the ones helping this hateful movement to grow and metastasize.
But, we can’t give up the hope & struggle to ensure that conscience and decency prevail in the long run.
