When fear is more than a feeling.

Returning to the blog to rant politic seems out of character even to me but as we grow, our priorities shift, and for the second time in my life I find myself being directly affected by who gets to run a country. 

The first time was in 2012/13, during the tumultuous and contentious elections in Pakistan which were defined by the hate speech and fear mongering generated by a certain narcissist with ambitions that far outweighed his political ability. I voted for decorum and stability then, and whether through rigging or general consensus, the country of my birth managed to make the same choice and have reaped the rewards over the past 3 odd years. For me, that was democracy at work and no matter how vociferously and passionately PTI supporters condemn the elected premier of the country, the proof in the pudding and the pudding is better than ever before despite all the theatrics and the repeated threats of umpires and raised fingers. 

Therefore, the irony of a very similar campaign unfolding in America was not lost on me when another narcissist, albeit a significantly worse one, brought rhetoric filled with hate and anger and fear mongering to the forefront of the campaign season. The media did not help. Plastering Trumps face on our TV screens like a watermark did not help demonize him, instead it glorified him as a rebel rousing gun slinger with the cojones to take on the sheriff.  

The Republicans in their desperation to regain the Oval office, failed to foresee the impact of such caustic vitriol on their own party and their traditional voter bank. The Democrats failed to see that in their desperation to change America into the Liberal paradise it was, in their opinion, always meant to be, moved so fast that a significant portion of the country got left behind, including many of their own supporters who had voted for progress but not such rapid social reform. 

Having experienced America during the W era, I know firsthand how things had improved under Obama’s subtle, friendly and fatherly leadership. We all also saw how the disenfranchised holdouts of the segregation era felt threatened enough to take up arms against the ones who stood to benefit most from the sweeping social reforms the Dems had planned. BLM was not an overreaction; it’s the least the African American population can do to feel like they have a fall back in their country where a random traffic stop can lead to death. The terrorist attacks, although few and far between, didn’t help the Muslim American cause and paved the way from Trump’s toxicity to seep into the national psyche. It really is asking a lot from people to continue to love the people of a religion whose members have repeatedly targeted innocent people for no apparent reason. Arguments regarding white folk going off their rocker to randomly shoot people up notwithstanding, Muslims may be tolerated but are still considered outsiders and this mindset is precisely what the Dems had been slowly chipping away at. 

I am a Pakistani who has lived extensively in America, and by lived I mean earned my living there lived, paid taxes and called America home lived, not just went there on vacation every summer lived or went to school for a couple of years lived. I have also simultaneously lived in Pakistan in the same deep rooted way. I am probably not the only one with this perspective, but I do feel it’s somewhat unique all the same to experience the shifting sands in two countries that could not be more different during key periods of change. I was in America when the twin towers were ruthlessly attacked and experienced fear and anxiety rip the geniality right out of the American populace. I was there to see it reborn and grow, slowly but surely, as almost the entire political establishment erased bi-partisan battle lines to jointly decide that tolerance and acceptance are two principles that must not be allowed to die for America to be what it was meant to be. 

And then Trump happened. 

What this means for America is anybody’s guess at this point. People can speculate all they want, but no one who doesn’t actually lives in America as a minority can ever fully understand the despair this uncertainty causes. We had been fighting hard for our right to exist in a country that we saw was struggling with its identity, but under the leadership of a decent human being was predominantly decent. We only had to fight because the racist, sexist, isolationist underbelly of America had been marginalized to the point where it was threatened enough to lash out and fight back. We saw this as the death throes of a school of thought that had no place in a global community and was dying its natural death. 

But now, that ugly underbelly stands validated. 

The POTUS-elect came in to power by stoking this dying fire of hatred to a roaring flame. The impact of this has already been spreading in America in the form of random racist attacks that have gone up in frequency since Trump got the GOP nomination and now they will get worse because the perpetrators will know that the most powerful man in the country is one of them. He has legitimized the worst behavior imaginable in a civilized society; he even prodded his followers to shoot his political rival dead soon after impersonating a disabled person in the most shameful way imaginable at a press conference. He has routinely molested women because he felt entitled to do so and could not even be bothered to apologize for it when caught red handed. Having such a person as a successful businessman is bad enough, but to have him is a President is a reality so frightening that it is difficult to encompass the fear and agony of it into words. 

Most people in Pakistan don’t get it. They can’t. I don’t blame them. They don’t know what it’s like to be a minority in a country which wants to accept you wholeheartedly but stops just shy because of a legacy that it’s trying very hard to shed. They don’t get it because they don’t have an immigrant population which is as diverse, as voluminous and as entrenched in the very roots of a nation as the one in America. I don’t blame the people of Pakistan, or for anywhere else when they think it’s just embarrassing and hilarious that the ‘goras’ are dumb enough or ignorant or belligerent or whatever enough to elect someone like Trump. They don’t know, nor can they comprehend, the implication of such an election on the minorities, on women, on foreign policy on the day to day lives of people who call America home and will now be told every day, on the sub way, at the grocery store, at their jobs that their time is up, that the white supremacists are back in power bitches and its game over for everyone else. They do not bear the scars of random, seemingly harmless acts of racism that will grow bolder, more frequent and more violent now because the head of the state does it too. I don’t expect them to understand the fear and the apprehension I feel as I pack my bags to fly back to my home in America in two days. I don’t expect them to empathize with the anxiety this palpable uncertainty is causing across the very fabric of the American landscape. I will find that empathy in America alone and for all anyone knows, not even there, for long, anymore.