Monday, July 29, 2019

Real Americans, and real Indians

A few days, in responding to the fascist's atrocious "go back" tweet and more, I shared with the world my own experiences with that kind of a response from a largely anonymous public, with the exception of one woman who sent me a typewritten two-page letter.

To which, an old classmate, who was also a lifer like me in that wonderful school we attended in that magical industrial town, responded with his usual sarcastic humor:
We brown people, who cherish the freedom to express ourselves, are increasingly considered to be "fake" citizens of our countries!

In the old country, the fascist is on an overdrive to make India a Hindu nation.
The rot may have set in decades ago, but it has taken Modi only five years to dismantle the idea of India as democratic and secular.
As if that were not enough, "Modi’s latest assault is on truth itself."

A few weeks prior to the elections, I had an emailed another classmate, who, is Muslim.  In that lengthy email, I wrote this: "I hope you are not feeling jolted, threatened, and anxious, in this current socio-political climate in which loud Hindu nationalist voices yell against Muslims."  It has been months now, and no reply!

And here in my adopted country, the ship of democracy "may be about to hit the iceberg."  But, we browns, in particular, aren't anywhere close to abandoning the ship even though the fascist and his toadies want to toss us overboard:
This land is your land, this land is our land, it belongs to you and me. We’re here, we’re not going back, we’re raising our kids here. It’s our country now…. We’re not letting the bastards take it back.
It’s our America now. 
It is my America, too!

It is clear that we liberals, long been caricatured as wimps, need to fight this good fight.
[You] can’t fight performatively when the other side is fighting to win: that kind of fight simply won’t go on for very long. You have no option but to fight to win, too. You want to win because you are right and they are wrong; because you have a moral right to power and they don’t; because you are real Americans and they’re not.
To which I will add this: When they go low, do not go high.  Instead, kick them even harder!
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