Dear America,  

How are you doing, buddy? Word on the street is that you’ve been having a tough couple of months. Understandable. Happens to the best of us. You wake up one day and suddenly find that the brave and noble country you thought you were living in existed only in your head. Instead, you find that you’re living in a country where millions of voters had no compunction in electing a know-nothing, racist megalomaniac who boasts about sexually assaulting women.  

Well, we don’t want to add to your woes, but we have a bone to pick with you. Here’s the thing, old pal. Electing a narcissistic tyrant with low self-esteem who does permanent damage to the country’s democratic institutions is kind of our thing. And you stole it from us.  

Look, here dude, there are two things that we know how to do really well. The first one is making movies with elaborate song sequences that serve no purpose to the story. The second is adjusting to life under a tyrant. We have no choice because we seem to have so many of them! In our country, conventional wisdom considers undemocratic behaviour a good thing. Every patriarch of a large family, every corporate manager, every person with even a slightest amount of power wants to wield it like a tyrant. 

In fact, one the most popular political fantasies of a large percentage of our voters is the one involving a benevolent dictator who fixes all the problems prevalent in the country without them having to do anything. In this fantasy, the benevolent dictator also voluntarily gives up power after the couple of years it takes him to fix problems that have existed for centuries. We relentlessly believe that even though for us to even begin solving all the the problems that plague the nation, we require sustained civic engagement from a majority of our citizens. 

It’s Deja Vu All Over Again

So that is why we’re angry. All this time, we were preparing ourselves to be a global superpower by learning your tips and tricks, so that one day when you’re all spent, we could Anna Nicole Smith you and usurp all your power. Not only are we not ready for such an responsibility right now, we had no idea that all this time you were trying to re-live your youth by trying to turn into us.  

And you’re still doing it. From bypassing the legislature to amend laws, instating a discriminatory refugee policy, to anonymous twitter accounts that promise to bring you the “inside scoop,” the news emanating from your country gives us Post Traumatic Stress Disorder. In fact, we should be creeped out at your brazen plagiarism, but years of watching Bollywood movies which glorify psychopathic behaviour has brainwashed us into being a little flattered.  

However, we’ll put all that aside for now because we realize that you’re a little rusty with this democracy thing and are still coming to terms with what you’ve gotten yourself into. So out of the goodness of our heart, we’re going to help you learn how to cope with living under a tyrant.  

The first thing you will hear after the election of a tyrant is people clamouring to “give him a chance.” Yeah, some of the people who – before and during the election – were calling this person an existential threat to the social fabric of the country will suddenly do a complete 180-degree turn and ask you to support him. They pretend that power will actually calm down a megalomaniac and turn him into a gracious and competent person, contrary to everything else he’s done all his life.  

When people show you who they are, believe it. Gaining power doesn’t change or temper a person. Power tends to exacerbate all their shortcomings. So don’t subscribe to the magical thinking that anything short of sustained mental therapy will help a tyrant overcome their personal demons.  

Don’t expect the corporate media to stand up to him. They’re always the first to fall. They will crawl even when they haven’t been asked to bend. Those people whose position depends on their proximity to power will gladly carry the leader’s water for a few measly moments of his time. 

One of the silver linings is that you’re going to have people bare their teeth and show who they really are. You’ll be surprised at how easily people will give up the public persona they’ve spent decades building up just for a few crumbs of fame or government largesse.  

When you start protesting the tyrant’s actions, he and his supporters-both old and new-will try to delegitimise your actions by questioning your motives. To you, you’re a person exercising your democratic rights enshrined in the constitution. To them, you’re a person who opposes them. And their low self-esteem cannot stand that. 

So first they’re going to try to tar you as frustrated. “Get over it, he won the election!” his supporters will yell.  As if winning a single election means that they won every political argument forever. Then they’re going to ascribe shady motives to your protest, accusing you of being in cahoots with whatever liberal boogeyman keeps them up at night. Then, they’re going to deny you agency over your own thought process by accusing you of being duped into participating in a global conspiracy intent on harming your country.  

Where Were You When We Were Getting High

Whenever you raise an issue, they will try to confuse you and deny your question any validity by using false equivalence or whataboutery in reply. And they will not limit themselves to reality. Real life tragedies are not enough for them. They will create new tragedies to be angry over, events that are either blown out of proportion or did not happen at all.  

The tyrant’s supporters aren’t going to listen to you. They do not share the same reality as you. They’re not merely political supporters, they’re members of a personality cult. Over the years, they’ve been convinced that everything from the news to historical fact is a false narrative, and their entire objective reality is a lie. While you think you’re living in a melting pot of various cultures, they live in a world where their way of life is under siege. They consider even the slightest depletion of their entrenched orthodoxy to be a cataclysmic event of epic proportions. They believe that not being able to oppress other people as much as they used to is discrimination.  

Don’t let them gaslight you into becoming a bonafide member of the “both sides do it” club. Every event is different and requires its own distinct response. Just because you weren’t available to say something when the Neanderthals were attacking other humanoids, doesn’t mean you can’t say anything about whatever is happening right now. And remember, some things are not up for debate. Like equal rights for women. Or LGBT rights. Or the right of people to follow whatever religion they want. Or not follow one at all! There is no “on the other hand” for the right of people to be more than the label society wants to put on them. To be able to eat what they want. You don’t have to “explain” these things to people who refuse to acknowledge their right to exist. Those who want to take away other people’s rights should not get an equal footing with those whose rights are being taken away.  

When all else fails, the tyrant and his minions are going to try silence you by trying to label your dissent as the musings of a traitor. Before the election of the dear leader, criticizing the government was a duty. Now, suddenly, when he is in power, it becomes a verbal assault on the motherland. The thing is that the tyrant and his minions don’t actually care about the country or it’s symbols or even the constitution. They just want to use it as a cudgel to berate people who don’t agree with them.  

Some of these things may or may not happen to you but there is one thing for certain. Things will never be like they were before. The world around you has changed. The rupture between your citizens is not going away. The normalizing of hateful rhetoric is not going away. The damage done to your democratic institutions is not going away. You cannot tell yourself comfortable stories about how your democratic institutions were robust enough to withstand the assault of a megalomaniac. Even the most robust of democracies take a hit. Don’t comfort yourself. Face the bleakness confronting you. Don’t try to console your fears away.  

To paraphrase Mahatma Gandhi, first they ignore you. Then they laugh at you. Then they fight you. Then you go back to square one.  

So that’s your life now. Please don’t take it out on us by being mean with Green Cards.

Love and platonic hugs.

The author can be contacted on Twitter @over_rated