So, I ask all of you: how do we endure the next four years of this Dark Time?
I’m sitting in front of my computer, staring at the blank screen.
What do I want to say? Who is going to read it?
But guess what! I’m free to write whatever I want (yet).
All I have to do is write my own truth.
We live between the pages where ink spills truths the heart cannot speak, yet the soul understands.
On January 6, 2021, I was still working on my memoir, Camel from Kyzylkum. I was horrified by what I saw unfolding on my TV screen. Thousands of Donald Trump supporters were storming the U.S. Capitol, attempting to stop the Senate from certifying the election results.
Here what I wrote then:
************************************
FROM JANUARY 2017 TO January 2021, I was terrified to watch the onset of Trump’s tyranny in our country. I saw such familiar signs—I experienced all of them in the Soviet Union! I ran for a better life from the country where I was born. The Soviet Union controlled its citizens with a regime of tyranny. This regime sustained itself in political power by controlling mass media that was disseminating propaganda, by the secret police, by restrictions of free speech and criticism, by mass surveillance and political purges, by the persecution of specific groups of people. The Constitution in the United States was designed to prevent tyranny through a system of checks and balances. We might be tempted to think that our democratic heritage automatically protects us, but in President Trump’s America, those safeguards were failing. Trump held the grandiose belief that only he should rule America. Unchecked by cowed or complicit Republicans in Congress, Trump invoked executive authority to alter policies that were long-established by law and practices. Trump is the only president in the United States who was impeached twice. He came to our lives with a scandal and indecency and he is exiting from our lives with a scandal and indecency.
I’m so relieved that during the election of 2020, democracy prevailed. But we all witnessed how fragile our democracy is. Even though the horrible Trump presidency is over and Joe Biden won the election of 2020, Trump keeps spreading the lie and pretending that the election was stolen from him.
The January 6, 2021 attack on the U.S. Capitol is one of the most unforgettable events in American history and in my life. The Capitol building was last breached when British forces invaded during the War of 1812. Two hundred and nine years later, a mob of insurrectionists attacked the building at the behest of none other than the sitting, but on-the-way-out, U.S. President Donald Trump. Videos from the scene show Capitol police at worst unprepared and at best overwhelmed by the sheer size of the crowd. I watched on TV in disbelief how easily the rioters were able to enter the Capitol building. Trump supporters invaded the Capitol from multiple points—videos and images show the rioters scaling walls, smashing windows, and breaking down doors to get into and advance through the building. Many lawmakers, including Nancy Pelosi and Mike Pence, were evacuated to safe locations.
Just recently, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi created a select special committee to investigate the attack on the U.S. Capitol on January 6, while most GOP members opposed the creation of the committee.
I’m still worried and wondering what is going to happen during elections in 2022 and 2024 and in what direction this country will be heading?
************************************
Today is November 2024.
I’m stressed and depressed, struggling to process my emotions in the wake of the 2024 Presidential election results. Each day, news about Trump’s cabinet and high-level government appointments fills me with dread. Every morning, I find myself asking:
How did we get here? What kind of country have we become? What’s going to happen to us? How can I live a normal life for the next four years?
My fear is overwhelming because I’ve experienced this kind of darkness before—the same deep shadow that now looms over our country. I know its taste and feel all too well. I fled from this darkness 35 years ago, seeking a brighter, better life. And now, here I am, watching the dismantling of American norms and democratic institutions unfold before my eyes. The system of checks and balances seems powerless to stop the terrible transformation our country is undergoing.
I don’t think those who elected Trump fully understand where he will take all of us.
The dramatic changes in our country will ripple across the entire world.
I can’t help but think about Ukraine, the country where I was born. Russia’s invasion of Ukraine has caused the deadliest war on European soil in more than 70 years. What was supposed to be a three-day war has now dragged on for nearly three years. The suffering of innocent people is unimaginable.
Since the war began, I’ve lost contact with my childhood friend in Ukraine. I have no idea where she and her family are now—or even if they are still alive.
Trump claims he will end the war quickly, but I can’t shake my fears about Ukraine’s future over the next four years.
And then there’s the promise of mass deportations of immigrants on Trump’s first day in office.
Between 1937 and 1949, Joseph Stalin forcibly deported more than two million people of 13 different nationalities from their homelands to remote areas of the USSR. This mass removal of ethnically defined populations, now recognized as “ethnic cleansing,” involved inconceivable suffering. People were transported in cattle cars and trucks, with those too ill to move often killed on the spot. Many others perished during the journey to destinations like Kazakhstan and Siberia.
Is America going to repeat this history?
I’m a liberal. To be a liberal is to believe that everybody has the right to freedom and that all people are created equal and deserve to live their life with dignity, regardless of their identity.
It’s this belief that drove me to escape the Soviet Union and start my life from scratch in the United States.
I never imagined that the same Dark Time I once lived through in the Soviet Union could come to this country as well. And now, I’m too old to start over in another place.
So, I ask all of you: how do we endure the next four years of this Dark Time?
What do I want to say? Who is going to read it?
But guess what! I’m free to write whatever I want (yet).
All I have to do is write my own truth.
We live between the pages where ink spills truths the heart cannot speak, yet the soul understands.
On January 6, 2021, I was still working on my memoir, Camel from Kyzylkum. I was horrified by what I saw unfolding on my TV screen. Thousands of Donald Trump supporters were storming the U.S. Capitol, attempting to stop the Senate from certifying the election results.
Here what I wrote then:
************************************
FROM JANUARY 2017 TO January 2021, I was terrified to watch the onset of Trump’s tyranny in our country. I saw such familiar signs—I experienced all of them in the Soviet Union! I ran for a better life from the country where I was born. The Soviet Union controlled its citizens with a regime of tyranny. This regime sustained itself in political power by controlling mass media that was disseminating propaganda, by the secret police, by restrictions of free speech and criticism, by mass surveillance and political purges, by the persecution of specific groups of people. The Constitution in the United States was designed to prevent tyranny through a system of checks and balances. We might be tempted to think that our democratic heritage automatically protects us, but in President Trump’s America, those safeguards were failing. Trump held the grandiose belief that only he should rule America. Unchecked by cowed or complicit Republicans in Congress, Trump invoked executive authority to alter policies that were long-established by law and practices. Trump is the only president in the United States who was impeached twice. He came to our lives with a scandal and indecency and he is exiting from our lives with a scandal and indecency.
I’m so relieved that during the election of 2020, democracy prevailed. But we all witnessed how fragile our democracy is. Even though the horrible Trump presidency is over and Joe Biden won the election of 2020, Trump keeps spreading the lie and pretending that the election was stolen from him.
The January 6, 2021 attack on the U.S. Capitol is one of the most unforgettable events in American history and in my life. The Capitol building was last breached when British forces invaded during the War of 1812. Two hundred and nine years later, a mob of insurrectionists attacked the building at the behest of none other than the sitting, but on-the-way-out, U.S. President Donald Trump. Videos from the scene show Capitol police at worst unprepared and at best overwhelmed by the sheer size of the crowd. I watched on TV in disbelief how easily the rioters were able to enter the Capitol building. Trump supporters invaded the Capitol from multiple points—videos and images show the rioters scaling walls, smashing windows, and breaking down doors to get into and advance through the building. Many lawmakers, including Nancy Pelosi and Mike Pence, were evacuated to safe locations.
Just recently, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi created a select special committee to investigate the attack on the U.S. Capitol on January 6, while most GOP members opposed the creation of the committee.
I’m still worried and wondering what is going to happen during elections in 2022 and 2024 and in what direction this country will be heading?
************************************
Today is November 2024.
I’m stressed and depressed, struggling to process my emotions in the wake of the 2024 Presidential election results. Each day, news about Trump’s cabinet and high-level government appointments fills me with dread. Every morning, I find myself asking:
How did we get here? What kind of country have we become? What’s going to happen to us? How can I live a normal life for the next four years?
My fear is overwhelming because I’ve experienced this kind of darkness before—the same deep shadow that now looms over our country. I know its taste and feel all too well. I fled from this darkness 35 years ago, seeking a brighter, better life. And now, here I am, watching the dismantling of American norms and democratic institutions unfold before my eyes. The system of checks and balances seems powerless to stop the terrible transformation our country is undergoing.
I don’t think those who elected Trump fully understand where he will take all of us.
The dramatic changes in our country will ripple across the entire world.
I can’t help but think about Ukraine, the country where I was born. Russia’s invasion of Ukraine has caused the deadliest war on European soil in more than 70 years. What was supposed to be a three-day war has now dragged on for nearly three years. The suffering of innocent people is unimaginable.
Since the war began, I’ve lost contact with my childhood friend in Ukraine. I have no idea where she and her family are now—or even if they are still alive.
Trump claims he will end the war quickly, but I can’t shake my fears about Ukraine’s future over the next four years.
And then there’s the promise of mass deportations of immigrants on Trump’s first day in office.
Between 1937 and 1949, Joseph Stalin forcibly deported more than two million people of 13 different nationalities from their homelands to remote areas of the USSR. This mass removal of ethnically defined populations, now recognized as “ethnic cleansing,” involved inconceivable suffering. People were transported in cattle cars and trucks, with those too ill to move often killed on the spot. Many others perished during the journey to destinations like Kazakhstan and Siberia.
Is America going to repeat this history?
I’m a liberal. To be a liberal is to believe that everybody has the right to freedom and that all people are created equal and deserve to live their life with dignity, regardless of their identity.
It’s this belief that drove me to escape the Soviet Union and start my life from scratch in the United States.
I never imagined that the same Dark Time I once lived through in the Soviet Union could come to this country as well. And now, I’m too old to start over in another place.
So, I ask all of you: how do we endure the next four years of this Dark Time?
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