I lived in the United States between 2007 and 2018. Like so many young people around the world, I left home, Reus, at nineteen, in search of opportunities while the crisis shook Catalonia and Spain. In the US, I earned my undergraduate degree and doctorate. I also worked in various places, many of them related to my career as a musician, composer, and producer. I met my wife there. I grew personally and professionally, and therefore I will always maintain an emotional connection.
That's why it pains me to see where this country is headed. Harvard's recent ban on admitting international students, mass deportations, blind support for Israel, public attacks on judges, cuts in research, and the dominance of an ultra-conservative Supreme Court are clear signs of a sinking democracy. And yet, Donald Trump still enjoys majority support. Academics such as Timothy Snyder, Marci Shore, and Jason Stanley are already openly speaking about the fascist nature of this administration. Thinkers on the American left, such as Noam Chomsky and Norman Finkelstein, had already sounded their warning years ago. "American exceptionalism" has lost all meaning: fascism has arrived in the United States.
When Trump won the 2016 election, I remember the fear and uncertainty that many of us who were there felt. The morning after election night, a classmate hugged me and burst into tears upon arriving at school. Unfortunately, her reaction was not typical. Friends and acquaintances, for the most part, expressed their concern, but their tendency was to believe in what Americans callchecks and balances: the power of the separation of powers to prevent the growth of authoritarianism. It makes sense to believe in this aspect in the context of a strong democracy, but when the judiciary, especially through the Supreme Court, is formed by an ultra-conservative majority, perhaps I should be more skeptical.
In my case, I had two personal experiences—in the midst of the Trump administration—that had a significant impact on my view of the situation. The first: I lost a job offer as a teacher at a prestigious music school so that minegreen card(My residence and work permit) arrived much later than expected, probably due to Trump's anti-immigration policies. The second: one night on the subway, ICE (immigration) agents arbitrarily requested documentation from some users. That day I was still waiting for my residence card, so I had no documentation. I didn't want to enter the subway that night. I was truly afraid.
We should learn lessons from this process of democratic degradation in the US. At least four. The first: when repeated Democratic Party governments fail to provide bold solutions to serious structural problems (housing, poverty and social exclusion, student debt, etc.), this becomes an opportunity for the far right. The second: when the social fabric is weak, where society is highly fragmented, this becomes another opportunity for the far right. The third: when the educational level is low and education is understood from an exclusively commercial perspective, this is also another opportunity for the far right. The fourth: when information through the media becomesinfotainment(news in the form of entertainment) rather than emerging from critical journalism, as in the case of Fox News, this presents another opportunity for the far right. Trump governs thanks to these and other opportunities.
My partner and I returned to Catalonia at the end of 2018, but we began to make the decision much earlier, when we saw the country's social trends. Now we live here, and I can't stop thinking about how important it is to defend our rights and freedoms every day, and to value all the aspects of our society that strengthen it: our public education, our public healthcare, our social fabric. We need to demand that our governments make brave decisions, not only to improve our lives, but also to protect us from the far right. This is surely the greatest lesson we can learn from the mistakes of American society.
