Can we save democracy in the United States?
I grew up in Taiwan and Argentina. Here’s what I know about authoritarianism.
(Century illustration)
Editor's note: A Spanish translation of this article is available here.
My father was born in a Japanese colony that ceased to exist by his fourth birthday. My mother was born on an island that was surrendered to a neighboring authoritarian state by its colonizers. I was born in a country under martial law. All of us were born in Taiwan.
We are embodied survivors of authoritarianism. We know what it’s like to live under totalitarian rule. We remember the fear of saying what you really believe. We know what it’s like to be paranoid that our neighbors might snitch on us. We have seen how a mistake could destroy our reputations or our lives. We know what it felt like to live in a homeland that didn’t feel like home. So we became Americans: we are Americans today because of what happened in our homeland.
