Dear Theresa: Don't Be A Trump!

Dear Theresa May,

I am not a British person, despite one of my grandparents being from London. I was born and raised in the US — and I have a decently thick New Jersey-New York accent to prove it.

I grew up in a country you're familiar with. Like others, I grew up thinking America was a great place to be. My town was one that was pretty united, if not a bit tense due to the creepy suburban attitudes we have about social status.

Over the years, more immigrants moved to my country. Contrary to the way the news may portray them in the US, not all immigrants are bad. However, much like in the UK, a fear of the unknown has caused immigrants to become stigmatized and hated by many.

It was this hatred and fear of people different to ones' own that brought you, and the US President, Donald Trump, into office. Now, I understand that there is a political reason why you would want to drum up fear into your population.

Fear makes people act against their own interest, and also makes them fervently support anyone who will promise to take that boogeyman away. I know this because it's happened in my country in 2016, and in Germany in the 1930s.

Much like Trump, you also turned coat on your promise to support the LGBTQ community. Incidentally, this also was something that happened in the 1930s in a number of countries that Britain had fought against during WWII.

I'm drawing a lot of connections between now and the beginnings of World War II for a reason.

World War II was sparked because the wrong people were in power, and they used the worst possible means to get the power they had. Millions of innocent men, women, and children died at the hands of hate.

The crime they committed? Existing, and having the wrong eye color, skin color, or lifestyle choice. Entire countries were divided, destabilized, and taken over by people who are now considered synonymous with the word "monster."

It took decades for Germany to recover economically, and it never fully recovered from its acts in World War II. Even today, Germany has a bad reputation for nationalism, despite being one of the most progressive countries in the EU.

I don't even want to go into the aftermath of what happened to families after the war. Families who had found out what their relatives did during the war were horrified, ashamed, and many ultimately cut contact with the war criminals among them. In some cases, entire families committed suicide after the shame they felt.

Theresa, you do not want the legacy that comes with this kind of power grab. You do not want to see the effects of your country slowly unraveling, shattering itself into a ghost of what it was. You do not want to see the heartwrenching pain that would come with people explaining why "they can't see daddy because he was a bad person" to their children.

Theresa, my country is not the same as it once was — and it's not a country that anyone would want to lead right now.

Theresa, the fear you have inspired in your people is poisoning them. I know this because I'm seeing the effects that Trump has been having on my own people.

Ever since the election, people have become a lot colder to one another. People like myself, a white person whose mixed race child is adopted out to a gay interracial couple, see Trump stickers on a person's car and wonder if the person inside would vote to destroy our families.

People like myself, a transperson, wonder if we will get arrested for using the wrong bathroom, or if we'll lose our jobs if we come out of the closet due to a law that our own neighbors passed. We are scared, and many of us no longer feel comfortable talking to family members or friends because of their political beliefs.

People who vote Trump see people like the father of my child, and wonder if he's a cold-blooded killer. They wonder if they should hold their purses closer when they sit next to people like my fiance. They call my friends "turban heads," and "wetbacks," and tell them to leave the country they were born in.

Theresa, this is not what America used to be.

We used to be united. We used to be accepting. We all innately understood that our fellow neighbors were our friends — the people who we could trust. Theresa, we used to have real communities that weren't divided among political lines...and that's dying right now.

And it hurts.

I feel like I'm watching my country on its deathbed as its succumbing to the cancer of hate being spread by fear-mongering politicians pushing a racist, homophobic, and transphobic agenda. It feels as if my home is being ripped away from me, and I don't even know where I could go.

There is a difference between you and Donald Trump — or so I hope.

Trump is a man who has made it clear that he's not competent in office, and that he doesn't care about the damage that he's doing to his country. He doesn't care how he got elected, even if it meant colluding with Russian mobsters to do so. He's a loose cannon, and he will most likely cause us to go to war.

Theresa, you seem like you know what you're doing — and I honestly get the feeling that you legitimately want the best for Britain. I ask you, no, I implore you, do not continue down the path that you're on.

Do not turn your country into Trump UK.

Have faith in your diverse society.

And please, above all, end the hate-based politics before it destroys your country as it has been destroying mine.

- Skunk Uzeki