Discarded
Reckoning with the Past. Reclaiming the American Patria.
Postwar moral rot turned too many American elites into rapacious plutocrats. In their sole allegiance to global capital, they find common cause with a transnational class of financiers, technocrats, and corporate executives. I call the latter "Borderfree Brahmins." Whether homegrown or foreign-born, this hyper-individualistic class profiteers from globalization by plundering the American body politic, and auctioning off its resources and sovereignty to the highest bidder. As a result, the cycle of wealth extraction, which began with deindustrialization and hollowing out the working class, has progressed to the outsourcing of white-collar jobs at home.
This new order inverts the harmonic hierarchy characteristic of the nation’s foundational Anglo-Protestant culture, in which dignity exists across occupations, social status remains fluid and merit-based, and moderately individualist elites uphold an implicit duty to the broader society. In its place, we now find technocratic elitism, a zero-sum mindset, and power hoarding within ethnocentric and nepotistic blocs.
I see unsettling parallels between this alien system of dominance, which is steadily infiltrating key American institutions, and the diasporic sociocultural norms that subjected me to years of psychological abuse, financial deprivation, and physical isolation. The pattern is unmistakable – domination through debasement.
I was born in India to a family that had already left the country. It is unusual that my mom left me with her parents (who were in India at the time), only reuniting with me when I was seven months old, but that's what happened. Sometimes, I joke about it by saying that I flew before I walked. I asked my dad about it once and he said they couldn't keep a newborn with them while they were building their respective medical practices. They were both twenty-eight at the time and had been together since they were eighteen. I guess they knew I'd be safe and loved.
My maternal grandparents began their lives as British subjects and ended them as American citizens in Texas. To them, Texas was America and America was Texas. I am really glad they never crossed paths with leftists, especially the kind who have devastated Vermont. They admired heritage Americans and were well assimilated. My grandmother was religious and loved Jesus Christ. She would often ask me to find Bible stories to watch on television.
At the age of five, when my mom was diagnosed with brain cancer, my younger brother and I went to live with them. They became our “legal guardians.” I saw my grandfather fill out a form in which he marked that option instead of "parent." I felt bad.
(Un)fortunately, I was a perceptive – even emotionally precocious – child. My brother didn't grasp the situation as clearly as I did. Even though no one talked about it with us, I knew that my mom wasn't going to make it. The aggressive malignant tumor in her brainstem made itself known. Later, I learned that she had been given only six months to live. She survived for a few years, albeit in a vegetative state, during which she no longer recognized me.
When my mother passed away, my first thought was, “No one will ever pity me,” and that became my abiding conviction. Eventually, my brother and I went to live with my dad and began life anew. I had no concept of empathy. Not until my mid-20s did I learn that you can be vulnerable and safe, vulnerable and strong. It requires emotional intelligence – openness about painful emotions and the willingness to deal with them honestly. In my home, we just never spoke about her. Ever.
Growing up, achieving academic excellence was non-negotiable for us. Here's how you can get an idea of the amount of stress I internalized. Even today, when I watch TV shows where the teenage character doesn't study after he or she comes home from school, I feel anxious. I was bright and did well in school. I lived for approval from my teachers and derived my self-worth from external achievements. By the time I graduated, I had been the President of the Student Council, a medaled athlete in track and long jump, won awards for debate and public speaking, and published poetry. My natural talents and interests were in writing, literature, politics, and international relations. Ultimately, none of it mattered. Individual aspirations, particularly that of a girl, held no weight in the face of familial expectations.
Defying the plans laid out for me was not an option. Indeed, any form of dissent was seen as a personal betrayal and punished as such. Having to acquiesce to prevent rage attacks and keep the peace at home meant I had no real agency. It was decided that I would be sent to India for medical training. These were the given reasons:
“Why waste four years getting an undergrad degree when you can go to medical school now [at the age of eighteen]?"
“Medical studies in Britain, the British Commonwealth, and Europe begin right after high school. America is the only exception.”
"What if you take the MCAT and don't get in anywhere? At least this way, you will definitely study medicine.”
I would fantasize about something happening out of the blue that would stop me from going. Magical thinking became my refuge. In the end, nothing happened and I ended up in a small Indian village with a big medical school and associated hospital. I was to study medicine in a British-style program for 4.5 years.
Two months later, my father announced that he was getting married to a recently-widowed family friend. She is thirteen years younger than him and her son was around three then. Naturally, she wanted a new father for her child and a husband to restart her life. That my father had only a year to go before becoming an empty nester surely played a role. I didn't think it was the right decision for various reasons. Most of all, I was afraid of losing my family, So, I did the unforgivable – I spoke out. “You shouldn’t do it. This is a bad idea. I don’t support your decision.” I was instantly "discarded." Just like that. (And it remains true to this day).
Imagine my life then, if you can. I won't go into the six-day weeks or that we had no summer break. I am no stranger to hard work, having studied 15-16 hours a day when needed. However, I needed emotional and institutional support. I had none. I was completely abandoned on all fronts.
"I can't relate to anyone here. It's tough to make friends. I am very lonely."
"There are some 200 students in your year. If you can't make friends with anyone, then whose fault is it?"
I decided to give it a year. If I could make a rational case for why the program was still a bad fit after proving that I had given it my best, I would be allowed to leave – or so I genuinely believed. I earned academic distinction in anatomy and biochemistry and somehow survived First Year. I had been woefully ignorant of what life as a medical student there would entail. I was ready to GTFO.
My father had a new family and was done with me. “I've given you 10 years of my life,” he said, “What more do you want?" Well, I wanted to be close to my grandparents. Before I was sent to India, we had looked at SMU. I could start fresh.
Yet, the answer remained “no.”
“College is a conveyor belt. There's only one way out and it’s on the other end.”
“I paid $18,000 for the year. I can't get my money back.” (An Indian American female student left and got a refund. A Middle Eastern male student returned to his country and he too got a refund).
“You can't leave. If you leave, it’ll waste a seat that someone else could have had.” Ah yes, worrying about the fate of a hypothetical person over your daughter's future and well-being. That one really stayed with me.
It dawned on me that no one actually cared. No amount of rational arguments or emotional appeals mattered. I would never get the "okay" to leave. It broke my will. For years, I hated myself for not finding a way to leave anyway. If you know me now, my inaction may seem baffling. I couldn't defy authority then. It also didn't help that I had no money and no way to make any.
I sunk into clinical depression. I cried myself to sleep regularly, developed severe dust allergies, and frequently suffered long bouts of low-grade fever and malaise. I began feeling deep shame about myself.
I noticed that the thought of watching a movie – any movie – terrified me. I didn’t want to lose myself in another world for two hours or more. It took me a few years after leaving India to feel comfortable watching films again. I now understand that chronic trauma from emotional abandonment and abuse led to a state of constant hypervigilance, which made it tough to let down my guard for any amount of time.
I drank, stopping cold turkey only because it made me gain weight. (In my mid-20s, I made the decision to rarely, if ever, drink, and that has been true ever since).
The Indian male students harassed the women around them as much as they could. My sordid experiences in this regard are best saved for another day.
The students, in general, engaged in extremely unhealthy competition. India is a resource-poor country and its citizens have become accustomed to fighting for everything. I had the misfortune of encountering a few who took pleasure in subjecting others to pain. Of course, it bears mentioning that a generalization is not the same as a universalization.
In any case, what was the response to the above?
“You need to learn how to be diplomatic.”
“Don’t practice medicine, but you have to get the degree.”
“At least you'll have an MD.”
I finished the program and passed my clinical exams in Internal Medicine, General Surgery, Pediatrics, Obstetrics, and Gynecology only to find that the goal post had shifted. ”If you don’t finish the one-year clinical internship, then these four-and-a-half years won’t count. You will be nothing but a high school graduate.”
That’s when it hit me. The only person who would get me out was me. When I did, heritage Americans played a critical role in helping me reclaim my dignity. While my personal renaissance began with God’s hand upon my head in Florence, Italy, the reclamation could not have happened without heritage American culture.
My grandparents instilled in me profound respect and love for this nation. From my earliest memories, the Americans I have known (Vermont leftists excepting) have been kind, warm, and supportive. I have never been judged, invalidated, or dehumanized. I know enough about the world to recognize the singular value of such a culture and its people. This is why I have always felt incredibly protective of America. It’s why I ran for office. Only a nation weakened from within will fall prey to external forces. And Vermont, like California, epitomizes homegrown subversion.
When I was young, I was worried about certain groups moving here and behaving in predatory ways. My aunt tried to dispel my fears once. “America is so huge. It’s such a huge country,” she told me. “These people will disappear into some corner and never be seen again.” She may have been right at the time. No country is large enough to absorb 100 million new arrivals, regardless of legal status, especially when many see it as an economic opportunity zone and actively resist assimilation.
Demographic engineering without public consent is key to the degradation of the American homeland into a global commons for all. Domestic oligarchs and Borderfree Brahmins, with the backing of the Uniparty and Deep State, have been excluding native-born citizens from economic and political capital, while importing and permanently settling a cheap and compliant workforce.
My critique of endless immigration isn’t directed at individuals, whether from India or elsewhere. Legal guest workers programs (including H-1B, L-1, OPT, H-4, L-2) are beset with systemic fraud and function as corporate-driven labor arbitrage, displacing millions of native-born STEM professionals. Whereas strict caps on foreign-trained doctors and high entry barriers (e.g., U.S. Medical Licensing Exams, mandatory residency) have, so far, prevented the large-scale displacement of U.S. physicians, the border has been thrown wide open in STEM fields.
In 2024, H-1B visa applications were approved – nearly ten times the statutory limit of 85,000 visas per year.
In 2023, 160,627 Optional Practical Training work permits were issued. (OPT is a shadow guest worker program).
In 2019, 76,988 L-1 visas were issued along with 14,000 work permits for spouses.
The endless influx has oversaturated the job market. In 2024, there were 17.2 million STEM graduates (native-born and immigrant) of which only 8.6 million were employed in STEM jobs.
The proportion of foreign-born engineers in Silicon Valley soared from 30 percent in 1990 to 74 percent in 2014. Has this seismic change spurred cutting-edge progress? According to key studies, hiring H-1B workers led to no measurable improvement in innovation, productivity, or firm growth.
What has been the response?
“We’re importing the best and brightest global talent.”
“We need foreign labor pipelines to beat China.”
“Americans are too lazy and anti-intellectual to achieve STEM excellence.”
“Displaced American STEM workers are undeserving, bitter, and can’t control their fear of becoming obsolete (FOBO).”
“Americans who reject losing their careers are racist and xenophobic.”
“American STEM fields are too white. We need more racial equity.”
“At least the national GDP is going up.”
At a Starbucks in the Bay Area, three Indian men were chuffed that they rarely interacted with "goras" (colloquial term for white people). "There are so many Indians here and so many Indian restaurants," one of them said smugly, "I feel like I am in India."