An Open Letter to the People Who Went to the Melania Movie

To everyone who dressed up and showed up for the Melania documentary,

I didn’t go.

Not because I don’t understand symbolism.
Not because I don’t enjoy political satire.
I didn’t go because I refuse to celebrate people who benefit from cruelty while pretending it isn’t happening.

You went to watch a woman walk into and out of rooms — and called it culture.

While you watched a polished production, I watched the raw, unscripted arrogance of people exercising power they were never meant to have.

I watched videos of people being pulled out of cars.
Dragged from their lives.
Handled as problems instead of human beings.

Before you tell me not to believe what I see, let me ask you something honestly:

What is it that you do believe with your own two eyes?

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About the box you don’t realize you’re in

I don’t like being shoved into boxes.
But what I see now is people who don’t realize they live inside one — built by feedback loops, media silos, and constant reinforcement of the same ideas.

When your world only reflects back what agrees with you, challenge feels like attack.
And when challenge feels like attack, cruelty becomes easier to excuse.

So when you dismiss videos of real people being brutalized as “fake” or “overblown,”
but embrace a glossy documentary as truth —
that isn’t discernment.

That’s loyalty replacing ethics.

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Immigration was never the real issue

This has never really been about immigration.

Land was taken from Native people.
People were taken and forced into labor.
Wealth was extracted and concentrated upward.

And every time America is forced to share — land, labor, opportunity, or voice — someone claims the country is being invaded.

Borders are invisible lines.
People are real.

When we rip immigrants out of cars in the name of “law,” we aren’t protecting a nation — we’re protecting a hierarchy that decides who belongs and who is disposable.

That hierarchy has never been neutral.
And it has never been consistent.

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This was never about law — it was about hierarchy

If cruelty were truly about enforcing the law, it would apply evenly.
It never does.

Those with power are shielded.
Those without it are punished.

That’s how hierarchy works.

It decides whose paperwork matters, whose silence is excused, whose violence is justified, and whose suffering is dismissed as collateral damage.

This is not a failure of immigration policy.
It is the predictable outcome of a system designed to sort human beings into ranks — and then defend those ranks as “order.”

Calling that justice doesn’t make it so.
It only makes it easier to live with.

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Why I won’t celebrate Melania Trump

I don’t see her as neutral.
I don’t see her as a heroine.
I see her as complicit.

You do not get to benefit from policies that harm people and then pose as elegance.
You do not get to profit from fear and then sell yourself as “family values.”

This isn’t about fashion.
It isn’t about accents.
It isn’t about personal taste.

It’s about what she stands beside — and what she stands silent about.

Silence, when people are being brutalized, is not grace.
It is consent.

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What you chose instead of looking

You chose a premiere over a detention.
A red carpet over a police report.
A gown over a body.

And then you told yourselves it was patriotic.

So here is what I’m asking you to do now:

Watch what is happening in the streets.
Watch how power behaves when it thinks no one is paying attention.
Watch how easily distraction becomes denial.

Tell me what you don’t believe with your own two eyes.

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Video for your review

I’m not going to embed every video showing abuses happening in our streets at the hands of our own government—there are too many, and many are deeply disturbing. But watch this one.

In this clip, Aliya Rahman—a U.S. citizen—testifies about being dragged from her car by ICE (U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement) agents in Minneapolis on January 13, 2026. While she speaks, the footage from the incident plays above her in split screen. You see agents smash her window and pull her out, even as she identifies herself and pleads that she is disabled and on her way to a medical appointment.

She was handled as a body, not a person.

Look at it carefully. Sit with it. And then decide what you’re willing to deny.

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Context matters

For those who want to understand how spectacle and denial intersect, here is the segment that prompted this reflection — not because it’s funny (though it is), but because of what it reveals when the laughter fades.

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Final thought

The only thing I’m jealous of is that you got to meet Jordan Klepper —
because you provided a public record of people celebrating power while others suffer under it.

I didn’t go see the Melania movie because I don’t believe in clapping for a house while it’s on fire.

And if that makes me a downer, so be it.

I would rather be uncomfortable than complicit.