I write about my journey from Iran to America. My life project is to help people exercise agency in the face of injustice.
Washington, DC
Joined September 2018
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Let us imagine an America where parties compete on "my vision is better" instead of "the other side are bigger monsters."
If you want better parties, you have to make better parties.
Enter: Maximum Republicans. New York needs a competitive political ecology, and two parties that compete to offer a strong, positive vision of governance. Here's my part of that grand project:
maximumnewyork.com/p/maximum…
We used to be a much less tribalistic and clear-headed country. Israel was sacrificed on the altar Donald Trump.
Pouya Nikmand retweeted
“The community of interests, the unity that exists between men, stems first and foremost from scientific progress, from discoveries, inventions, and the proliferation of new machines.”
Montessori
You can't have sympathy with Iranian freedom fighters and try to placate Islamists. It's either-or. And El-Sayed is too much of a coward to pick a stance. Eternal shame on him for that.
Pouya Nikmand retweeted
Sadly, the GOP is no longer the party of merit, free markets, and the American Dream. It's the party of nativist bigotry, tariffs, deportations, government control of the economy, and "postliberal" authoritarianism.
10 months ago, I wrote that Indian Americans’ belief in merit, free markets, the American Dream, faith, family, the list goes on, made them a natural GOP constituency. All Republicans had to do was engage in some outreach and, of course, not be racist. Many (not all) failed.
And this failure will indeed have significant ramifications for electoral politics going forward. The in-roads that the GOP made with Indian voters between 2020 and 2024 were nothing short of remarkable. People are citing voting patterns among Indians, which, don’t get me wrong,are important—after all, more Indian men aged 18-39 said, in 2024, that they intended to vote for Trump than intended to vote for Harris (remarkable!). But consider, too, the massive swings in party identification. All from the Indian American Attitudes Survey @CarnegieEndow:
Compared to 2020, the share of Indian Americans identifying as Democrats dropped from 66% to 57%, while the share of those calling themselves Republicans rose from 18% to 27%, in 2024! This likely translated into electoral victories.
All I can say, after this week, is that I’m certain we’re going to see a reversal; the in-roads the GOP made within the Indian American community over the last several election cycles will be lost. (I would love to be wrong. Really, I would, and if I am, I will gleefully write an article saying so.)
It is all such a shame. Complete political—and moral—malpractice.
This is basically *the* thesis of my work-- what I strive to cement in people and myself with my writing.
“We have conquered our physical environment and overcome our purely natural limitations. We have mastered invisible powers and taken the place of the Jupiter Tonans of the Greeks and the gods of the Hellenic peoples. But we are not yet fully aware that we have done so, and this is precisely what prevents us from becoming brothers in order that this super world may become the Kingdom of Heaven.
“Man must be educated to realize his greatness and to become worthy of the powers that are his. If, in the Rome of the Empire, the Roman citizen needed to be aware of his dignity, it is even more necessary that today’s citizen of the Universal Empire become aware of his.”
Montessori
Was hanging around Bryant park yesterday and thought "hmm... Why is the band performing without an audience?"
Then realized there are exactly 2,753 chairs 💔
Americans are orders of magnitude better to me than Europeans were.
It's true. The minorities living in the US have no idea how discriminatory Europe is.
Pouya Nikmand retweeted
There is nothing in the world, no matter how banal or how ridiculous, that capitalism hasn't been blamed for.
"Capitalism" now functions as an ur-boogeyman, a universal cause for anything in life that you find unpleasant.
You are my personal hero, but you are monsteriously wrong, Masih.
Don't buy them excuses. This administration is committing the same kind of lawless vigilante violence that Islamic Revolutionaries committed at US embassy: kidnapping innocent people over tribal retribution.
Saw a Reel from a fellow Iranian immigrant who worked at a US school. Their curriculum changed and she was told to throw away last year’s supplies.
She recorded a 5-minute video going through everything discarded, completely dumbfounded by the fact that we can afford to do it🧡
I have a great idea for a movie:
(in a parallel America where MAGA didn't hold power,) an Iranian agent radicalized to hate the West is sent to America to be a sleeper cell, falls in love with America and switches sides when confronted with the reality of this civilization.
I have my own definition of Populism
(Noun): a political movement that instead of persuading informed voters with thoughtful policies, aims to galvanize the unpolitical masses who have done little to no actual thinking about politics.
Pouya Nikmand retweeted
Being anti-immigration is a license to broadcast your high Neuroticism to the world.
But rest assured, you will still be angry, anxious, depressed, and generally paranoid even in your utopian ethnic-state.
I'm writing about the first time I got to have a computer. I was about ten. The censorship breaker. The magical portal to infinite knowledge, joy, and connection.
The sight of a desk with a computer on it was (and still is) the highest, godliest image I can conjure in my mind.
The fact that houses that old are still everywhere is the epitome of everything wrong with Europe and why I never saw myself living there.
People like Ogles are not civilized and so don't belong in any civilization. American or otherwise.
