Sometimes in our lives we have the rare opportunity to become one with history – to witness moments that will be written about in textbooks for generations to read, on and on and on again, until we too have become history. Sometimes we witness these events and are unaware of their significance, their implications.

In the past few weeks alone, we’ve all witnessed events that will change not only the course of history, but the course of our very lives – our present, coeval, daily lives. And unlike reading a history textbook, we cannot predict their forthcoming, nor can we imagine their consequences. Instead, we are stuck, forced to exist in the current moment, our hearts left filled with fear and questioning.

For many people, their entire lives are like this, always wondering what will come next, how much worse it can get. I’m fortunate to live in a first-world country, which means that I am blessed to be able to leave my house in the morning without fearing for my life, but in the past few weeks, I’ve begun to see many people’s confidence in this notion being shaken. It’s not that they stand in any particular fear for their lives, but what we are currently facing could be a loss of freedom, of democracy, of our rights as not only American citizens, but as human beings.

I am my family’s singular liberal democrat, which means that I’ve grown used to the ridicule by now. To the protests of “Oh, just wait until you’re older and you have to pay taxes” or “You’re hardly 18, you can’t possibly know what you want."

I’ve learned to face them with a smile and a nod, and bite my tongue, because at the end of the day, I’m allowed to hold my own political beliefs no matter my age, and I’m allowed to act upon those beliefs in ways I see fit. I no longer mind disagreeing drastically with my family; in fact, we’ve sparked some interesting discussions out of our disparities.

But there are certain topics I’ve learned to avoid – namely, the nomination of a certain predestination nominee that (to quote Fitzgerald’s masterpiece on American culture) “represents everything for which I have an unaffected scorn”.

The Trump presidential campaign had at first seemed comical to me. I remember thinking, “Surely my country isn’t senseless enough to elect someone like him as president." And then I watched as the polls shifted and his popularity grew, until all of a sudden, without any real warning or feasible prediction, Donald Trump became the Republican presidential nominee.

To me, the most frustrating part of politics (and life, for that matter) is the inability to control others – to make them see what you see, understand what you understand. I’m very cemented in my beliefs, which means that those who oppose them have always seemed absurd to me. I like to think of myself as an open-minded person, but it was insane to me that people might actually agree with someone like Trump- that they might actually trust him to “make America great again”.

If there’s one thing I’ve learned about politics, it’s that it’s primarily based on fear. Trump does this incredibly effectively, building on people’s fears of a loss of independence and tradition to promote his campaign. For many, Donald Trump says things they may have always felt but have been too scared to say aloud- things that generally blame others, vindicating themselves of any guilt or fault. Because, after all, isn’t it always easier to blame others than to own up to our actions? To own up to the effect we might have caused?

But there’s a reason people felt uncomfortable attesting to these hidden truths, and the Trump campaign fails to recognize that. It fails to recognize that at the end of the day we are all people, no matter what country we might come from or what beliefs we might identify with. And it appears that Trump himself has forgotten this fact; after the worst mass shooting in American history, the first thing he tweeted was “I appreciate the congrats for being right on radical Islamic terrorism”. Fifty people unjustly dead, and the only thing he wished to say was that he was right- or at least, that he thought he was?

I won’t say I understand those who are voting for Trump. I’ve tried to, and I understand some of the appeal, but I will never understand the actual decision to cast your vote for him. What I do understand is that we must take his campaign seriously; we must not consider it a joke. We must not rely on others to detain him, or laugh off the absurdity of the election. We must not become inactive.

This past weekend, we witnessed one of these moments of history when Britain voted to leave the European Union. Like Donald Trump’s campaign, the vote to leave was something that had been laughed off as an impossibility. Many people chose to not to vote because they believed in their country and its people enough to trust them to make the rational decision. They did not think that Brexit would actually happen, the same way many people do not believe that Trump could win the presidential election. And many were shocked by the results on Saturday, shocked by the news that what they had not fully believed in was actually coming to pass.

This is a warning to us, a warning that we can never let assumption control our decisions. Nigel Farage, one of the leaders of the Leave vote, resembles Trump in far too many ways. Both of them share similar beliefs on immigration, which was one of the main factors of the Leave campaign. Like the way Trump plays on American fears of a loss of national identity, Farage and the Leave campaign did the same to residents of Great Britain. Fear makes people open to theories and ideas they might not have otherwise been; fear, when used to its highest capacities, can make people essentially senseless.

But fear can also wake people up. Fear of an outcome we do not want can spur people into action. Fear can force people to open their eyes and see what is happening around them- not just continue to live in the bubbles many of us have been blessed to spend our lives in. We have the power to create change, to create lasting change. To build a better country, not just for those who were born on its soil, but for those who come seeking a better life. Because, after all, isn’t that what America was founded on? Very few of us can truly call ourselves Native Americans. And the Statue of Liberty, one of the most noticeable American landmarks and a symbol of immigration, reads: “Give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to break free, the wretched refuse of your teeming shore. Send these, the homeless, tempest-tost to me, I lift my lamp beside the golden door!”.

That is our national identity- the fact that we are a country founded by misfits, by rejects, by runaways and those seeking new and better lives. We are hand-givers and thought-provokers, seekers of the unknown and protectors of freedom. Our national identity is founded upon our free-thinking, our desire to be both an example and a benefactor to those in need.

And we must not lose that to one man. We must not let it be stolen from us. For I fear that if we do, we will cease to be America the Beautiful, but America the Broken.