Though I’ve never voted for Trump and never will, the Trump campaign can be “credited,” if that’s the right word, with a pair of useful things, both related to the same underlying thing. The underlying thing is ethnic identity politics, and the two things are the taboos regarding what you can say about it.

Taboo #1 is that you’re not allowed to attribute dual loyalties to members of an ethnic identity. Every ethnicity is axiomatically assumed to be loyal to Uncle Sam and the Stars and Stripes.

Taboo #2 is that you’re not allowed to wonder whether there there are any non-accidental connections between certain ethnic identities and, say, reactionary politics. The axiom here is that whatever the other differences between them, every ethnicity–or, every ethnicity in America–fundamentally pledges allegiance to freedom, equality, and the happy, smiling ideal of being a good neighbor. We may eat different foods, or attend different houses of worship, or wear different clothes, or make sure to marry within different demographics, but at the end of the day, we’re all the same.

The upside of watching Muslims line up to endorse and vote for Trump is that we can say good-bye and good riddance to both of these delusions.

Here’s an article from Middle East Eye, “Pakistani American Group Endorses Trump.” Their reasoning:

A Pakistani-American political action committee has endorsed former US President Donald Trump in the upcoming November presidential election, saying that he is the best option for key issues among the Pakistani voting population in the United States.

“While we certainly do not agree with the former President on every issue, after extensive meetings with his campaign and with the Harris campaign, we believe the former President is the candidate who will improve US-Pakistan relations,” the Pakistani American Public Affairs Committee (PakPac) said in a statement on Thursday.

The organisation said that among its key issues is securing “the release of all wrongfully imprisoned political prisoners in Pakistan”.

“We believe that Mr. Trump’s leadership will promote stronger diplomatic and economic ties, and ensure that Pakistani-American interests are represented at the highest levels of government,” the PakPac statement said.

The notable thing about this reasoning, apart from its sheer stupidity, is that it unapologetically puts Pakistan’s interests at the front and center of PakPac’s relationship with the American regime. It doesn’t take a logical genius to see that this strategy commits PakPac to dual loyalties with respect to Pakistan and the United States. Either Pakistan and the United States have identical political interests or different ones. In the very unlikely case that their interests are identical, then I suppose the issue of conflict doesn’t arise, but if they differ, it obviously does. It’s implausible to think that two countries as different as Pakistan and the United States have literally identical interests, except at a very generic and indeterminate level. So we’re forced to assume that in the relevant sense, the two nations’ interests differ.

If so, then it’s possible for those interests to conflict. If PakPac is committed to Pakistan’s interests, then in case of conflict between Pakistan’s interests and those of the US, PakPac must choose whether to favor Pakistani interests or American ones. The very fact of a difference in interests implies the possibility of a conflict between them; the possibility of conflict implies in turn that at least two different sets of interests are at play. That fact implies that anyone loyal to both sets of interests has two sets of loyalties. And that’s precisely what a “dual loyalty” is.

I’m not saying, by the way, that having dual loyalties is wrong. I’m saying that if you have two sets of loyalties, then unless those loyalties are literally non-conflicting loyalties to the same exact thing, you have dual loyalties. Put differently, I’m bringing you the shocking news that 1 + 1 = 2.

One of the problems with identity politics is the way in which it comes to complicate things as simple as 1 + 1 = 2. Tell a partisan of identity politics that he has dual loyalties and he’ll get all offended. Are you accusing him of treason? Of espionage? Of terrorism? Are you trying to incite law enforcement to come and investigate him, and put him in a concentration camp, like the nisei?

No, what I’m saying is that if someone is loyal to two different things–two different polities, two different regimes–but then insists that he doesn’t have dual loyalties, he needs a refresher course in arithmetic, some acquaintance with the English language, and a little bit of self-knowledge. He’s denying the obvious, then getting all bent out of shape when others affirm it. I mean, if we can accept Duolingo, we can accept dual loyalties.

To belabor the obvious: it’s not as though I’ve ever valorized loyalty. Just the reverse. So it’s not as though “dual loyalty” is some great accusation when coming from me. I’ve never valorized Pakistan or the United States, either. Just the reverse: I have zero loyalty to either place. I would throw either country (or both) under the nearest bus, or sell either one (or both) for a mess of pottage or a handful of silver. As someone with zero loyalty, I’m not demanding that Pakistani-Americans develop single loyalties, or some particular loyalty, whether to Pakistan or the US. The only loyalty I’m demanding, I suppose, is the ability to look reality in the face and admit what you see there. If you have dual loyalties, you have dual loyalties. Stop pretending otherwise. And stop blaming the messenger.

The second taboo is subtler, and breaking it requires a bit of specialized knowledge and nuance. I looked up some of the people on the masthead of PakPac’s letter to Trump, and what struck me was how familiar they were. The New Jersey ones–Imran Jamil and Atif Jalees Khan–could practically be members of my family. Jamil is the better example; his “biodata” practically mirrors mine. Obviously, we’re both Pakistani Americans. SES: upper middle class. Provenance in Pakistan: Lahore. Profession: health care. Like my parents, Jamil graduated from King Edward Medical College in Lahore. And like my family, he’s part of the health care environment of the Tri-State Area. Khan’s background is not a picture-perfect match, but it’s close enough.

After 55 years of hard experience with and painful immersion in Pakistani-American society, I think I can venture a few generalizations about the demographic involved–or rather, one relevant generalization. Whether they admit it or not, whether it offends them to hear it or not, it happens to be true that Pakistani political culture is deeply authoritarian–has been, since the founding of the country–and that Pakistanis transport this authoritarianism wherever they immigrate. Something in the Pakistani psyche resonates powerfully to the exercise of specifically masculine authority exercised authoritatively.

The affinity in question is no more biological than “Pakistan” itself is: not genetic, not anatomical, not physiological. Though it sometimes takes religious or theocratic form, it’s not an inherently religious phenomenon, either. Ayub Khan was a military dictator, Zulfikar Bhutto a socialist, Zia ul Haq a theocrat. The first two were secular, the last religious, but all three played variations on the same authoritarian theme. The theme in question is an ethno-national-demographic phenomenon–a heritable, transmissible, but fundamentally class-based dimension of character reproduced by generations-long habits of authority-worship.

If you wonder why Pakistani Americans, who have less than nothing to hope for from Trump, would line up so abjectly to beg for crumbs from his table, that’s why. It’s not concern for political prisoners. It’s not concern for diplomatic ties, or some vague, ethereal bullshit about “representation.” None of that is going to happen. Even if it happened, the downside would make these particular perks laughable by comparison. And the priorities involved are too morally corrupt and politically myopic even to laugh at. The real motivation is a paradoxical combination of the religious and the secular. It’s the sheer worship of power for its own sake, power being the idol these ethno-identitarians would pass on to future generations for veneration and sacrifice. Trump is their god, and they are his prophets.

I don’t want to suggest, with respect to this latter taboo, that just anyone can generalize without further ado about any old ethnicity, attribute any old set of cultural vices to them, and have a field day indulging their favorite prejudices and stereotypes. We already have enough of that in American political discourse. What I mean is that there should no longer be a taboo, among those who know well enough, on articulating what they know about the psychopathologies correlated with the ethnic identities they know best. Ethnic identity is not race. It’s not language. It’s not religion (though religion itself is hardly beyond scrutiny). It’s not precisely culture. It’s a sense of heritage that’s thought automatically to be worthy of transmission and inheritance. That is something amenable to carefully qualified generalizations. And the obvious question it prompts in this case is whether an authoritarian heritage is really worth passing on.

Many people will feel queasy at talk linking any specifically ethnic identity with any particular vice. It “feels” too much like racism. But it isn’t racism. The easy equation involved is precisely the taboo we need to get over–at least those of us in a position to do so. Any honest Pakistani knows what I’m talking about here. Every thinking Pakistani is familiar with the specifically Pakistani brand of authoritarianism, with the long, sad history that inspires it, and with the zealous dogmatists who do their best to reproduce it from generation to generation.

The question is where the rest of our loyalties lie. Does it lie with a pointless, confected conception of ethnic identity? Or with our own individual sense of integrity? These Trumpsters have done us the service of clarifying those questions and the stakes involved. It’s now a choice between freedom and fascism, between survival and suicide. They’ve made their choice. Time to make ours.