I need to tell you about something that’s been breaking my heart.
Last summer, I took my kids, Hayden and Eve, on a two-week road trip across the heart of America. From South Dakota to Wyoming to Montana.
We fired guns at a range outside Cody. We camped in Yellowstone under stars so bright it felt like the sky was showing off. We sat at the famous Cody Rodeo while families around us waved American flags with a pride that made my chest tight with emotion.
The people we met were extraordinary.
At a local diner, the waitress gave us the warmest service and the best pie I’ve had in years. At the hotels we stayed in, we were treated with overwhelming kindness and sincerity.
I am not an American citizen. I was born in Malaysia. I run Mindvalley, an American company. But I’ve spent nearly three decades traveling across your country—from my college years in Michigan to speaking events in Florida; from tech conferences in San Francisco to quiet conversations in Ohio diners.
And here is what I know to be true:
The American people are not the problem.
The warmth I felt in Wyoming, I have felt in every corner of this nation. In so-called “red” America and so-called “blue” America. Among people who voted for Trump and people who voted for Biden. Among ranchers and professors, veterans and artists, churchgoers and skeptics.
Goodness is everywhere.
So why does it feel like you are at war with each other?
The rodeo speech that changed something in me
At the Cody Rodeo, the announcer stepped into the ring and gave a speech called “Why We Stand.”
He spoke of soldiers who never came home from Vietnam. From Iraq. From the beaches of Normandy. He spoke of sacrifice, of freedom, of a flag that represents something men and women were willing to die for.
The crowd went silent. Hats came off. Hands covered hearts.
And I thought: This is real. This love of country is real. This reverence is real.
These people are not hateful. These people are not ignorant. These people are not my enemies.
Then a second thought hit me hard:
Who the hell convinced Americans that they are enemies of each other?
I was manipulated too
I need to confess something.
For years, I consumed media that painted a certain picture of Trump supporters. I read the tweets. I watched the clips. I saw the worst moments replayed on loop until they seemed like the whole story.
I absorbed a caricature.
Then I went to Wyoming. And I met human beings.
They didn’t match the cartoon I’d been sold. Not even close. These were people worried about the same things everyone worries about:
Can I afford to get sick?
Will my children have a better life than I?
Why does it feel like the whole system is rigged against regular folks?
These aren’t Republican questions or Democratic questions. These are human questions. These are kitchen-table questions.
I realized I had allowed myself to see my fellow human beings as enemies—because it’s easier to hate a cartoon than to sit with complexity.
If I were manipulated, I suspect I’m not the only one.
The inclusion paradox
There is a hard question I had to ask myself—a question raised by philosopher Ken Wilber, whose course “Integral Life” is part of the Mindvalley curriculum.
He describes a strange paradox in our modern culture. We have a “leading edge” of society that prides itself on love, diversity, and inclusion. We fight for the environment. We fight for minorities. We fight for the oppressed.
But there is one group we often feel comfortable excluding.
Wilber calls this a “performative contradiction.” How can we claim to be the movement of diversity if we look down on half the country as “deplorables”?
We cannot claim to stand for “inclusion” if we hold contempt for diversity of thought.
If our tolerance stops the moment someone wears a red hat, it isn’t tolerance. It is just another form of tribalism wearing a nicer outfit.
We have to be better than that. True inclusivity means holding space even for those we vehemently disagree with, understanding that their pain is just as real as ours.
The machine that profits from your division
Here’s what I’ve come to believe.
There are forces that profit when Americans hate each other.
The equation is simple:
When you’re angry, you click. When you click, someone makes money.
When you’re afraid, you watch. When you watch, someone sells ads.
And when you are divided, you don’t notice that your wages haven’t kept pace with inflation while CEO pay has soared. You don’t notice that healthcare bankrupts half a million families a year. You don’t notice that the same corporations often fund both parties, ensuring they win no matter who is in the White House.
The platform owners know exactly what they’re doing.
A study from MIT found that falsehoods and outrage-driven content spread six times faster than the truth.
Internal Facebook files leaked in 2021 revealed that their algorithm privileged anger to such a degree that even Meta’s own engineers warned it was “ripping society apart.”
Ken Wilber calls this the “Culture of Post-Truth.”
It creates a state of “aperspectival madness”—where we lose our shared reality and retreat into warring tribes. When algorithms prioritize outrage over facts, truth vanishes. And when there is no truth, there is only power.
The division is not an accident. It is a business model.
And all of us—left and right, rural and urban, MAGA and progressive—we are the product being sold.
Then comes the second wave: The Bots.
A 2024 USC study analyzed online traffic during political flashpoints. What they found was chilling.
Nearly half of the most viral, toxic conversations weren’t coming from humans.
They were generated by bots. In some cases, bot activity spiked from 20% to 43% of the total conversation.
These weren’t Americans. These were automated scripts originating from Russia, Nigeria, Bangladesh, Pakistan, and Macedonia.
Think about that.
When you see a comment that makes your blood boil, when you rage at “the other side”—half the time, you aren’t fighting a fellow citizen. You are fighting a line of code from a server farm halfway across the world.
It is a foreign algorithm wearing the mask of your neighbor.
The bots are designed to make you hate each other. The actual Americans I’ve met just want the same things.
Something doesn’t add up
I’m not an economist. I’m not a policy expert.
But I’m someone who has built a life on questioning assumptions—what I call “brules,” the bullshit rules society programs into us without evidence.
In a “Post-Truth” world, b-rules thrive. They fill the void where facts used to be. So I decided to look at the actual data. And the reality I found didn’t match the stories I’d been told.
Here are four ideas worth reexamining.
1. On the economy
I always heard that one party was better for business, better for the stock market, better for jobs. It seemed obvious. Everyone repeated it.
Then I looked at the record.
Since 1933, the stock market has performed more than twice as well under Democratic presidents (NYU / Stock Market Historical Review).
Job creation has nearly doubled.
And 10 of the last 11 recessions began under Republican administrations.
I’m not sharing this to score political points. I’m saying: the story I was told was a “brule”. It didn’t match reality.
2. On immigration
I was told immigrants were driving crime and draining resources.
But study after study shows the opposite.
Texas—a state at the center of the immigration debate—found that native-born Americans commit violent crimes at nearly twice the rate of undocumented immigrants (Texas Dept. of Public Safety, 2024).
And in 2022 alone, undocumented immigrants paid $96.7 billion in taxes (ITEP, 2024).
They pay billions. They work in agriculture, construction, elder care, and childcare—industries that would collapse without them. Many can’t even claim refunds on the taxes they pay.
So if they’re not causing crime… and they’re not draining your taxes…
Why have we been taught to fear them?
Who benefits when we are afraid of the most vulnerable among us?
3. On healthcare: the freedom to fail
530,000.
That is the number of American families that go bankrupt every year due to medical bills.
In Canada: zero.
In Germany: zero.
In the U.K., France, Japan, Australia: virtually zero.
This isn’t because Americans are sicker. It’s because of policy choices made by people who benefit from the status quo.
But here is the brule we’ve been taught: safety nets make people lazy.
The data shows the exact opposite.
Countries with robust social safety nets—like Sweden, Norway, and Denmark—are hotbeds for entrepreneurship. Sweden produces more unicorn tech companies per capita than any region except Silicon Valley.
Why?
Because entrepreneurship requires risk. And risk requires security.
In America, “freedom” often means the freedom to fall through the cracks.
In social democracies, the government provides a trampoline.
When you don’t have to worry about losing your healthcare because you left your corporate job, you are free to be brave.
4. On the American dream: a personal warning
I was always told America has the highest upward mobility in the world—that this is the only place where anyone, from any background, can make it to the top.
It is a beautiful story. But I decided to look at the rankings.
The Global Social Mobility Index ranks countries on how easy it is for a person to start at zero and climb to the top.
The United States ranks 27th.
The top of the list? Denmark, Norway, Finland, Sweden.
The “American Dream” is now statistically more likely to happen in Scandinavia than in America.
So why do we resist the very policies that would fix this?
I believe it is because Americans have been manipulated into confusing “Social Democracy” with “Communism.”
And I need to make a distinction here that is deeply personal to me.
I am an entrepreneur. I love entrepreneurs. And I hate Communism with a fire that comes from my own blood.
The Estonian side of my family owned a farm on the Baltic island of Hiiumaa for hundreds of years. But when the Communists took control of Estonia in the 1940s, that legacy was shattered.
They sent a massive portion of the Estonian population to the gulags. My children’s great-grandparents were marched into a forest, lined up, and shot in the head. They were buried in unmarked graves.
Their sin? They were farmers who happened to own their own land.
This is a scar on my family’s history. That land was stolen, and it was only returned to us in the early 1990s when Estonia finally threw off the shackles of Communism and property ownership was legal again.
So you can imagine how I feel when I hear Americans screaming the word “Communism” at things that are clearly not Communism.
I know what Communism is. I know the smell of the graves it digs.
And I need you to know: A safety net is not Communism.
We need to understand the difference between three very different things:
- Communism: The government owns everything. They shoot you for owning a farm. (Think Soviet Estonia).
- Socialism: The government owns the means of production.
- Social Democracy: The government provides a floor so that capitalism can thrive. (Think modern Europe).
The tragedy is that by fearing the ghost of Communism, Americans have rejected the very systems that would make their capitalism stronger.
You can’t take big risks if the system is designed to crush you for stumbling.
When I look at my family’s history, I know that Communism destroys the human spirit. But I also know that unbridled capitalism, without a safety net, breaks the human body.
Real freedom requires a floor you can’t fall through.
The scripture I can’t stop thinking about
After Wyoming, I took Hayden to Ellis Island.
We stood at the base of the Statue of Liberty and read the famous inscription: “Give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to breathe free…”
I thought about my own family—immigrants who came to Malaysia with nothing. I thought about the families at the rodeo, many of whose ancestors arrived the same way, chasing the same dream.
Then I remembered these words from Jesus:
“I was a stranger and you welcomed me.” (Matthew 25:35)
“Whatever you did for the least of these, you did for me.” (Matthew 25:40)
I’m not a theologian. But those verses haunted me on that island.
I started wondering: What would it mean to take them seriously—not as a political slogan, but as a genuine challenge to how we treat the desperate?
Christ didn’t say: Fear the foreigner. Blame the stranger. Build walls and turn the desperate into demons.
So how did so many good people of faith end up cheering for rhetoric that seems to contradict the teacher they follow?
I don’t ask this to judge. I ask because the contradiction breaks my heart.
The real enemies are not each other
If I could share one insight from an outsider looking in with love, it would be this:
The veteran in Wyoming and the activist in Oakland are not enemies. They are prisoners in the same cell, fighting over crumbs while the warden laughs.
The immigrant picking strawberries didn’t move your factory overseas.
The college student protesting injustice didn’t write the tax code that lets billionaires pay lower rates than nurses.
The single mother on food stamps didn’t create a healthcare system that charges $800 for insulin that costs $8 to make.
Your frustration is real.
But the target you’ve been given is wrong.
And while you are fighting your neighbor, the systems that squeeze you keep squeezing.
What I’m asking
I’m not asking you to change your vote.
I’m not asking you to abandon your values.
I’m not asking you to agree with me.
I’m asking something simpler:
Be suspicious of anyone who tells you to hate.
Be suspicious of the media that makes you angry every single day—because anger is profitable, and you are the product.
Be suspicious of leaders who need enemies more than they need solutions.
And ask yourself, honestly:
Is my life actually better under the policies I support?
Are my bills lower?
Is my healthcare more affordable?
Are my wages keeping up?
Do my children have more opportunity than I did?
If the answer is no, then maybe, just maybe, you’ve been convinced to fight the wrong battles.
I dream of an America that finally lives up to its own giant story.
That dream doesn’t belong to the left or the right.
It belongs to anyone willing to fight for it.
Not fight each other.
Fight for each other.
PS: If this article stirred something in you—agreement, discomfort, clarity, anything—leave a comment below. Honest dialogue is how we start healing what’s been broken. I’d love to hear your thoughts.
243 Responses
I am sure that I speak for many Americans when I say that after reading your thoughts Vishen about your trip,
I feel inspired, but I personally feel that Americans are good people but they are “under the influence” of the media.
I feel that I cannot afford the luxury of “hate” on any level. We must start to ask the question, what is this news
telling me and how does this serve me? If it is creating tension or fear, you must stop listening, go within, the power of the practices that you offer will help all of us to feel peace instead of confusion, If we begin to influence people in a positive way, we can influence the collective consciousness, that is making true change. You are part of the solution,
we all can be that. Blessings.
As someone building a youth-led program designed to heal cultural division through story, food, and performance, this letter hit me hard. The wound you describe is the same fracture I see in our students’ lives — and the same one they are helping to repair. Thank you for naming what so many feel and for pushing the national conversation toward empathy and truth.
I wanted to address a few of your comments-“And 10 of the last 11 recessions began under Republican administrations.”
Would you consider taking a look at what possibly transpired in the previous years building up to those recessions. Recessions don’t happen overnight, it is a process that sometimes takes years to come to fruition. So, even though it appears the Republicans “cause” recessions, it is possible it is in the reverse? Possibly, the previous party created the situation and the Republicans are left holding the bag to fix the problems.
In regards to taxing the rich vs poor, should the people that create jobs for America be rewarded or penalized for becoming successful and creating jobs? What is done with the monies saved on taxes? Possibly, more jobs are created as those individuals re-invest that money back into their businesses creating more opportunities for our Country.
I am first generation American. My family worked hard to come here, my grandfather worked for a year for a cabinet maker that sponsored him before he could send for my grandmother and father. They took the process and dedication to our Great Country very seriously. They chose to speak only English in the home and embraced the American ways as it was a conscious decision to immigrate. They did not accept government assistance, they worked and paid taxes.
America has always embraced immigration-the Correct Way! I am very grateful and proud of my grandparents for making the sacrifices to come to America legally.
I understand migrant life and how that works very well, my family owned a farm and we employed migrants. They became our friends and family for life. They went on to own their own family businesses- This is the American way!
I am surrounded with friends and neighbors from an opposite political party from me, yet we share similar views on living, caring for each other and what we need as a nation.
Media has a share of the problem as well. Media that continues to rely on news of hate and division to make $ for their network.
Thank you, for bringing out the real issues and the comparisons with other countries.
Vishen, I have seen this division so clearly, and yet it has been so confusing to me—how is it happening? People I know and love are on opposite sides in politics and only see one perspective. I read or hear them spew out things that they’ve heard about the “other side” that I KNOW are untrue because they’re talking about ME!
I recently visited relatives who I don’t see often who do not share my political views. We talked family and then they shifted to their challenges. I just listened as they listed the same concerns I hear from “my” side, but in each case they blamed the other side and vilified the very people I believed were making progress in addressing those concerns. It was amazing and appalling. Why can’t we work together? Why do we let hate and division paralyze us and keep us from finding solutions?
I knew about our proclivity to notice and respond more to negativity, and how media and advertisers exploit that. Your insights about social media and bots are alarming! We have to wake up and find a way to break through or circumvent this division. Our survival depends upon it.
Thank you for these words Vishen. Please check the work of the Othering and Belonging Institute: https://belonging.berkeley.edu
Spot on, Vishen. While our values are real, our political system is broken. How do we begin to reclaim our country – one way is to reinvigorate our communities and recognize our shared values. This is a movement we’ve started https://promiseofamerica.info . If it resonates, I hope you’ll join us and pass it on! Our first POA weekend is Dec 6th and 7th – flags up!
It feels really good to see and hear those words as it needs to be heard not just in America but in a lot of other parts of the world too .
Thanks so so much Vishen for your courage and honesty .
Let’s all send and share more LOVE and stop feeding those who earn on HATE and WAR. Xx with much gratitude
These are true ideas that almost everyone I come across understands. What to do about it is now our problem. These powerful families and individuals have such a chokehold on us all that even though your perspective is one shared by everyone I know, nobody knows how to change it. That is why it has been so effective. As long as the majority of us feel we have no way out, no way to change it, it remains an almost more effective shackle to our society. I feel I live a life that doesn’t harm anyone, but beyond that, beyond spreading my views on inclusion and not spreading hate in any form, what can I do? This is an honest question? I feel I live in an echo chamber. Everyone I know feels the way you’ve just articulated. Yet nothing changes. What are we to do? I’ve been in this place for 40 years, and I feel less and less like my choices affect the whole.
Thank you for writing this. Truly.
Your words landed in a very personal place for me.
I recently moved to a quiet, very white rural area, and even though people have been kind, I’ve carried a subtle fear inside me — a fear of not belonging, of being seen as “other,” of not knowing how I’d be received. I didn’t realize how much tension I’ve been holding until your story made something inside me relax.
Reading this reminded me that most people have goodness in them, even if it’s not immediately obvious… that behind every face there is a whole life, a whole heart, a whole story I know nothing about.
Your blog helped me shift from cautiousness toward connection. I feel inspired now to meet my neighbors with more openness and friendliness, instead of letting fear close me off.
So thank you — your words helped me feel a little more at home in the world today. It meant more than you know.
Thank you very much for this article! I am from Germany but I used to live in Los ANgeles for 8 years. Hate is not in my system but what I am not able to understand is, that a Nation votes for a man, that communicates in such an uneducated, respectless and racist way, that it hurts, listening to him. – and that there are so many people in congress and business (facebook etc) that bow subservient in his presence. It is shocking!
„ Nearly half of the most viral, toxic conversations weren’t coming from humans.
They were generated by bots. In some cases, bot activity spiked from 20% to 43% of the total conversation.
These weren’t Americans. These were automated scripts originating from Russia, Nigeria, Bangladesh, Pakistan, and Macedonia.“
Wow, I completely forgot about this and I was only aware of Russia doing it. Shocking!!! But thank you! I believe we have the same problem in Germany.
As a final thought: If for nothing, I am greatful for our healthcare in Germany even though we have to finance it and its not getting cheaper. But I do know people that got in big trouble in the US just for a hospital bill.
It’s important to make people aware of it. Thank you for doing it🫶
I love you Vishen, more than you can possibly ever know. You have saved my life many times and please help me to do it again. I am 84 years old and need help. I fell 19 days ago and this is where I am at –11 17 2025 Fall
On this date, I fell from a 7-foot height to land with a solid force on the right side of my body hitting my head on a wheel barrow wheel and pending down the rest of my right side, with my right arm pinned under my body, hitting other rocks, materials metal, lumps and various items crushing the whole right side of my body-Neck, shoulders, upper back, waist, lower back, hip, thigh, knee, lower leg, shin, ankle, right foot and toes. Also smashing nerves, cells, all tissues in the area of my body, including the body’s right organs of liver, kidney, right lung, gallbladder, pancreas, ascending colon, right adrenal gland, right pelvic organs being unable to move and could not contact anyone and was not found until over 2 hours later. My step-son was able to get me to the hospital and on November 18, 2025, was operated on for hip repair. There was no operating procedure or process to aid in the repair of the damage cells, tissues, fascia, therefore the only relief came in the form of a drug, oxycodone, a schedule II-controlled substance. The pain of the damages cells, tissues, nerves, organs, fascia, etc. has been more than bearable, and the hospital staff helped all they could with pain medication. The wickedness of the pain affected the mental, emotional, biological, physiological and psychological aspects of life. I’m currently healing in a small outdated rehab facility and using the pain medication at certain really stressful times with really debilitating pain in the right side of my body, which I caanot move by myself, especially my upper back, lower back, right leg, and right knee. I currently cannot move any of my right side of my body except my right are some, hand some and fingers some. I am requesting Prayers and good positive thoughts for the healing and recovery of this aching, smashed up body; all would certainly be greatly appreciated. Thank you so very much and sending lots of love, many blessings and good vibes to everyone.
This is an incredibly insightful piece! It has been so disheartening to live in this post-truth America that I stopped listening to news from both sides of the political spectrum. We desperately need new orientation and new leaders from both sides that bring people together and truly have their interests at heart!
Vishen, what a beautiful blog! You are absolutely right! We are all humans doing our best to survive, and hate has no place in survival. It was well researched and documented! Thank you for sharing your insights with all of us!
Deb
Thank you, Vishen, for one of the of the best analyses of what’s really going on in our country that I’ve read. I have long felt the same way, but you articulated it beautifully.
I believe that a large part of the problem is, as you point out, that both parties are beholden to the largest donors, so neither addresses the real needs of the people where it conflicts with those donors’ interests.
And a president that calls social democrats like Bernie Sanders and Mamdani communists, and tells us that Somalians are “garbage”, and “Christians” who cheer on the tactics of the ICE agents instead of finding a way to help the people who came to this country–legally or illegally, as well as ignoring the burden of medical expenses contribute to the mess we’re in right now. I won’t even get into denying people food–in the what’s touted as the wealthiest country in the world.
Thanks for writing this and sharing it.
One of the most profound, honest, and moving pieces I’ve read in a long time. Truly from the heart, Vishen. Thank you.
Thank you, Vishen, for this powerful post. It also breaks my heart. I have long believed that the real enemy is disinformation, coming mostly from the highest-rated news outlet in America (we all know who they are). The propaganda machine is strong, and it’s not the fault of those who’ve come to trust and believe everything coming from it. We are all just drinking from a fire hose on the daily; most people don’t have the energy of even desire to dig up the real truth. But they believe the mistruths so strongly that even I sometimes wonder if I’m the one being hoodwinked (I’m not). It is frustrating and exhausting, but I work daily to keep hate and anger from eroding my heart. It truly is everyday Americans against the ultra rich and powerful, and I believe we are in this moment in history exactly for us to finally break the massive inequity. Everything is happening FOR us, not TO us, and the only way we are going to emerge better than we were before is if we come together and stand in our collective power to shift the balance back where it belongs.
1. I love your tone, your vulnerability, your bravery to share this message. I think it’s an incredibly powerful message.
2. I agree with you on so much of what you say about division, power imbalance, and safety nets. I want universal (government coordinated and funded) healthcare, childcare, education, housing, and even guaranteed jobs programs like FDR introduced, because these things seem to hold the potential of even greater future prosperity for the whole. We could benefit from (and eventually need to) reimagine agriculture, city design, and many essential elements of our culture. We can embrace centralized coordination, government planning, cooperative ownership and industry, while also embracing democratic forms of governance and policy based on known, best practices. The word we use for this system doesn’t matter so much as what we mean to imply when we say it.
3. In addition to research on those particular points, given disagreement, how can we uplift this message? How can we move as far and fast with this truth as we can? Sharing this essay will help. What else? What’s next?
4. For me, spirituality is a big part of the picture. Leaning into a worldview that affirms the basic goodness of all people, our fundamentally shared goals of growing, learning, thriving, the fact that we are all doing our best with what we’ve been given, and therefore the faith that we can and will come together in deeper cooperation to make progress on the challenges we face – these can be seen as deep moral stances that represent a shift from atheist nihilism and from christian sin-shaming.
5. Let us uplift eachother and ourselves in tandem, and continue to question our own beliefs, practices, and desires.
In Progress,
Faze
Vishen,
I have always admired your work and your success. Thanks a lot for Mindvalley and everything surrounding it.
As for your blog, it’s not intended to be about politics but it is. Democrat and Democratic is not the same thing. Lots of people are confused about this. It is the Democrat Party and not Democratic Party. And by mentioning all the positive stuff they done vs the other party, it changes the general impression.
As for the main idea, I completely agree: we shouldn’t fight or argue with each other. When you have a full Congress making money in the stock market by betting on the decisions they will make, we shouldn’t expect to much goodness coming out of Washington.
Something needs to change, but everyone hates change, so how do you do it?
Vishen,
Brother, this is what I’ve been telling my people. I’m from Texas. I have so-called conservative friends and family, and I have so-called liberal/progressive friends and family. I get along with my Trump-supporting friends just as I do with my Trump-hating friends.
And Trump is just a cog in the machine, a symptom of the system that has been built to pit us against each other in order to make us look away from the real problems. It’s the classic divide-and-conquer strategy. Bread and circuses…
I’m learning that love is the only thing that matters. Love, Vishen, is the only thing that matters. And the opposite of love is not hate, but fear. Richard Bach said that hate is just misdirected love. It all goes back to love.
So, yeah, we need to be looking critically at the social media/news posts that make us want to hate somebody, because it’s coming from a place of fear, and fear is the mind-killer. Fear causes us to act unwisely. It’s hold can make us do things against our own interests. And it is fear that has proven to be the emotion so effective at causing us to be so divided. I’ve been seeing it for years: fear the Muslims, the Jews, the gays. Fear the Antifa, the Communists, the folks in red hats…
Regular people just want to live a decent life and to provide a better future for their children.
I don’t know how to stop the madness. I’m not in a position of power. All I have is my voice, Vishen.
That is all. So I’m gonna sing, and pray, and talk to my people about the love that we could be experiencing right now. Because the Word creates. Let’s speak up.