We had made it! 

By “made it,” I mean we were finally sitting in our seats on American Airlines Flight 1801 from Miami to Newark, NJ. Not the easiest task these days. First, we had to endure the eight-hour, fifty-five-minute flight from Rio to Miami in economy, in front of a very talkative Brazilian family who violated the unwritten “whisper only” rule on overnight flights. Then came the really stressful part: navigating Immigration control. 

Virtually every day in the Brazilian press, there’s another story about Brazilians caught up in Delta Tango’s misguided, brown-shirt-like tactics against undocumented immigrants. Like Luciano Draco, pulled over in Martha’s Vineyard and detained despite having legal documentation by ICE agents who failed to identify themselves. Or Marcelo Gomes da Silva, a high school student detained on his way to volleyball practice—though not a target—who was held for a week without a shower and forced to sleep on concrete floors. Or Caroline Dias Goncalves, a Utah nursing student pulled over by sheriffs, handed to ICE agents, and detained for fifteen days in Aurora, Colorado. 

Add to this the current administration’s overt hostility toward Brazil, largely because the Great Leader has a fondness for Jair Bolsonaro, the convicted felon and former president (sound familiar?). That hostility includes 50% tariffs on all Brazilian imports and visa restrictions against Brazil’s Supreme Court Chief Justices, their families, and allies—ironically for “free speech violations.” (The Brazilian constitution makes hate speech a crime… but that would never happen in the U.S., right? Stay tuned.) 

It was enough to make my wife ask me, for two weeks straight: *“My darlingo, do you think they will let me into the United States? Do you think they will arrest me?”* 

She was serious. I answered with a confidence I didn’t fully feel: *“Don’t worry. Those cases are outliers. You’ll be fine.”* 

Still, we were both nervous when we separated at Border Control—Elaine to the non-citizen line, me to Global Entry. (Trust me: worth every bit of the $75 fee and interview hassle.) She asked me to wait for her on the other side, and I promised I would. My Global Entry took less than a minute—facial recognition and a wave—and then I stood in the hallway, anxiously scanning every group of passengers for her. It felt like hours, though it was only twenty-five minutes. When I finally saw her, the relief was overwhelming, and the hug we shared had the strength usually reserved for long-lost relatives or when the doctor says the bump is nothing to worry about. 

Then came baggage claim (always stressful), customs, the baggage re-check line, and the even longer security line—each delay eating into our connection time. Finally, we faced the long walk from Gate D30 to Gate D4. For the uninitiated, that’s nearly a kilometer, fifteen to twenty minutes at pace. 

So yes, settling into seats 14E and 14F felt like a true accomplishment. I closed my eyes for a well-deserved nap as the flight attendants shut the doors. That’s when the pilot came on the PA. 

He started off wrong: *“Welcome to Flight 1801 from Miami to beautiful Newark, N.J.”* His tone dripped with the same snideness “Laugh-In” used for its “Beautiful Downtown Burbank” gag. I grew up in New Jersey. I live in New Jersey. Newark is many things, but “beautiful” isn’t usually how people describe it. Still, Mr. Captain, you don’t get to disparage my state. Not your city. Not your place. 

Then came the real gut punch: *“We are all aware of the terrible events of last week. Charlie Kirk was a patriot…”* 

Whiskey. Tango. Foxtrot. 

Let’s start with basics. Airline pilots are bound by a code of conduct that limits PA announcements to operational information. (I checked: American Airlines strictly prohibits political commentary by captains.) In my 3.2 million miles on AA, I had never once heard a political pronouncement from the cockpit. Until now. 

Charlie Kirk was not a patriot. Not even close. 

Among other things, he said: *“One of the reasons we’re living through a constitutional crisis is that we no longer have a Christian nation, but we have a Christian form of government, and they’re incompatible.”* One cornerstone of our democracy is that it is secular. The Founders wrote extensively about the dangers of state religion, having seen the damage it wrought elsewhere. 

He also said: *“This is a Christian state. I’d like to see it stay that way.”* A patriot holds the Constitution sacred. Declaring the U.S. a “Christian state” undermines our founding principles and disqualifies you from that label. 

What Kirk was, is a Christian nationalist. That is not patriotism. Some might even call it a version of fascism. Despite his despicable death, he was a controversial political figure—not someone who should be eulogized over an airplane PA system. 

I sat in my seat and seethed. 

The fire was stoked by the fact that, just the day before, Jimmy Kimmel was suspended for saying: *“MAGA gang is desperately trying to characterize this kid who murdered Charlie Kirk as anything other than one of them, and doing everything they can to score political points from it.”* That was factually true. But ABC suspended him after the head of the FCC pressured networks, saying: *“We can do this the easy way or the hard way. These companies can find ways to change conduct … on Kimmel, or … there’s going to be additional work for the FCC ahead.”* He even said he wasn’t done yet in dealing with “perceived issues in the media ecosystem.” 

And this, from an FCC that said nothing when Brian Kilmeade suggested homeless people should be given involuntary lethal injections. To me, calling for the mass murder of the homeless in Nazi fashion is far worse than pointing out that MAGA was exploiting Kirk’s death. 

Somewhere over Delaware, I realized I was returning to a country I no longer recognized—a place where you can say anything you want as long as it aligns with MAGA principles. A country where you’re welcome only if you’re white and Christian. A place where empathy—dismissed by Kirk as a “made-up New Age term”—is reserved only for those who look and worship like you. 

It left me wondering why I came back at all.