Chile once again showed how democracy works: transparent, efficient, trusted. Votes counted by hand. Institutions respected. Results accepted.

And yet, the outcome was José Antonio Kast, a far-right president elected using a playbook we know too well. The same script used by Trump in the United States, Bolsonaro in Brazil, Milei in Argentina.

Fear. Fear of immigrants. Fear of crime. A relentless narrative of collapse, despite data, statistics, and international studies that place Chile among the most stable and successful nations in the region.

In Chile, this narrative was amplified by a media ecosystem controlled by a handful of the country’s wealthiest families, repeating the message until fear began to feel like common sense.

What’s happening now echoes a pattern too many know by heart: Governments cloaking themselves in “values” while punishing dissent. Opposition cast as enemies. Cruelty dressed up as order. Violence excused in the name of stability.

These aren’t distant memories. They are living patterns, repeating, mutating, reasserting themselves under different flags and faces.

Success doesn’t dull the memory. If anything, it sharpens the contrast, and the obligation to speak.

So, I ask the question many of us are afraid to ask:

Why do people vote for leaders who threaten them?

Why does a woman vote for a man who boasts about assaulting women, who believes her place is obedience, not autonomy?

Why does an LGBTQ+ person vote for leaders who deny their humanity?

Why does a poor person vote for someone who despises the poor?

Why does an immigrant support policies designed to erase the next immigrant?

The easy answer is ignorance. It’s comforting. And wrong.

The truth is more uncomfortable: People don’t always vote to protect their dignity. They often vote to protect their position.

Ballots become mirrors of an unspoken hierarchy: As long as someone is beneath me, I must be doing okay.

The Latino immigrant who doesn’t want more Latinos.

The woman who calls independent women “angry” or “conflictive.”

The worker who defends billionaires while drowning in debt.

It isn’t stupidity. It’s fear, mixed with aspiration, the hope that proximity to power will offer safety.

But history is clear: authoritarianism does not reward loyalty. It consumes it.

Democracy is strong when we recognize one another as equals. It becomes fragile when money and power decide whose life matters.

I keep losing elections. Trump won. Kast won. By large margins.

But losing elections is not the same as losing values.

We, the humans, will continue to choose dignity over dominance. People over profit. Human development over the worship of power.

Because democracy doesn’t die in a single vote. It dies when enough people decide their worth depends on someone else having less.

And I refuse to be successful at the cost of another human being’s humanity.