I Am Nobody’s Girl”: On Identity, Power, and the Cost of Blind Loyalty

When I saw a young woman proudly calling herself “Trump Girl,” I didn’t feel anger. I felt sadness.

Not because she is young or wrong, but because she has fused her identity with power. She is not standing with someone; she is standing inside someone else’s shadow. And history shows that when young people turn themselves into extensions of authority, they lose access to their own perception.

It reminded me of my younger self—terrified, shaking, but clear. Clear enough to say no.

I once worked in an environment ruled by corrupt, nasty men—men who later went to jail for racketeering and extortion. At the time, I didn’t know that when I pleaded my case to Bob, the general managers were listening from the next room.

The older one burst into the office, got in my face, and spat:
“You are a Cheetah girl first, and you can only work here on Sundays.”

I answered him:
“I am not a Cheetah girl. I am not a Bourbon girl. I am nobody’s girl. If I can’t work here, I’m not working for you at all.”

I walked out to my car, trembling inside—but intact.

That moment lives at the heart of A Dance to Freedom. It is the difference between fear that silences and fear that tells the truth anyway.

What “Trump Girl” Represents

When a young woman calls herself “Trump Girl,” she is not expressing independence. She is surrendering it. She is borrowing certainty from someone else’s aggression.

This is not new. Power has always recruited youth by offering:

• Belonging instead of thinking

• Certainty instead of complexity

• A strong man instead of a conscience

In exchange, it asks for loyalty—not to truth, but to narrative.

That is why disagreement feels like treason, and why defending sovereignty gets twisted into “defending criminals.” Thinking becomes dangerous. Feeling becomes optional.

“A Country of Laws”—Until It Isn’t

Recently, a 37-year-old American citizen, a white woman, a mother of three, was shot and killed by an ICE agent in Minneapolis after dropping her six-year-old child at school.

This is not abstraction. This is not “border chaos.” This is a dead woman. Children without a mother.

And it brings back something an old co-writer once told me during heated debates:
“America is a country of laws.”

I wonder what rationalizations he will manufacture now.

Because when loyalty to power replaces allegiance to law, people always invent explanations. They have to. The alternative—to admit they empowered lawlessness—is too painful.

Internal Freedom vs. External Force

This is why I have been insisting, again and again, that true liberation must come from within.

Maduro, whether one liked him or not, was a Venezuelan problem for Venezuelans to solve. Just as Trump is our problem to confront as Americans. Outsourcing justice to external force is how sovereignty dies—quietly, with applause.

The only exception in history is collective defense against aggression, as when nations united to stop Hitler. Venezuela did not attack the U.S. Greenland did not attack the U.S. Minneapolis was not a battlefield.

Calling everything “security” does not make it lawful.

The Human Cost of Sleeping Through Power

Being “woke” is mocked now, but being awake has always been dangerous to those who want obedience. What they really mean by “woke” is refusing to sleepwalk into submission.

The young woman calling herself “Trump Girl” is not evil. She is asleep inside someone else’s story. One day, reality may wake her up—often harshly.

I hope she survives that moment.

As for me, I learned long ago that fear does not excuse surrender. Even trembling, even alone, it is still possible to say:

I am nobody’s girl.

And no country, no technology mogul, no strongman gets to own my mind, my voice, or my conscience.