One of the most damaging tropes in public discourse is the idea that there is some posture that normal decent people just trying to live their lives can take toward conservative Christians and other American fascists that will be deferential enough to preclude their oppression.
There is no appeasement or strategic retreat that will convince them to permit people to just live their lives.
Nothing other than full surrender to their exact specifications will stop them from smiling and praying for you as they lovingly lower you into the boiling oil.
The only strategies we should accept are: witness to their hatred w/o room for debate; moral clarity about our own entanglement with their oppressive structures, resolute hope to believe liberation is possible, and uncompromising defiance of their grotesque methods and beliefs.
This is why I reject calls to "appeal to their better angels." No group who ever performed atrocities against their fellow humans ever did so before 1st convincing themselves they were uniquely good.
They already worship their "better angels." They don't need our help.
Christian fascists need total control but they demand to be seen as good while receiving it. Take that away from them. Refuse to give that to them. See them exactly as they are, and reflect what they do to their fellow humans back to them.
That's witness.
What makes this trope so noxious is that it makes oppression the fault of the oppressed, for failing to be deferential enough—a framing that defends and reinforces the total blamelessness Christian fascists demand.
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