Look, if you're still with the president or you still affiliate with his party, you're a bad person. You chose evil, you're bad. That's it.
Is that divisive? I guess.
Separating children from their parents and shunting them to military bases, even caring so little where they go you lose them by the hundreds is divisive, too.
If we are to unite around that? Then let the divide grow.
Separating children from their parents and shunting them to military bases, even caring so little where they go you lose them by the hundreds is divisive, too.
If we are to unite around that? Then let the divide grow.
The idea of “convincing the other side” is a trap.
They think what Trump is and what Trump does is good. Trump happened because they wanted a Trump to happen. There’s no convincing. They’re convinced already.
There’s opposing.
They think what Trump is and what Trump does is good. Trump happened because they wanted a Trump to happen. There’s no convincing. They’re convinced already.
There’s opposing.
Maybe opposing looks like this: Refusing complicity. Not letting people infer through your silence that you think their beliefs are good and just and true, rather than unjust and harmful.
Maybe opposing looks like this: refusing distraction. Not allowing the existence of an unjust person’s good qualities to distract from the fact that this person’s beliefs are unjust and will make abuse not only likely, but also inevitable
Maybe it looks like this: Refusing to be confused. Insisting on the truth. Not accepting a deflecting flurry of lies. Not accepting a false reality.
Maybe it looks like this: Refusing to ignore. Not giving in to the temptation of comfortable apathy.
Maybe it looks like this: Refusing debate with someone whose methods and purposes are abusive, simply on the grounds that they are being abusive and you refuse to be abused.
Maybe it looks like this: Reporting a crime being committed by a powerful person against a powerless person.
Maybe it looks like this: Putting your body between somebody who might be harmed and the person who intends to harm them—without violence, if possible, and if you possess sufficient physical bravery.
Maybe it looks like this: Listening to somebody talk about their lived experience of oppression without deciding the conversation needs your perspective. Understanding that some conversations only need your ears, not your voice.
Maybe it looks like this: Listening to somebody explain the lies they’ve believed, allowing them to present you the contours of their inhumanity, and then asking: “But aren’t you aware that every human being is a unique and irreplaceable work of art carrying unsurpassable worth?”
Maybe it looks like this: refusing to scold a person who happens to live under daily persistent threat from powerful people for the tone or methods they use to cope and survive.
Maybe it’s supporting people whose family faces separation, whose marriage faces nullification, whose child faces hatred, who represents a presumed danger to armed authorities—and supporting them even if their responses to these outrages are not as polite as you might prefer.
Maybe it looks like this: allowing yourself to absorb some of the criticism, and even some of the daily threat, and maybe even some of the abuse, by associating with people who have been made vulnerable by an unjust society, and who therefore are feared by that society.
Maybe it's recognizing the places where you are society's accepted and preferred default, and the ways that other people are not
Maybe it looks like not being able to be around somebody for a while, not because you no longer love them, but because things are not the same, now that you know what they are willing to accept.
Maybe it looks like taking to the streets in protest. Maybe it looks like calling your representative every day. Maybe it looks like a sign in your yard. Maybe it looks like a post on your Facebook page. Maybe it looks like a massive Twitter thread.
Maybe it means letting things get uncomfortable and stay that way.
Here’s what it always, always, always looks like: Insisting on keeping the frame of the discussion at all times on the issue of justice.
Insisting that we all belong to each other.
Insisting that life is not earned.
Insisting that violence does not redeem.
Insisting that human value is not determined by human profitability.
Insisting that life is not earned.
Insisting that violence does not redeem.
Insisting that human value is not determined by human profitability.
Insisting that all people—all people—are unique and irreplaceable works of art carrying unsurpassable worth, who possess inherent dignity, and who deserve equal consideration under the law and access to basic human need, simply because they exist.
Insisting that all other good things—peace, prosperity, order, law—are only good insofar as they are not elevated above this essential truth.
Insisting that any good thing that is elevated above this essential truth ceases to become good, is perverted into an injustice.
Insisting that any order that would preserve injustice must be dismantled and rebuilt.
Insisting that any order that would preserve injustice must be dismantled and rebuilt.
If that's the conversation we insist upon, we will have a conversation reframed upon a justice based on love. It recognizes all mediums of human art. Insist upon this new frame. Reject all others.
Doing so will offend those of us who have different priorities.
Good.
Doing so will offend those of us who have different priorities.
Good.
