Thread by @1JoshGreenberg

THREAD

HOW WE GOT HERE: PART XI—CONCLUSION: FINDING RECONCILIATION AND TOGETHERNESS

This thread contains excerpts from Part XI of “How We Got Here.” This part concludes the treatise, distilling key points and painting a moral vision for the future.

1/22
1joshgreenberg.medium.com/how-we-got-her…

“One day, when this nightmare is over, we will need a Truth, Justice, and Reconciliation Commission. In the Commission, among other things, we will have to ask ourselves hard questions about the conditions that have allowed extremism to take hold.”

2/22

1joshgreenberg.medium.com/how-we-got-her…

“Already, a pre-autopsy of how Trump took over America highlights crucial issues. Most of all, the greatest danger is not Trump himself. The greatest danger is the wedge that exists within our society.”

3/22

1joshgreenberg.medium.com/how-we-got-her…

“While we might have failed to address the deeper origins of our societal wedge over the past several decades, Trump's election in 2016 should have been a wake-up call.”

4/22

1joshgreenberg.medium.com/how-we-got-her…

“To date, rather than working toward eliminating the wedge, we have chosen to allow a demagogue to divide us further.”

5/22

1joshgreenberg.medium.com/how-we-got-her…

“Rather than focusing on universal human rights, we have become more preoccupied with different human identities. Rather than pursuing social justice while building unity and inclusion, we have fallen for a form of justice that drives divisions.”

6/22

1joshgreenberg.medium.com/how-we-got-her…

“Rather than responding to dehumanization with humanization, we have decided to respond with the original insult. And when we dehumanize other people, we otherize them, planting the false belief in our minds that we do not share the same humanity."

7/22

1joshgreenberg.medium.com/how-we-got-her…

“Consequently, we lose sight not only of our own capacity for dehumanization but of the common bonds that tie all of us on this planet together.”

8/22

1joshgreenberg.medium.com/how-we-got-her…

“We cannot sacrifice our principles in the fight for those same principles. Our means must be morally consistent with our ends.”

9/22

1joshgreenberg.medium.com/how-we-got-her…

“Now, we do not have the power to change our past. But we have the power to change our future. Even at this late moment in our crisis, we still have the opportunity to change course.”

10/22

1joshgreenberg.medium.com/how-we-got-her…

“But if this conflict is to be resolved by force—and there may seem to be no other option in the face of atrocity—we must recognize that, though war may appear to defeat hate, violence is only a form of suppression.”

11/22

1joshgreenberg.medium.com/how-we-got-her…

“As the hate may seem to dissipate and as our society may seem to stabilize for several decades following a war, we risk deceiving ourselves that we have defeated hate. But the roots of this hate will always remain in our soil, ready to resurrect.”

12/22

1joshgreenberg.medium.com/how-we-got-her…

“Anyone who believes we can continue to defeat this ill by outnumbering—or outpowering—the other side is gravely mistaken. Even if we outnumber a group, it will not disappear. Instead, structural fissures will continue to eat away at our society.”

13/22

1joshgreenberg.medium.com/how-we-got-her…

“Thus, until we revolutionize our social structures and address the underlying causes of extremist hate, the stain of hate will persist in our society, and we will never achieve social resilience.”

14/22

1joshgreenberg.medium.com/how-we-got-her…

“Additionally, we must remember that we will all lose in a war—victims and perpetrators alike. No matter how righteous our causes may be, they will mean nothing if we no longer exist.”

15/22

1joshgreenberg.medium.com/how-we-got-her…

“All of these realities also tell us about the central role of reconciliation following any conflict. Without an earnest effort toward reconciliation, the curse of violence will forever tear apart the fabric of our nation.”

16/22

1joshgreenberg.medium.com/how-we-got-her…

“In the Truth, Justice, and Reconciliation Commission, truth will be the beginning but not the end.”

17/22

1joshgreenberg.medium.com/how-we-got-her…

“While we must bring the leading criminals to justice, most people will have to engage in the monumental undertaking of reconciliation. This task must be rooted in truth and justice and will be most difficult following the trauma of conflict.”

18/22

1joshgreenberg.medium.com/how-we-got-her…

“It will require all of us to find a form of courage and strength that we never felt existed within us. The choice will be stark: a collective future or a collective death.”

19/22

1joshgreenberg.medium.com/how-we-got-her…

“Until we learn to be together, we will not be free.

“But when our many voices learn to sing in harmony, we will produce the symphony that is togetherness, ...”

20/22

1joshgreenberg.medium.com/how-we-got-her…

“... we will discover the real power of humanity, and we will watch the awesome sight as freedom and justice flow through all the waters and cover all the lands of the world.”

21/22

1joshgreenberg.medium.com/how-we-got-her…

22/22

https://twitter.com/1JoshGreenberg/status/1313296081489260544