Just so you understand what Republicans are, this is a mainstream Republican. If you are Republican and you think this doesn’t represent you, you are a fringe Republican. It’s not pleasant but it’s true. Elected Republicans are catering to him not to you.
What if my church loves Catholics but we simply believe (as a matter of deep religious conviction of course) that they are sinful heretics and as such we must not allow them to be around children or be hired in schools (strictly as a matter of personal conscience)?
“I’m not a bigot, but … altar boys? Cannibalism? How do I explain that to my kids?”
Before redemption comes reparation.
Before reparation, repentance.
Before repentance, confession.
Before confession, acknowledgement.
Before acknowledgement, awareness.
People benefitting from a wrong will do anything to prevent this sequence. So they attack each step—as we see.
America is a country best understood using dynamics of abuse and enablement.
What abusers want are the gifts of redemption without the cost of reparation.
What enablers want is the refuge of comfortable lies, which insulate them from the inconvenience of caring.
As we see.
Knowledge of a wrong carries a moral imperative to acknowledge it.
Acknowledgement carries one to confess it.
Confession, to repent of it.
Repentance, to repair it.
And so, among people who presently benefit from wrong, there grows a powerful desire not to know.
Friedersdorf could use his platform to admonish these parents that it’s worth seeking out an accurate understanding of CRT rather than continue protesting in ignorance.
Tellingly, he instead uses it to admonish us to seek out a better understanding of their ignorant ideas.
It’s so weird how there’s never a burden on white conservatives to convince us of their sweaty-brained conspiracies, yet the burden on others to convince white conservatives to relinquish those conspiracies in favor of reality is enduring and everlasting and unquestioned.
Some believe that white conservatives are the main characters of America and that all others exist in context of them. This assumption comes out in a hundred different ways, including the unexamined assumption that all propositions are invalid without white conservative approval.
If the Democrats currently in charge of both legislatures and the executive branch don't immediately start treating the Republican Party as an enemy to national security instead of as trusted colleagues, I'm not sure what stops the installation of Dictator Trump in 2024.
It won't be Mitt Romney's narrowly parsed fits of dignity, or Ben Sasse's vapid disingenuous heavy sighs or Susan Collins' concern or Joe Manchin's disappointment that will prevent this grim fate from coming to pass, I assure you.
Some people seem to see the work of a public servant to involve making sure people’s lives are unbearably difficult, and I simply don’t think we ought to pay the salaries of such people.