Because our society has a deep and ruinous disease of “being polite” about terrible people who do harm to the moral netting which protects the vulnerable.
Our culture teaches us to dance around harsh truths about terrible people.
1/
Good people have been worn down over centuries of indoctrination to think there is actually a virtue in pulling up short of attacking threats to our wellbeing with an unrestrained venom.
That model favors abusers.
It favors abuse.
2/
People delude themselves into thinking they are somehow doing a great job by politely maintaining an absence of discomfort while terrible people go unchecked.
That is bullshit. Until we “good hearted people” get much more okay with setting public fire to assholes, we’re fucked.
Our side of the aisle is woefully poor at getting this.
All of this servile devotion to norms and manners gets societies under threat nothing but destroyed.
Getting along with terrible people by sitting silent is a failure of cowardice. This isn’t a cotillion. It’s a war.
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Yesterday, my son and I went away on a one-night trip. We had just checked into our hotel room. I sat down on the bed and opened my phone to find a ton of unread texts from my friends waiting.
One of our other friends, one of my best friends growing up, is very sick.
1/
I am still in shock.
Having gone through my mother-in-law’s cancer, I’m no stranger to having to compartmentalize.
So, I pulled it together; cordoned off that news for a few hours; and was present with my son for dinner and then a concert.
2/
I stepped out of the room to get coffee this morning and there waiting just outside the compartment I managed to put it in for the night was the news of my friend’s diagnosis.
I’m in shock. I’m devastated. And maybe worst of all, I’m familiar.
3/
If we were a thoughtful society, this pandemic would have taught us that forced commutes to office parks - which are ecological disasters - is a terrible practice.
We turn green spaces into heat-absorbent pavement farms so people can unnecessarily go to offices they don’t need.
The amount of chemicals we dump on office park landscaping to make its ornamental green spaces look pretty is a sin.
The amount of land we consume with largely unused parking lots, also a sin.
And every large company in the country just learned firsthand, they don’t need them.
One of my secret getaways during the pandemic was an office park that was largely shuttered due to COVID.
Here, at the foot of the property, is a grassy area with no actual purpose. It has no path, no use, no proximity to offices.
That little Giving Garden - those little rows of raised beds tended by strangers - produces 70,000 pounds of fresh produce a year.
Since its founding, it has provided fresh, organic produce to over 200,000 families.
2/
Fresh produce is expensive.
Food-insecure families cannot afford the makings for a salad. They can’t afford a trip to the farmer’s market. They can’t afford local summer corn or fresh fruit.
When a food budget tightens to the point of choking, fresh produce is one of the cuts.