I've devoted nearly a decade of my life trying to convince
people who I thought were decent, rational, and loving not to be deceived by
Trump’s phony religious
pandering or his transparent fake patriotism and to avoid being tricked by the
bigotry and fear he trafficked in.
I realize that in many ways I failed to read the room, even
if it was a room I’d spent my entire life
in. I’ve finally had to admit
that many of these people were not all that decent, rational, or loving after
all; that his cruelty, his violence, his hatred were what they wanted.
It wasn’t them not understanding him, but me not understanding them. They weren’t manipulated by him, they were
empowered by him. In so many cases, he didn’t
poison their hearts, he reflected them. They didn’t get fooled by a bigot,
they got freed by one.
And as we watch every conceivable assault on our systems of
finance, education, personal liberty, national security, and human rights being
laid to waste, we need to talk about cutting off his supporters for good.
It’s time to hold the
people in our lives accountable for their willing partnership with this filth.
We may need to finally sever ties with our family members, friends, neighbors,
and co-workers who still champion him. If they're going to continue their
unwavering allegiance to him as he openly tears apart the very foundation of
our democracy, sabotages our economy, preys upon vulnerable people, and
alienates us from our long-faithful global allies—at some point we’re obligated to declare
unequivocally that this isn’t something we’re willing to compromise
about.
There are tens of
millions of us who have danced around difficult conversations, endured awkward
holiday gatherings, and held our tongues in order to avoid conflict with people
who we’ve still ultimately let
off the hook by our presence. The time for that shit has long passed.
For a painful, frustrating, joy-sapping decade now, many of us
relentlessly believed in people’s ability to come to their senses, to have their humanity appealed to, to
reject this man’s brutality—if we could only find
the right words, if we could just help them see clearly. We believed that given
time, their goodness would eventually kick in.
It breaks my heart to say it, but that ship is long gone, and it’s filled with years of our lives we’ll never get back. It
turns out, all these efforts at understanding were wasted. I’m not saying they weren’t the right thing, but
they led us to where we are now. And as we stare into the abyss, we’re past the point of healthy compromise or a simple
agreement to disagree on debatable topics.
The path forward for this nation won’t be about everyone coming together, and it doesn’t need to be. It will be
about those of us who will not abide this brutality, standing together against
those who are celebrating it.
