Cruelty Begets Cruelty

It's Fun To Fall Apart Online

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They are hiding behind their rage and grief to avoid looking at what they are doing. Their grief and rage is real, and it very hard to hold space for that when our grief and rage is belittled and dismissed, every time.

Their feelings are treated as facts, ours treated as punchlines. For years.

Our rage at Trump's censorship interpreted as a personal attack on the life of a murdered man. Kimmel lied, I am told. Said Robinson was MAGA when evidence suggested he might be but was inconclusive (which I said at the time). Trump told us the entire left was responsible before the body was cold. Where's the rage on my behalf?

Cruelty begets cruelty. Brutalization makes brutes. The right laughed at or ignored dead liberals and leftists for years. Made light of Melissa Hortman, for example, or forgot who she was entirely. Not everyone on the right participated, but few denounced it. There are reasons we're desensitized. It was a joke to you, but it wasn’t funny to us. Maybe now you understand why.

I want to be better than that -- for my own sake, not for theirs. I don't want to give in to this zeitgeist of callousness, to lose sight of the value of human life. I don't want to lose the empathy they describe as a sin and a weakness. I don't agree.

It's very, very hard right now. I'm not doing a good job of it, not online and not in my heart. I have become calloused and indifferent to the loss of human life, including my own. Our choice is to fully embrace the value of our own lives and shut up, or to become indifferent and continue to speak.

Last night I found myself wondering if there was anything I could have done to stop this -- personally, politically, spiritually. It's a subtle shift. Before last night, I would ask myself what I could do to stop it.

Too late.

Trump has declared war. The expectation seems to be that we surrender and apologize for all past disagreement. And we're not going to. I don't know how to fight that war while remaining emotionally connected to this world. We have to figure it out, but I don't know how.

Sincere thank you to the people on the right who reached out, publicly and privately. You've reminded me that a human being died and left behind bereaved friends. It is DEEPLY unfair that the empathy seems not to go both ways, but who I am should not depend on who others are.

I would ask that you consider that I'm scared out of my mind. That they have just declared Antifa a terrorist organization and that this encompasses people who think and speak like me.

I don't expect it. I'm not naive, I know what time it is. We're too far down this path for anyone to turn back now. Your rage prevents you from doing this, protects you from the reality of our humanity in the exact same way our callousness protects us, and you’ve been doing it for longer than we have. I know there are nasty lefty pockets online, there are always nasty pockets online. Large swaths of the right have laughed at memes about running down protesters, even as cars followed through, for years. There are no mainstream Democratic politicians reveling in death or posting memes like this one.

I would ask that you consider that it was devastating when Melissa Hortman’s death was either ignored or became a punchline, that we saw no right-wing rage on her behalf. That Trump ditched her funeral and forgot her name. I don't expect it. Trump has made a career out of demeaning dead rivals and it has generated no widespread Republican denunciation, no censure, no massive wave of outrage. Why should anything change now?

I would ask that you remember that human rights are bigger than your grief, bigger than any of us. God, nature, whatever: it is our duty to preserve these things for ourselves and for future generations. I don't expect it. Trump has betrayed our country, and recognizing that after years of support may be impossible. When your identity is so tied up in something, it’s very hard to extract yourself from it and remain intact as a person. Ask me how I know.

I'm very sad and very tired. I have a very late draft to finish. I'm going to try to find the right combination of stimulants to make it through this day. I won't be checking messages or social media or the news. The horrors will have to wait until tomorrow.

I just want this to stop.

But it won't.