We have, obviously, all found ourselves at a moment in American history where it is obvious that the people we know, and we ourselves, are either onboard with the destruction of the fragile and tenuous fingerhold the United States of American have always had on democracy or we are resisting that destruction. We are either for it or against it and those who are on the opposite side of this Great Wall of history are no longer people we can trust. For some of us, that isn’t a huge shift and for some it is terrifying, disappointing, surprising, and paralyzing.
People who love easily and completely are the most affected by this discovery. People, like me, who have a hard time trusting anyone because of years of disappointment and rejection just see this as a logical extension of everything we have experienced our whole lives. In a weird, self-selecting way, being an atheist in the most superstitious 1st world nation has made me oddly able to view almost everything about life in Middle America (geographically and economically) from an outsider. My mother died, painfully and unhappily because every adult in her life (except her younger sister) had lied to her about the cancer that was taking her life. Being surrounded by that level of pious cowardice from my father and her doctors and the Methodist Church to which our family belonged, even at the age of nine, was eye-opening and enlightening. Obviously, I hope, the constant “God works in mysterious ways” bullshit that spewed from those adults’ mouths after she died did nothing for my hope and faith in either magic, gods, or adults. At least that is how I explain my total lack of religion because I can date the beginning of my spiritual rebellion to when I had to learn to make my own way while my father wallowed in self-pity and isolated himself in his school office (“grading papers,” his evasive introverted tactic until he retired) until long after my brother and I went to sleep.
For people who are naturally inclined to hope for the best from their neighbors, friends, and family, this moment in history is tragically painful. They are having to come to terms with the fact that many of the people whose behavior they had excused for years are not who they had hoped. For those with parents and older and younger siblings and relatives and even progeny who have exposed themselves to be horrible people with practically transparent skin of camouflaging decency, usually provided by the excuse of religion, this experience is startling, discouraging, disappointing, and emotionally draining. This is one of those, many, moments when “a pessimist is what optimists call ‘realists.’” You’ve been fooling yourself in a futile attempt to create community with those who do not value anything but their own narrow interests.
As far as the folks “on the other side,” if you are onboard with the Republican Party of 2025, you are either a gullible fool or a fascist. There is no middle ground. You might be a stupid fascist or a bandit fascist, but either way you are the enemy of decency, fairness, justice, equality and equity, and the US Constitution. I don’t mean the “opponent” of those things, either. I mean the enemy and one who needs to be defeated in exactly the same manner as the last batch of Nazi fascists were dispatched, if not more ruthlessly. There were good and bad reasons for using the atomic bomb on Japan’s cities, just like there were similar reasons for not doing that to Berlin, but it’s hard to imagine that this battle isn’t going to end up just as brutal, expensive, and dangerous for all life on this planet.
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