on monsters and mirrors

 

In the aftermath of chaos and the great lifted weight of a screaming, terrible toddler on our collective chests, now so much of the news calls for unity.  Biden himself, classy dude that he is, says much of the same.  It would be easier if the Rebublican foes were of the old, Reaganish sort.  Nice to your face while secretly harboring their racism, their sexism,  their privilege, moral conditioning when it comes to sexuality, their fucked up priorities of money and big businesss over citizens. Such were the Republican days of yore---toxic, but much more politely toxic. Trumpkins were a particulary loud version of this, not even content to hide their awfulness in handshakes and policy, but screaming, running angrily through the capital building. twisted faces, full of violence. 

In the beginning, in late 2016. not seeing the impending damage and body count something like the pandemic would bring, I feared this most.  That Trumpf's win would make it okay to hate again.  To be awful and terrible.  That those guys--the truck driving, flag waving bigots, the snithering fwapping incels, the rabid maskless Karens--- would think it was okay to slither out of their homes (where they'd been hiding like roaches during the Obama administration)  and into the light.  That they mattered, that what they thought was okay somehow--something to be doubled down on and not shamed away. And over the years, they got more comfortable and ultimately, the result was what has been happening the last few months. On one journalists footage, a man in an orange hoodie, outside the capital yelling "This is not who we are!"  Sorry sir, but look around, but it kind of is...

But where is common ground to even be found with these people.  They are not okay.  Their opinions are not okay. Do you allow one sibling to bully and berate the other and write it off as differing sides? One child to pick up a stick and beat the other senseless in the name of free speech?  One is good, full of empathy and humanity.  The other is monstrous. There is a meme that says as much, how we will never find common ground with people who wear "6 million was not enough" on t-shirts. The kind of people who instead of protesting with signs and chants outside the capital, break in through windows with fists full of zip ties and bludgeon a cop with a fire extinguisher. Who are ready to hang a vice-president, who admittedly  gross and slippery in his own way, then toes the (mostly) party line, and shrugs it off. This is not okay.  These people, not okay.  I think the sooner we admit that and give up the illusion of unity, the better. 

Perhaps the only way toward progress is to hold a mirror up to the monsters so they can see their own monstrousness, and very much I think the events of January 6th were a start. There were very certainly people, watching from home and listening to the news who were horrified  and began to shift at least their allegiances, if not their nature. It's a start...