NIGHTMARE OVER! WAYS TO HEAL THE RIFT…

It has been a long five days since Election Day, but it was well worth the wait for those of us ridin’ with Biden.

 

Our painfully longer (four years’-long) national/international/global nightmare will be OVER on January 20, 2021 at noon. HALLELUJAH! (Providing they can keep the self-absorbed “jilted lover” from doing something to end us all before that fine day. There is still that concern…)

 

I am so relieved I feel I could dance on the ceiling.

 

And yet… and yet…

 

I know that on the other end of this duplex-like home, my sister is painfully disappointed and even worse. She’s afraid!

 

It’s crucial that we all treat each other–yes, even hard-core GOP Trump supporters– with kindness and concern.  Rubbing salt in their wounds, or appearing too delighted about this outcome, won’t engender the conversations that we need to start having to heal ourselves from the toxicity that the past four years has engendered.

 

Hate can’t drive out hate.

Only love and immense patience can do that.

 

Because they’re mostly under-educated folks, they’re living in mortal fear of “the other.”

 

The powers that be on the dark side have capitalized on their fears for decades now, and they have embraced and internalized the lessons. They’re victims of misinformation and disinformation. They may even be so far around the bend that they’ve become cultists. (I think this is the case with my sister and her son. All they read and listen to is far-right propaganda.)

 

That doesn’t make them evil. It makes them pitiable. (All except the sociopaths and psychopaths among them. That minority of folks appear irredeemable.)

 

Now, I realize there  is a vast “difference of opinion” as to how we should treat these folks. Some want to gloat. Some want to make fun of their gullibility.

 

I want to get them to repent. (Not spiritually, but information-wise.) I want them to take their blinders off, look around and see the friends and family members they have and love who were, and always are, put at risk by the policies that far right evangelical leaders and politicians put forth.

 

I have a meme on my wall. It reads, “May you never know the fear of having your human rights challenged every time there is an election, and may you never know the pain of watching loved ones vote against your right to exist fully, equally, and authentically.”

 

I think appealing to their humanity, and to our civil rights as Americans (which are rights NOT just for straight, cisgender, white supremacist white men and women), should be enough to sway them from their delusions.

 

My sister has black, brown, red and yellow friends and acquaintances. And she has me as a transgender sibling.

 

Does she treat us all equally? No, sadly.

 

But she doesn’t treat us badly, necessarily, or as if we don’t have equal civil rights under the law.

 

BUT THE GOP IS DOING EVERYTHING IN ITS POWER TO LIMIT OUR ABILITY TO ACHIEVE “life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness” in favor of cisgender white male supremacist oligarchs.

 

She has suffered under their policies, too, but she has never stood up for herself when it happened. Why? Fear. She wants to placate them, keep them feeling favorable to her.

 

So she votes against her own best interests and those of her most cherished loved ones (except for her privileged, college-educated, cisgender white far right evangelical son. She follows his lead like a lemming).  She would do anything to retain his love and approval.

 

And that’s a huge mistake, from where I stand. If she could lose his love–or he, hers–by voting for policies that level the playing field for all of her other loved ones, then it isn’t really love at all.  It’s sycophant behavior.

 

I don’t have the answer, but I know the answer isn’t ridicule, hatred or shunning.  As Mister (Fred) Rogers counseled, “Everything human is mentionable, and everything mentionable is manageable.”

 

Mister Rogers is one Republican who should be revered and modeled by the GOP. Alas, that isn’t the case.  He is actually reviled by a great many people on the far right.

 

And that may be the genesis of the problem, right there. When decency, compassion, careful listening and encouragement to conduct oneself with honor becomes a sticking point, so does the term “civilization” itself.

 

It isn’t weak to turn the other cheek. It isn’t weak to tackle tough conversations. It isn’t weak to do our best to inhabit other people’s lives so we can come to an understanding of why they see things differently than we do. Walking a mile in someone else’s shoes usually ends well. We learn, we understand, we develop compassion for their struggle and for the roadblocks that are placed before them just because they aren’t running the show.

 

The only things I’m intolerant of are cruelty and bigotry in any of their shapes or forms.  Human beings are capable of being stewards, and we should act like them. It isn’t always (or even terribly frequently) all about us.

 

“Whatever you do to/for the least of these, you do to/for me.”

You’d think far right evangelicals would embrace that notion.

 

I think we’d have a better, saner world if we all did.