Now you know what you would have done

[drwex]

I give up. I've struggled with this entry for too long. It has deep threads that go into every area of my life and many of my beliefs. Like any such thing, I find I learn more every time I open it up. I am also reminded that I believe incomplete and contradictory things. Godel would be proud, I hope. I keep trying to say things and failing and deleting and rewriting and reading things written by people who've said this or that bit of it better than I and then more awful racist hateful shit emits from Trump's mouth and I'm struck dumb again.

A friend wrote this not long ago: I didn't plan to say anything, but it's hard not to, isn't it?

If you are a person of conscience, a person of moral character, yes, it is very hard not to. At least some of you are old enough to remember as deeply and painfully as I do why we wore "Silence = Death" tee shirts. To do nothing, to say nothing, has ceased to be a valid option. Team Sideline no longer plays in this league. There are now two very clearly defined sides: this side and "fucking Nazis." Our president and his supporters from Putin and David Duke on down are simply wrong to equate them in any way. Voices from across the country, from across the political spectrum, have stated this eloquently, unequivocally, and forcefully. If you are so committed to your support of Trump, or your dislike of other politicians, that you are willing to ignore, excuse, or condone sympathy with Nazis and traitors then you and I likely have nothing further to discuss.

If you ever wondered what you would have done in Germany in 1935, look around. Now you know what you would have done - what you're doing right now, today.

Comments

[drwex]

Your responses to my journal posts, across several examples, are almost always entirely negative, critical, and often come across as sounding harsh and derogatory. Is that your intention? It's not how we interact in person, so I'm genuinely curious if you're deliberately doing something different when you write here.

[wotw]

If there's anything personal, it's buried so deep that I'm unaware of it --- and I think that's quite unlikely.

In the present case, I think that likening the US today to Germany in 1935 is about as ridiculous thing as I've ever heard, and I'm sure I'd have said so no matter who I'd heard it from. And I say that as one who is, I'm near sure, far far more concerned than the average American about the fragility of our freedom, prosperity and security in the age of Donald Trump. Given the content of your post, I can't imagine that I'd have said anything different, or said it any differently, no matter who I was responding to. So once again, there was nothing personal here.

As far as there being any sort of pattern, again I'm not aware of one. Maybe if I were pointed to a whole lot of examples, I'd suddenly recognize some personal agenda I was, until now, wholly unaware of. But I doubt that very much. I think it's more likely that you've recently said several things I very much disagreed with.

For the record, you once (and only once, as far as I remember) said something in the comments on my blog that I thought was so gratuitously insulting and indefensible that I started moderating your posts. But with that one exception, I've always been glad for your comments. More than once, you've given me new and valuable ways to see things. So overall I think of you as someone who is well worth paying attention to. Also, for what it's worth, I happen to like you.