Please stop telling people to not be afraid. Please stop telling people to just “get over it.” Or to “move on.” Or “just come together already.” Or to just change the topic to talking about football or some shit instead.
Stop it.
We just went through a gut-wrenching election in this country, where, yet again, the person who got the most votes (by 574,000 votes and counting …) also got the privilege of losing the election. And it was no normal election. It was an election whose victor prodded his crowds with Muslim, Mexican, Chinese, and gay straw men to get them excited to vote for him. An election whose loser ran on a slogan of togetherness to help children and families and whose winner ran to build a wall, exclude foreigners, deport millions, and take away hard-fought civil rights for others.
But now … oh well … that’s done. Right?
So, your side won. Or at least by not participating, because you childishly think you should have been presented with a choice that was perfect for you, you now feel like it’s not “on you.” And you just don’t want to listen to people being upset. Well, tough shit.
Let people grieve. They’re not fighting, they’re crying. They’re not lashing out, they’re crawling into a corner. They’re not attacking you with their posts on social media, they’re venting their overflowing emotions. So let them.
The people who are protesting are doing so peacefully and in a spirit of solidarity, because they need to feel the presence of others nearby who feel the same way. So let them.
If you’re the bigger person that you like to pretend to be, then let them be sad and let them express their fear. Let them cry. Let them vent. Let them gather. Let them march. If you’re the bigger person, then be the bigger person. This will all hopefully pass, and when it does, be ready to work with the people who are littering your Facebook feed with their fears. But being the bigger person doesn’t mean that you get to tell them how to feel.
Because their fear is real. Their fear is justified. Their fear is legitimate. And you have no right to try to take that away from them. It’s not your place to decide for them whether or not they get to be scared.
One big reason for this is that most of you out there telling others to get over it have nothing to fear. I see you: white, straight, middle class, Christian (either practicing or just runs in your family). Regardless of what horror show may or may not come to pass over the next few years, you already have a pass for the worst of it by virtue of the lottery of your birth.
I know because I am one of you. I’m a straight white male with a decent job and no criminal history or a file with the FBI that shows me previously fomenting revolution. If the worst comes to pass, I will survive just fine. My parents and sibling will survive. Many of my closest blood relatives will survive. If we keep our heads down, don’t make trouble, and pretend to not hear the worst of what happens around us, we’ll come out the end ok.
At the very worst, I can take the cowardly way out. I can take the Loyalty Oath, get sized for a uniform and jackboots, and fitted for an armband. I can garner favor with my new masters by turning in my Jewish wife and family and tell them who in the neighborhood is hiding the “ragheads.” With a college education, I can probably even get a desk job pushing papers instead of a guard duty job leading people to the showers. (I mean, someone with a decent grasp of arithmetic has to keep the tally, right?)
If that dystopian future does arrive, I like to think that I will have the courage to stand and fight, instead of taking that seat behind that desk. I like to think that I will be hiding my newly refugee neighbors in my attic. I like to think that I will take up arms against the armies of hate. But as the fates and choices of millions of otherwise “good” Nazis, Stalinists, Fascists, Maoists, Khmer Rougists, Baathists, Falangists, and many, many more throughout history prove, don’t be too quick to discount the power of self-preservation.
But even in that unbelievably horrific scenario … I’d survive. I have that luxury.
Tens of millions of people in this country don’t share that luxury with me. Their brown skin would doom them. Their religion would doom them. Their ethnicity would doom them. Their gender would doom them. Whom they love would doom them.
Given the obvious divergence of our potential fates, I have no right to tell my fellow human beings that they shouldn’t be afraid, or that their fear is unjustified.
Their fear is real. It’s tangible. It’s justified. Let them express it if they are brave enough to do so, because there are millions more who are too afraid to express their own pain and need the catharsis of seeing others voicing theirs.
Whether or not the worst comes to pass tomorrow is not an accurate gauge for the validity of their fears today.
So if you actually care, instead of just narcissistically wanting to not listen to it, then repeat this mantra with me:
Your fear is real.
Your fear is justified.
And I will fight every day to make sure that what you fear never becomes a reality.
And now go repeat that until you actually believe it. And say it to your friends and loved ones who are afraid. Because if the worst does come to pass, and you want to be on the just side of history instead of sitting at a desk keeping a ledger of the bodies, then you’re going to need to be all in.