Coming off of five years of Trump vitriol in our national politics (epitomized by Twitter name-calling and straight-faced lies for purely political purposes), which quickly leaked into and poisoned many everyday interactions, I have been feeling cautiously optimistic. Joe Biden is not perfect -- I didn't vote for him in the primary, and would still rather see someone closer to my mindset in office -- but he is a decent human being with decent human impulses, unlike the immediate past president. He's experienced enough to know what to look out for in foreign relations, he's able and willing to operate under the rule of law, and he accepts the premises of a democratic republic.
It used to be that these underlying paradigms were common enough that they would not be remarked upon. That is no longer the case, but it is to be devoutly hoped for in the future. Now that we know that a whole bunch of people (cough cough Trump Republicans cough) don't have foresight, think the rule of law is for fools, and don't actually want a democratic anything, let alone a republic -- now that we know that, we need to explicitly and dare I say stridently advocate for those principals. Every day. Every damn time someone acts like the New Normal is acceptable and expected.
Voting for and loudly proclaiming pernicious lies is in fashion, and it's contagious. There's always the people who want to fight fire with fire. An eye for an eye! (Do we really all want to be blind?) A tooth for a tooth! (If I can't eat, no one eats!) To the end of their race! (Sorry, I've been teaching A Tale of Two Cities, and Madame Defarge is heavily on my mind right now)
It's contagious and sick. We are coming off of a pandemic, but we carry the real pandemic inside. Martin Luther King Jr had the right idea when he pointed out that "darkness cannot drive out darkness; only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate; only love can do that."
We are still fighting the innate racism of America, but now it's spread from fear and hatred of humans whose skin is a different hue to a twisted tribalism that also hates humans who wear or don't wear masks. There is no united states, there is only Us and Them. If you are not with Us, you are against Us. But my friends! Without intending to sound like a bad hippie trope from the early 70s, all we need is love.
Love can drive out hate. Love can light the darkness. Love will help us all feel human again. I don't currently love the people who wholeheartedly bought into the Big Lie and all of its accoutrements. I will work on that. We should work on that. But first, we need to acknowledge what we are facing and identify it out loud. We need to explicitly state the solution (which is love) and then identify when we explicitly use that solution. And keep on identifying and deploying this love vaccine until the spiritual pandemic subsides.
It can be done. It hasn't been done before, because it will take a collective and focused will that has to be sustained. But the alternative is death of all we love (spiritual and figurative as well as physical).
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