But I thought of this quote yesterday and it stuck with me today as the aftermath and fallout from the terrorist attack on the Capitol unfolds.
A friend of mine who is a minister had posted on his feed a question for those that voted for Trump, how did they see what happened, what did they think. He said he wasn't looking for any arguing or discussion, he only wanted to hear from them and all he would do was reply "thank you." He also let his more progressive friends and flock know that they weren't being called to answer this question and that he didn't want them replying to any of the comments. He would be deleting any mean spirited remarks. I read a few of the replies through the day. And bit my tongue, and sat on my hands, and sent him a private WHAT THE HECK, (he's a minister, I try) DUDE?! message.
This morning I read the replies to another friend's post. He's a conservative. A republican as of right now but thinking it's about time to leave the party. He posted that he was ashamed to be a republican right at this moment. He was ashamed of what happened at the Capitol. He had let me know on one of my posts a few weeks ago what he thought of Trump denying Biden's win and fighting it. He didn't approve. Losing is a thing that happens and Trump and his supporters needed to get over it and deal with it and stop embarrassing themselves. Well as I read the replies from friends of his who are conservatives I had to bite my tongue and sit on my hands. Again.
Because there were common themes in the reply threads. First off, it wasn't us. That was really common. Somehow Antifa and BLM were to blame. They were the ones who stormed the Capitol yesterday. The other was bothsiderism. What about Antifa and BLM and how they burned down the country all summer and why is nobody talking about that? One person even dared to use a MLK quote of the riot is voice of the unheard to justify what happened.
Okay, so yeah, no. It wasn't Antifa or BLM yesterday. It was the Parler Patriots. The QAnon QuarterMasters. Y'all Queda. Vanilla Isis. My personal use; Cult45. Whatever you want to call them, it was them. They've been calling people to come to DC, Trump has been encouraging them to come, they've been bragging about coming. They went to a rally and listened to Trump tell them to march on the Capitol and they did. This wasn't some sort of set up. This was them saying I will do this thing and then doing it.
And then the comparisons to BLM protestors. Well, lets see, BLM is about protesting police brutality. Systemic racism. Hundreds of years of oppression and injustice. Yesterday was about losing an election by 7 million votes and not being able to understand that you lost an election by 7 million votes so it must have been stolen. And Antifa is not an organization. It's not like the Proud Boys or Patriot Prayer or The Three Percenters of Oathkeepers or what ever your homegrown militia is calling itself. It's a movement, it's a belief system, it's not an organization. It is literally anti- fascist.
I believe Black lives matter and I am anti-fascist. And I believe all good people should be both of those things. But I didn't join an organization, or go to a meeting, or get the monthly newsletter. It's who I am, not a group I play pretend dress up with. I also have spent a lot of time explaining to people who don't live in Portland what they were seeing on the news. Talking about the difference between the BLM protests and the anarchists and the anti-capitalists and the Antifa pushback from the police violence. Which (surprise, surprise) Trump encouraged and exacerbated. I talked about what was actually happening on the ground, here's a hint, I don't live in a burned out wasteland. The city still stands. The issues we have are complex and varied. The protests are not the focal point of most people's days. And I also condemned a lot of the destruction and the things I didn't agree with.
Brent and I talked a little about the responses. The level of denial. The unwillingness to condemn what happened. And he said "of course they have to deny it or it reflects badly on them."
And that's it. That's the whole thing. To believe in a thing you have to believe in all of it.
If they look at the crowd that overran the Capitol yesterday, that caused our representatives to be whisked off to safety, that damaged and stole things from their offices and recognized that they were them? Well that opens up a whole lot of questions. Seeing the guy in the horned hat and no shirt and realizing how fucking crazy he looks? Well that's not me, that must be them. I would never...
To continue to believe that Trump is right. That the election was stolen. That a great injustice has been done. That they are the good guys. Well to believe all of that they cannot let in doubt. They cannot say that the insurrectionists represent who they are, that the obvious amount of unhinged madness we saw on display yesterday is who they are. This is what they believe. This is the logical endgame of what Trump has been encouraging.
To admit that Trump is dangerous. That his lies and his cult of personality are a problem. That he should have never been elected president well that's a tough pill to swallow. It means they were wrong. And admitting you are wrong is hard. Admitting you were wrong about something you have passionately argued you were right about is REALLY hard. So they can't. They would rather say it was Antifa. It was BLM. And why aren't we talking about the riots this summer? Let's focus on the other guys.
I view it like when I left religion. One piece fell. I stopped believing in one piece. And once that one piece fell the other parts I had been holding together with duct tape and spackle fell apart as well. Then one day I looked at everything I used to believe and wonder how I ever did. How in the world did I think all of those animals got on that boat? Why did I ever think it was a good story about faith when a god would tell a father to kill his own son just to test his loyalty? Did I really think that a talking bush laid out the laws we were supposed to live by?
But if you had talked to me at 14 or 15 I would have told you of course all of those things are true. And yes, being gay is a choice, and it's Adam and Eve not Adam and Steve. But once one piece fell all the rest went as well. And then I had to figure out not only what I really believed but who I was.
Maybe yesterday planted the seed in a few heads and hearts. Maybe a piece started to fall. Maybe a lot of people who were supporters of him will wonder how they ever were. Why they ever bought into what he was selling. Maybe.
But for now you're going to see a lot of denial. A lot of deflection. Because they have to.
To believe in a thing you have to believe in all of it.
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