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| A bitmoji cartoon of a chubby woman on a pink couch, patting the seat next to her, with the caption, "We need to talk. This is serious." |
people who a) claim to follow Jesus Christ, b) are a member of one of the many groups (and they are legion) that are currently considered undesirable by the asshats in power, or c) both a and b.
Yeah, yeah, racism, sexism, homophobia, prejudice, whatever. Those aren't reasons. They're symptoms.
Lack of empathy. We know all this. God knows I've certainly been over it dozens of times in this blog and on other social media, and I'm not even loud or well-known or particularly outspoken. There are many good people out there explaining this, but they're ignored by hundreds of thousands because what? Those hundreds of thousands might feel a twinge of guilt or shame, I guess?
Can't have that. Might be uncomfortable. And as we learned ad nauseum during the pandemic, powerful privileged people's comfort trumps (used deliberately) everyone else's life and health and safety.
If this post makes you feel defensive, or inclined to not-all, or ready to well-actually me, don't bother. Just take yourself the fuck off my page, block me, whatever. I'm no purist, and I'm certainly not one to let perfection get in the way of progress (or even not backsliding into fascism), but if you are, get out.
I don't feel safe in my own country right now, and I'm a cishet white American-English-speaking citizen born to citizens in a family that has been citizens for generations. Sure, I have a few of the "undesirable" traits; I'm female, for one, and fat, and poor, and ethnically if not religiously Jewish, and neurodivergent, and chronically ill (if you count asthma and bad knees), and mentally ill (although how anybody is not depressed and/or anxious right now I'd love to know their secrets) and I <gasp> think people are more important than money in this hypercapitalist hellscape.
But I can't even imagine how people who don't have my advantages feel right now.
I mean, folks who "look like" whatever the most-hated group of the day™ is, whether they are or not?
I do not feel like celebrating independence today, because what independence, exactly, are we talking about? I see very little of it around here these days.
I'm willing to entertain hope, though, and multiculturalism, and empathy, and basically trying to be a decent human. So that's what I'm doing today. Yes, I'm setting off (legal) fireworks (according to the legal limits of time and place) with my neighbors because this is a tradition of over a decade in my neighborhood. It was one of my late husband's favorite holidays. It's still a friendly and well-loved summer thing for me and my neighbors.
But I'm not celebrating. I'm coping at best.
