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Having very conservative friends and family meant four years ago I was in a position to push pause on my feelings about Trump’s victory and ask questions and really listen. This was part of a longer message I wrote at the time:
In my grief and confusion I got on board with anything unifying, like the whole love train or whatever it was Van Jones was peddling. I started collecting data about how and where the two sides agreed. I did this through tremendous pain and fear.
Here’s what I found out. You can question and listen all you want but one sided interest in what the other thinks and feels is completely useless. For all my inquiry, nobody gave a fuck about what I thought and felt. Asking about it never, ever happened.
This is very simple psychology - one person or group of people in a relationship doing all the work and reflection while the other does none will hardly ever end in something successful. It usually ends in mutual resentment.
But for four years I kept trying to use my goodwill with people to probe and hopefully present an alternative way at looking at events. I hoped to especially have those hard conversations about race that were so clearly needed.
I tried being loving. I tried being rational. I tried metaphors and analogies. I tried using heart wrenching stories. I’ve tried begging and I’ve tried searing anger. If there was a slight opening I took it and tried to use it.
I’ve been called divisive - because of course to try to name something is the problem because the problem is never the problem. I’ve been tuned out because of my tunnel vision. I’ve been called a bitch. I’ve been threatened by friends of friends (always, the wishing for rape!)
After four years of trying in every way that I know of I can’t tell you that I have a single person in my life who supported Trump then, that probably didn’t vote for him again. At the very least none of them cared about the proof that businesses and charities were shut down.
Nobody cared that he kept running existing businesses and promoted them constantly. Nobody cared that he abandoned all our allies and cheered on dictators. The Muslim ban, the wall, the border camps, a mass shooting a week, nobody said a word.
As a friend we grew up with battled for his life and narrowly survived cancer for the second time, and begged for people to care about the ACA, they remained silent.
As LGBTQ friends begged for their existence and love to matter, they remained silent. Maybe a few of them said a little something after George Floyd but quickly “all lives mattered” when god forbid people protested murder after murder.
The law and order party is fine with state execution of Black people without a warrant, an arrest, a trial by jury, a clear and present danger and most of the time the lack of a crime even being committed. None of it mattered ultimately.
So I’ve done my listening and empathizing already and what I discovered is that it’s a one sided relationship. There are in fact a lot of issues that statistically speaking there is 70%+ agreement. But still we lack common ground. Why?
One side sees all humans as humans worth protecting and lifting up. The other side can’t be bothered (that’s the generous take). Even all of that aside, the fascism staring us all in the face should have been a dealbreaker. Instead...silence.
I wasn’t that surprised in 2016 that racism won. I grew up in Texas. I had no illusions about racism. But I was incredibly disappointed by the number of people I’ve known most of my life or even all of it who have stayed silent or defended this administration .
So I already did my listening exercises to understand the other side. And the only thing I learned is we can witness the most shocking abuses of power and breaking of constitutional norms and it doesn’t even remotely move the needle towards “unity.”
At the end of the day I also cared a lot about what people were going through and spent time promoting solutions that would make a tangible difference in their lives and their communities. That didn’t work either. Not even a bit.
After four years of energy I now understand the only real path at this point is to change the game on the ground, state by state, and make sure the majority - of which we are in this country - can vote and will vote. Changing hearts and minds is not a short-term strategy.
So you’ll forgive me if I sit out on the whole “it’s time for Democrats to do some soul searching about why more people didn’t vote for them” and focus on other work. It’s time for conservatives to do some soul searching about why any over the last four years was ok with them.
Ok well this blew up (or in my Twitter world this counts as blowing up). I don't have anything to sell ya so please if you aren't already - put your energy towards Georgia - especially by getting in line behind all the Black women already doing excellent work on the ground.
