I think I it’s not insignificant that a lot of republican reps say they won’t vote for impeachment because they are afraid for their lives.

And they aren’t wrong — anybody marginalized around trumpists knows that.

My friend and employee had a trumper follow her after she left my neighborhood in Ohio, trying to run her off the road in his rolling coal pickup, because of her lesbian bumper stickers.

I was afraid for my friend from Peru when she came to visit me there. Worried about being down a dead end road. I would talk myself out of it but... but.

It was living there when I realized that despite having been out as bi since my teens, I was suddenly back in the closet.

My kid’s peers got sent to conversion therapy, and there were nearby suicides, and their parents were like “good.”

I answered the phone in Spanish at the supermarket and a woman with a blonde frosted undercut bob — THE haircut — followed me through the aisles to tell me to speak English.

An HVAC contractor declined to give me a quote after seeing extended (diverse) family photos.

There were swastikas spray painted on walking trails and Hebrew schools and people insisted it was all false flags, Jews doing it to themselves to accuse fine upstanding folks, unfairly.

The school district was constantly under federal investigation for racism.

It was racist.

There were, and remain, some wonderful folks thereabouts. Some active anti racists and such.

But. The thing is?

You got used to keeping your head down and pretending there wasn’t a nagging fear that this time, standing in the Starbucks kiosk line at the Kroger, someone would flip shit and do radicalized right wing violence.

It WAS my friend who had cops break into her apartment and paint racist slur graffiti on her walls.

It WAS my friend laughing off the swastika in her driveway as best as she could.

So I don’t fault anyone for being afraid, except... when they’re supposed to be leaders and elected lawmakers, the people who are literally in place to deal with this systemically? Then I kinda do, yeah.

You knew this was the job.

Do it.