Time To Get Serious: WHAT IS GOING ON?

I don’t get overtly political here. (I mean, I guess as identifying as a feminist and talking about those issues, I can say that everything I’m doing here is political, but that’s an ideological conversation that I’m not having.) But, this week, I have to, I mean, HOLY MOTHER OF GOD, why are we having this conversation?

A certain political candidate, who’s name rhymes with Stump, and the party that he’s running for (that I was once a card carrying member of, and still affiliate myself with from time to time.) has proposed the plan that we no longer allow Muslims to immigrate to the US.

Aside from the fact that this is a batshit crazy plan, and only a batshit crazy person would think you could implement such a law in a country that (at least you know, according to our own national mythos, if not actually in historical reality) was founded by a group of people fleeing religious persecution.

I’m baffled, and I feel a little bit like I’m dreaming.

I started noticing in college that the Republican party was not the thing I’d always thought it was growing up. My family are (mostly) all Republican because of a belief in the strength of a free market and the enfranchisement of the individual.

Do you want to know what never once entered into conversations about politics with my conservative family members when I was growing up? “We are better than those that are different from us, and they are going to destroy our way of life.”

This year in particular, my heart is breaking and I feel disconnected and disillusioned from something that I’ve grown up believing in so strongly. I don’t understand how people can have so much hate and fear in their hearts. I don’t understand how, “beating the other side” became more important than, “creating a better world.”

I just don’t.

I’m not letting myself off the hook for this. Other people who have watched over the last few decades while the Right (I mean politically, not “correct”) side was dragged down into fear and hate and done nothing are not off the hook. People on the Left who laughed and thought it was a joke and demonized moderates along with the loud crazy voices, rather than engaging those who have a different perspective are not off the hook.

NO ONE IS OFF THE HOOK HERE! We all need to take a big step back and look at this mess and say, “how did this happen and how do we change the conversation?” Not in a few months, not next year, right now, IMMEDIATELY.

We need to say, “NOPPPPEEEEE, no more excuses, no more, ‘I’m not like that,’ no more laughing at the big dumb powerful racist/homophobic/xenophobic assholes. Now we stand up, now we say, ‘WE DESERVE BETTER THAN YOU, we deserve better than having our base fears pandered to.'”

I’m done, I’m straight up, flat out done.