In the summer of 2016, I took a position as an organizer with the Clinton campaign in Iowa. I’d grown up just across the northwest border of Iowa in Sioux Falls, South Dakota, and drove down from my father’s house on a Tuesday in July for training in Ames, Iowa. Prior to spending three and a half months canvassing for candidates up and down the ballot in Iowa, I’d only really been to Steve King’s district in Northwest Iowa or to my cousins’ former home along the Mississippi in Burlington, on the far east side of the state. The entire middle area was unknown to me, but I was assigned Marion and Mahaska Counties, two areas with a solid Democratic base outnumbered by Republicans and gerrymandered in 2010 to eliminate a previous democratic state house district.

I leaned heavily on the established party structure in both counties—a structure that was still feeling raw after the failed election of 2014. I learned the geographies of my counties, and learned which county officials were friendly and which ones would need someone not directly from the campaign to drop off voter registrations so the registrations from our Hispanic voters wouldn’t face challenges to their requests.

And I knocked on doors. Every day, I was out in the streets, driving from town to town, leaving pamphlets, answering voter questions, encouraging people to early vote and sign up for absentee ballots. I spent most of my days in towns of less than 2,000 people. In one particularly memorable incident, I was in a small town that had one major intersection consisting of a four way stop. I had to use the bathroom, so I pulled over to the only gas station in town and walked in. Every person in the store looked up at me as if to say, “I don’t recognize you.”

I was definitely in rural America.

“Rural America” has become many politicians’ favorite euphemism when talking about who needs courting in upcoming elections. Sen. Bernie Sanders recently called on coalitions to understand the pain and suffering many in rural (aka white, non-liberal) America feel, as a failure to do so resulted in Trump’s win. The Economist says Democrats abandoned “kitchen table issues,” leaving these voters feeling alienated and anxious. And Sen. Claire McCaskill blamed Democrats’ refusal to compromise on core issues on their failure to “gain enough trust with rural Americans.” They’re not prejudiced, just disillusioned with the Democrats’ inability to understand the issues that face them.

But I found a great universe of Democrats there. Many of the local volunteers were people from marginalized positions in society—queer people, Latinx people, many lifelong Democrats dedicated to bringing about change in their hometowns. I trained these volunteers on discussions from the campaign, discussed the policies of the candidates on the ballot, and talked about what was good for rural Iowa. I went to bat for my rural counties with the data people in Des Moines, insisting that some of the tactics passed down from Brooklyn wouldn’t work in rural Iowa—I couldn’t make thousands of unique phone calls in a week because I simply didn’t have enough active Democrats to call different ones each day. My counties combined were 55,000 people, one third of which were under 18. The counties are 97% white, mostly rural, and mostly Republican. In Mahaska county in 2016, only about 10,000 people voted in total.

Many of the local volunteers were people from marginalized positions in society—queer people, Latinx people, many lifelong Democrats dedicated to bringing about change in their hometowns.
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So needless to say, I got to know my rural voters. And consistently, I encountered white male members of rural communities who insisted that, despite being registered Democrats, despite having voted for Democrats in the past, they would not be voting for Clinton in 2016—because she’s a woman, because she’s a baby killer, because they bought into narratives about Benghazi.

The only time one of my voters brought up disillusionment over a Democratic failure to reach the white working class, the person was an upper middle class professor in a largely well-off college town.

Otherwise, my interactions with the rural white working class followed along a certain narrative. Older white men expressed concern about voting for women. One voter I spoke to the week before the election told me he’d already gone to the courthouse to vote early—for Trump—because “I can’t stand that female.” Another who spoke with me for 20 minutes outside his barn on his farm told me all about his disabled daughter being on social security, and yet he was worried about the Mexicans at the border, coming in and living off the government dime. When I pointed out that his own daughter is living off Democratic social safety net programs, he shrugged his shoulders and said “She needs it. Others don’t.”

I encountered white male members of rural communities who insisted...they would not be voting for Clinton in 2016—because she’s a woman, because she’s a baby killer, because they bought into narratives about Benghazi.
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I don’t say all this to relitigate 2016. That election is over and done with. But rather, I say all this to divorce “Rural America” from rural whites, and to point out that the ongoing narratives from liberals about what concerns the rural whites and the white working class is not “economic anxiety.” Like liberals in cities, white Dems out in rural areas are concerned about social issues—but many, in those areas, tend toward conservative. I was asked repeatedly about abortion, about immigration, about gay rights, about Black Lives Matter. The vast majority of my canvassers were queer people or people of color, working hard to change their hometowns by being an active presence in them. And they recognized, cogently, that their own liberation was bound up in the issues of their neighbors, which led them to reach out their hand and knock on those doors.

Many members of what might be called the Sanders wing of the party harbor a lot of bitterness over 2016, continuing to emphasize narratives of economic anxiety. But, in my own experience, economic anxiety, while relevant to people’s lives, wasn’t the driving issue that brought them to the polls. They care about their community, and the social issues that impact it—they care deeply about identity, especially if they’re an old white man who feels like his community is being threatened by minorities. Pursuing these voters would mean sacrificing the progressive social politics that make us the party of diversity, the party of queer people, of people of color, of women—the party of civil rights heroes. To win white rural America would mean giving up what makes us progressives, and I don’t know about you, but I’m not willing to do that.

Perhaps you heard the scuttlebutt about a dubious product on offer from Sephora: a “witchcraft starter kit” that included fragrance oils, tarot cards, a white sage bundle and a quartz crystal. Responding to widespread criticism across social media, mostly from millennial/Gen Z witches who found the box distasteful for a variety of reasons, Sephora and Pinrose (the kit’s creator) decided to cancel the release.

The outrage ran the gamut from ecological concern (white sage is very trendy and there is concern it is being over harvested) to spiritual dismay (with real witches annoyed at the shallow commercialism that co-opts their religion), from consumer activism (why buy a $42 kit from Sephora when so many artisans and small shops sell ritual supplies on Etsy or in brick and mortar shops?) to cultural appropriation (didn’t we learn that using white sage is basically a practice stolen from Native American traditions back in the 1980s New Age days?), and also had a tinge of eye-rolling ennui (this Instagram witchcraft craze is getting out of hand). And of course, there are real problems in the world that real witches could be focusing their magic on, instead of getting incensed about, well, incense.

The current rebirth of witchcraft has made its beliefs and practices more socially acceptable, even desirable, as a facet of one’s feminist identity (and has allowed for its commercialization). Almost twenty years ago, a similar product made it into the marketplace, the “Teen Witch Starter Kit” (created by the author of the book Teen Witch, Silver Ravenwolf, whose earlier book To Ride a Silver Broomstick had been a bestseller among newbie Wiccans in the late 1990s). At that time, the main objection from the witchcraft community was also the product’s crass commercial vibe. However, instead of Instagram-driven enthusiasm, it was met with objection, bordering on insurrection, from the non-witch public.The kit’s being targeted at teens ruffled a lot of feathers, and there was a response from the evangelical Christian community aimed at boycotting the product.

One key reason for the public outrage was that a bonafide Satanic Panic took hold in the United States around this time, mostly driven by the rise of the Moral Majority and the popular notion that secularism was ruining America. The Satanic Panic, which stretched roughly from the mid-1980s through 2000, had all the hallmarks of the witch hunts of Salem Village: hysterical and political in equal measure. The renewed interest in witchcraft appears to have all the ingredients for another Satanic Panic—teenage girls expressing independence, an appreciation for non-Christian ideologies, a slew of occult stories in film and TV, and a right-wing government. Could another Satanic Panic be looming? And this time around, what would it look like?

The occult media that flourished throughout the 1970s almost disappeared in the 1980s, partly due to the growing influence that extreme Christian groups exerted on the media landscape. Instead, the media treatment of occult storylines focused on documentary, not narrative storytelling. Even programing that relied on rumor, hearsay and poor research became associated with news and truth. The primetime specials by Geraldo Rivera (Satan’s Underground and a sequel) were hugely popular, and daytime talk show host Oprah Winfrey also devoted several episodes to the Satanic Panic.

One disturbing outgrowth of the Satanic Panic was the growing belief in the phenomenon of Satanic Ritual Abuse (SRA), in which children and adults were physically and sometimes sexually abused in occult ritual contexts. Rumors of SRA were allowed to proliferate due to flawed psychological treatment practices that had become popular but that have since been discredited, such as hypnosis and recovered memory. The descriptions of these crimes were all eerily similar, and all bore a marked resemblance to horror films from the 1960s and 1970s, in particular Rosemary’s Baby. Details like candles, knives, people standing in a circle (either nude or wearing ritual robes), chanting or singing, consumption of wine or blood: all these could be traced to various occult movies or books. Young children who could possibly have seen such media were fed suggestive questions or stories from a therapist or other authority figure, and become convinced they had suffered abuse. One famous, sensational book about one such SRA victim, Michelle Remembers, was instrumental in spreading awareness of SRA, but years later was thoroughly debunked.

The current rebirth of witchcraft has made its beliefs and practices more socially acceptable, even desirable, as a facet of one’s feminist identity (and has allowed for its commercialization).
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In 1985, the FBI convened a task force to instruct law enforcement on investigating occult crimes. In 1987, the notorious McMartin pre-school case in California produced disturbing media stories about children being ritually abused by daycare workers. But overall, there was a hyper-awareness of the behavior of teenagers. Typical teenage behavior such as listening to heavy metal music (which was full of occult imagery), recreational drug use, rebelling against authority, and wearing black clothing were all considered possible signs of occult involvement. This led ultimately to a great many bogus “occult experts” with mail order degrees and virtually no academic or professional training offering their “services” to law enforcement.

After a few years, and many hours of investigation, Kenneth Lanning, the head of the task force, concluded that there was no evidentiary basis for the stories of children being kidnapped for ritual sacrifice by devil worshipping cults. But many people believed these nefarious crimes were real, and widespread, and talk-show media did its best to fan the flames. Criminal cases like the so-called Matomoros Cult Murders in Mexico in 1989 (where an American college student was murdered during spring break), and the 1993 murder of three young boys in West Memphis, Arkansas, said to be orchestrated by a satan-worshipping teenage “ringleader”and his two friends (later to become known as the West Memphis Three) are only two examples of occurrences that allowed fear-mongering talk show media to spread rumors, panic and suspicion.

And in the midst of this maelstrom of rumor and fear, The Craft, a movie about teenage girls whose lives are amplified and emboldened by witchcraft stormed the zeitgeist and led to an explosion of interest in Wicca, not to mention a revival of Goth fashion. The pagan internet was in its infancy but grew quickly once the networking site The Witches’ Voice was introduced in 1997. Silver Ravenwolf’s book Teen Witch came out in 1998 (as did the movie Practical Magic), the Teen Witch Kit in 1999 (as did The Blair Witch Project). Parents were still concerned about their daughters’ interest in witchcraft, but the internet allowed increasingly independent teens to order books and supplies discreetly, and join chatrooms and newsgroups to discuss witchcraft. And then, the first Harry Potter book came out in 1997, with the next three being released a year apart. Even though Evangelical Christian groups raised concerns about the books’ subject matter, and some communities banned and even burned the books, fearing indoctrination into witchcraft, the series became so popular that millions of kids were tossing aside their video games for books. Kids reading for pleasure. So evil.

Of course, if you’ve ever tried to stop a teenage girl from doing something she’s forbidden to do, you know it’s a fool’s errand. As the main consumers of popular media, young people command the marketplace of ideas in undeniably powerful ways. The 1990s wave of girl power witchcraft, however, seems downright quaint next to today’s surge of social media-fuelled witchcraft, pulling celebrity influencers, witchy podcasters and reboots of witchy TV and movies along with it, like bright spots of silk thread caught in a tumbleweed, ribbons in Baba Yaga’s spiky hair.

I’m old enough to recall the witchcraft waves of previous generations: the explosion of neo-pagan witchcraft among young adults in the 1980s, following a mostly woman-led interest in goddess worship and feminist witchcraft. Men entered the movement in droves in the 1980s, and the Dianic covens of the 1970s seemed to dissipate slowly (these days, holding public rituals for “women only” is controversial, to say the least). In graduate school and beyond, I studied the modern occult revival and the first wave of popular-culture fueled witchcraft in America in the 1960s via Great Britain (which was more widespread than earlier waves of occultism after WWI, which also originated in the UK), and, specifically, the teen witchcraft craze of the late 1990s. But more recently, we saw a flurry of teen witches seeking their “Supreme” after watching the decadent, gruesome season of American Horror Story: Coven which debuted on FX in 2013.

Witchy media is on fire right now. The current season of American Horror Story: Apocalypse, features a Coven crossover with most of the original witches returning to do battle with some very well-dressed warlocks (this is the way the world ends, not with a bang but a witch war). 2016’s arthouse smash The Love Witch portrays a 1970s-era sexy witch in a modern day setting, who uses spells to seduce men. The remake of Dario Argento’s 1987 cult classic Suspiria is a glossy, bloody, gorgeously-designed tale of a secret witch society within a posh dance academy run by devil-worshipping matriarchs. The reboot of Charmed cast three Latinx actresses in the roles previously played by Shannen Doherty, Alyssa Milano and Holly Marie Combs (the series was itself inspired by The Craft). The Chilling Adventures of Sabrina (which premiered October 26 on Netflix), about a sixteen year old girl who is half witch, half mortal, will surely attract more young adherents to witchcraft, which the show portrays as a lifestyle full of romance, social intrigue, evil and ever-present danger. (You know, kind of like living in America right now, minus the romance.) And a new film entitled Satanic Panic, forthcoming from recently-revived horror mag Fangoria’s production company, portrays a Satanic cult that tries to sacrifice a young (and presumably virginal) pizza delivery gal in a not-so-subtle twist on a common gonzo porn trope, and a weird reference to the recent Pizzagate conspiracy.

What all of these current films and shows have in common is a shift towards a kind of “dark” witchcraft, one that does not shy away from linking witchcraft with demons, the occult, or even bold expressions of Satan worship. And while that may be great for box office receipts and streaming services, it’s very likely that the proliferation of portrayals of evil witches will once again lead extreme Christian groups to react in predictable (and perhaps unpredictable) ways. The Pizzagate debacle shows what can happen when unchecked rumor, misogyny and violent extremism are allowed to run wild. There is no doubt that the portrayals of Hillary Clinton as a witch during the presidential campaign (even Bernie Sanders supporters tried to hold a “Bern the Witch” event) helped to foment the crazy rumors of a satanic child sex ring based in the basement of a pizza parlor in Washington, DC. The fact that the building had no basement did not stop a man from entering the business with an assault weapon, seeking, apparently, to rescue kidnapped children and mete out vigilante justice. Recent events bear out the very real threat of violence to people of many ethnic and religious groups, and to journalists, and the domestic terrorism resulting from the self-radicalization taking place among Trump supporters.

It’s very likely that the proliferation of portrayals of evil witches will once again lead extreme Christian groups to react in predictable (and perhaps unpredictable) ways.
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As a long-practicing witch and a scholar who studies media portrayals of witchcraft, I see the current witchy zeitgeist, which often posits witchcraft as an aesthetic, or an interesting approach to self-care, as both helpful and hindering to women’s empowerment right now. I’d love to see a deeper engagement, a better understanding of the history and culture of modern witchcraft, amidst all the witchy fashion, DIY décor, and weekend spellcraft. But even more than that, I worry that the many years of effort modern witches have spent offering disclaimers about their spiritual practices, ensuring our friends, lovers, neighbors and the mass media that we don’t worship the devil, may have all been for naught.

Given the present situation in our country, I feel some trepidation about the current trends towards glamorizing and valorizing any and all things witchy and demonic. It’s not because I don’t absolutely love Suspiria or Chilling Adventures of Sabrina, because I do; it’s because I fear the atmosphere of ignorance, anger, and bigotry that has been emboldened by our president, and the growing number of Americans who see conspiracy theories as facts and journalism as “fake news.” If the imagined world of Harry Potter, with its spellcraft and coming of age angst, could move religious extremists to ban and burn books, what will they have to say about Sabrina’s murder, satanic worship, cannibalism, hot gay sex and infanticide?

As all around us we witness the dismantling of democracy, the proliferation of propaganda, the swell of militia groups, the spread of violent vigilantism, and the unmistakable drumbeat of a burgeoning police state, it’s not all that far-fetched to expect that one day soon some form of mass hysteria might break out. Yeah, I hate that word too: the Greek root hyster means “the womb” and our framing of hysteria presupposes that it’s unique to women. What we once called hysteria has also been called shell shock (a condition affecting men in the first world war), and later known as post-traumatic stress disorder. The symptoms are numerous and vary widely from one individual to the next. It has been suggested by numerous historical scholars that the symptoms displayed by several of the young girls in Salem Village during the time of the witchcraft accusations there were symptoms arising from hysteria. In more recent years, feminist scholars have debated that the hysterical symptoms on display were not signs of witchcraft, or even of witchcraft dabbling, but in fact were signs of trauma, possibly brought on by sexual abuse.

If the imagined world of Harry Potter could move religious extremists to ban and burn books, what will they have to say about Sabrina’s murder, satanic worship, cannibalism, hot gay sex and infanticide?
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No doubt many of us are feeling a little on edge lately. For many months now, in the wake of Trump’s election victory, women across the country have addressed their collective ennui, stress, and rage through increasingly radical forms of self-care, including witchcraft. Okay, in many cases that “witchcraft” was a sort of code for occult-tinged activities like smudging with sage wands, meditating with crystals, reading tarot cards, and setting up personal altars. The recent witchery trend usually stops short of encouraging women to join an actual coven, but popular media has been abuzz with spells and divination. There are determined witches and compatriots of all genders all over the country hexing the president and his sycophants on a monthly basis, drawing on the power of the new moon. Witchcraft as a declaration of identity and power has been a growing cultural wave for several years now.

But the narrative seems to be shifting. The wholesale gaslighting of female survivors, the sight and sound of the POTUS mocking Christine Blasey Ford and calling her accusations a “hoax” perpetrated by Democrats, the characterization of protesters as “an angry mob,” all of this signifies a full-out war on women, perpetrated by people devoid of empathy, logic or even the most basic sense of decorum. Women and people of color were among the targeted Democrats of the “MAGA-Bomber” who tried to make it look like his pipe bombs were all mailed by Debbie Wasserman Schultz: an attempt to make it look like a Jewish woman perpetrated these assassination attempts.  It seems increasingly likely that women who profess any sort of connection to witchcraft or the occult these days (in other words, any woman seeking empowerment) may well find herself the target of right-wing bullies. It seems ridiculous to think that way, but who among us has not felt like we’re losing our grip on sanity lately?

Wicca has as one of its central tenets: “Harm none, and do what ye will.” Despite vaunted claims of power and supernatural ability, witchy women have never been able to escape the gallows, the pyre, or the dunking stools built by men. Our magic is more subtle and secret than that, and it has had to be, for our own protection; whether it means gathering abortifacient herbs by the light of the moon, or crafting profane signs to carry in the streets, or meeting at the crossroads to plan safe houses for vulnerable immigrants. And if the current state of things continues to erode, I think the empowerment many women have sought from witchcraft may take on new, more serious context. We may not be able to sour milk or wither cornfields (or erections) at the wave of our hands: but we have the power of our strident voices, the strength of our hungry bodies, the passion of our weary hearts. Witches know the magic of the change of seasons, the subtle shift in energies of the moon, the ocean, the trees, the radio waves. We seek knowledge to ply our arts, devouring books and podcasts, and we have stamina, fed with righteous anger, our bones bearing centuries of oppressed sisterhoods. We may not be able to control the weather, but we know which way the wind is blowing.

I almost hesitate to contribute to the flurry of commentary around the now infamous New York Times op-ed.

The Kavanaugh hearings demand the disinfecting sunlight of an O-type star—burning very hot and very bright—after all. But the subtext of the op-ed points to two of the most alarming things about Trumpism. First, the fact that most of its opponents—especially on the right—condemn Trump’s style rather than his substance; second, that as a result of this, the groundwork is already being laid for Trumpism sans Trump.

The op-ed is a not-so-subtle plea to do the very thing we must never do: blame Trump’s proto-fascism entirely on the personal failings and quirks of one man:

“We want the administration to succeed and think that many of its policies have already made America safer and more prosperous. But we believe our first duty is to this country, and the president continues to act in a manner that is detrimental to the health of our republic.”

The editorial is, in truth, the confession of an enabler and—despite its nearly unprecedented nature as a devastatingly public betrayal from within—a very traditionally Washington attempt by the author to position themselves for future jobs.

As scathing as the press has been about Trump and his omnishambolic government, there remain two glowing bright spots where even they must buckle and fawn in praise: American military strikes (let us recall Brian Williams’ woeful misunderstanding of Leonard Cohen’s music when the anchor said he was “guided by the beauty of our weapons”), and the mythic “adults in the room” of the Trump White House. These are the “men of honour,” mostly ex-military, who are supposedly sacrificing themselves to be close to Trump, and thus are able to restrain him.

The op-ed author made sure they eagerly claimed the “adult” title, and with good reason: Their audience was not ordinary Americans, but the country’s intelligentsia—political operatives, the non-profit world, academics, and journalists. It was a lullaby meant to reassure them that the “adults in the room” were real, implicitly noble conservatives who put “country first.” In that vein of media-friendly mythologizing, the coup de grace was shamelessly grabbing onto the coattails of the late John McCain’s newly sewn, saint-like hagiography.

The editorial is the confession of an enabler and a very traditionally Washington attempt by the author to position themselves for future jobs.
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Why? Remember that this administration has been uniquely radioactive for its employees and officials. Normally a White House stint is a golden ticket to plum jobs worldwide. That’s not proven true for Trump’s feckless adjutants, however. There’s a skin-deep stain of association with things like Trump’s Charlottesville remarks, where he praised neo-Nazis, insisting there were “good people on both sides” of a one-sided assault—acts which culminated in a terror attack that cost a young socialist counterprotester her life and injured many others.

“Out, damned spot!” cry Trump’s staffers and murderous ministers. They scrub feverishly in hopes of removing the mark that might keep them from a lifetime of corporate boards and preselection for safe seats. Painting themselves as the “adults in the room” media darlings—snatching the halo unworthily bestowed on Chief of Staff John Kelly or Defense Secretary Jim Mattis—is the only way they might cleanse themselves.

We shouldn’t allow this to work. The true thesis of the op-ed is “Trump is horrible, we know, but we’re good people, really.” The signal is sent up, particularly to other conservatives and the baleful number of credulous liberals who still desperately need to believe in the “compassionate conservative”:

“Don’t get me wrong. There are bright spots that the near-ceaseless negative coverage of the administration fails to capture: effective deregulation, historic tax reform, a more robust military and more.”

Take them at their word. Don’t get them wrong. They’re right wing and fine with the continual looting of our country and its imperialist ambitions. They just don’t want to be as uncouth and “anti-trade” as Trump. But for malingering as they have, like a long lasting cold, they deserve no mercy or sympathy.

As this is the umpteen-thousandth take on the op-ed I’ll only delve into one more issue, which I feel hasn’t received its due attention. The op-ed is deliberately designed to instill complacency. The last section, which invokes the ghost of Senator McCain in an unintentionally apposite way, is a call to lay down arms.

“The bigger concern is not what Mr. Trump has done to the presidency but rather what we as a nation have allowed him to do to us. We have sunk low with him and allowed our discourse to be stripped of civility. Senator John McCain put it best in his farewell letter. All Americans should heed his words and break free of the tribalism trap, with the high aim of uniting through our shared values and love of this great nation.”

The author blames us all for our fate. We allowed ourselves to sink low with Trump, and even our opposition to him is darkened by his long shadow. Aside from the fact that one should always beware anyone peddling “no labels” as a solution to social problems—even the Bible begins with a parable about the importance and power of naming things—this is the bit of the op-ed where you see the oil leaking.

The allegations in the op-ed are deadly serious, and yet that merely indicts the author further for their craven complicity. Even now Republicans are lamenting that the op-ed has backfired because it will make it harder to “contain” Trump. Sen. Bob Corker (R-TN) went so far as to validate the piece’s major claims about Trump, yet still laments its publication. They represent a perverse GOP consensus with the author: although Trump can be removed, they’d rather control him. No matter who gets hurt.

There’s something slick about it all; it’s all Trump’s fault, but it’s also the nation’s fault. Who’s not at fault? The author, and their cadre of “resistive” but polite proto-fascists.

This sly nonsense should be met with resistance worthy of that name; it is how we’ll deal with the immediate crisis of Trump and the aftermath of rebuilding a shattered society. Resistance must not be limited to opposing one man; it must address itself to the conditions that made him possible—such as the venality of operatives like this anonymous official. We must dispense with the comforting myth that these “adults in the room” are anything but efficient enablers.

In a word: fight. Treacly unity smothered by the flag is precisely the sort of sleepwalking that led us into Trump’s fever dream. To get out of it, we’ll have to dare to call things what they are, disobey—and horror of horrors—break decorum.

The author wants to tamp down on this as it might upend their plush boardroom chair. No more or less.

The author soft-pedals the “adults in the room” line as “cold comfort.” It’s no comfort at all to know that an administrative coup—with repercussions that will far outlast this presidency—is taking place and lies in the hands of such cowardly people that they’d sacrifice us all to Trump’s furies for a tax cut.

There is but one ice-bath of cold comfort in this mess: the knowledge that Trump himself is absolutely tormented by the question of who wrote the op-ed, and that its author is equally tormented by their tell-tale-heart beating beneath the White House floorboards.

When the two finally meet, each will see the other and find himself; they’ll know, silently, that they deserve each other.

Growing up a white girl in small-town Tennessee, each week I watched Bo and Luke Duke’s General Lee racing down country roads on The Dukes of Hazzard. The Confederate flag on its hood was as familiar to me as Daisy’s bare midriff.

In high school, I worked as a waitress at a trucker joint off Interstate 24 between Chattanooga and Nashville, and the restaurant owner kept a large Confederate flag standing on a six-foot pole in the corner of the dining room. One morning a group of girls, just a bit older than me, came in off the Interstate—loud, unruly, and rude—and snarled at my ignorance when they asked for “iced coffee” and I brought them iced tea instead.

Cleaning their table after they left, I realized they’d taken down that big Confederate flag, wrapped it around its pole and shoved the whole contraption way up under the heavy oak table. It was perhaps the first time I realized what the Confederate flag meant—bigotry, hatred, slavery—in the world outside Hazzard County. As I watched my manager tug that huge flag from under the table and set it upright, she assured me that the flag had nothing to do with racism. “It’s about pride in our heritage,” she said, “Southern culture”—which I understood to mean that we ate a lot of fried okra and went to church on Wednesdays.

Later, to me, Southern culture came to mean additional things, like the Klan marching in nearby Pulaski, religious discrimination against my gay friends, or societal control of women’s bodily autonomy. I decided to escape if I could, maybe to a paradise that I’d heard tell of‚ a godless place where the gays had busted out of their closets and women refused to wear panty hose and men helped with the housework! California, they called it, and I couldn’t wait to go there and live happily ever after in harmony with all humanity.

But I got here to Southern California and realized that even in my left-coast fantasyland, police killed young Black women, white boys asked if I’d ever worn shoes before leaving the South, and an Asian-American grad student told me she “couldn’t hear” my argument in a professional setting because my twang was coming out.

I heard of a place called Huntington Beach in Orange County, supposedly a hotbed of white supremacists, and soon enough, I decided the Californians might be just as screwed up as us Tennesseans.

A year or so ago, I was in a bar in Newport Beach (which is a very rare occurrence, Mama, if you’re reading this) and began talking to another woman, a stranger I had just met. I mentioned something about being from the South, and she got all excited. She pulled a Confederate flag keychain from her bag and showed it to me, assuming I would share her enthusiasm for it.

“…why do you have that?” I asked. “Are you from the South?”

No, she said, she was from California. I gave her a sideways glance. Did she believe all Southerners held a deep love of the Confederacy? In my experience, it was as hard to say something about “all Southerners” as it was to say something about “all Americans.” Even if you ask two Southern women about their favorite potato salad recipe, you’ll get five answers.

When the girl didn’t get the desired reaction from me, she muttered familiar words: “It’s not racist. I just think that if you have a culture, you should keep that culture.” What culture…? I wondered. Was she talking about my culture, or at least, my experience of the South —my hilly dirt roads and my hotwater cornbread and my endless weeknight Bible studies? No. This girl had likely never passed a piece of fried okra through her botoxed lips in the entirety of her life.

“But the South is not your culture,” I said. My heritage, contradictory and confused as it was, did not belong to her. What “culture” was she talking about that she was somehow identifying with? Was she saying that white racist people should stick together and preserve their…white racist culture?

I wondered the same thing last year as I realized that most of the Nazis and wannabe Confederates marching in Charlottesville were not, it seemed, from Charlottesville. Aside from a few, like organizer Jason Kessler, the ones who were identified in the press were from places like California, New York, Nevada, Washington state, North Dakota, and of course, Maumee, Ohio. These non-Southerners had driven all the way across the country in their quest to “preserve Southern history,” only to ride roughshod over the actual, real-life Southern people of Charlottesville, who had voted to remove a Confederate statue in their own public park.

This past Sunday, as Kessler organized his anniversary “Unite the Right Rally 2,” one of his invited speakers (who, like the rest of the alt-right, it seems, simply didn’t show up, there were only about 24 people there) was Patrick Little, a California Senate candidate originally from Maine who in his own words wants to “raise Jews as livestock.”

Aside from being a disgusting anti-Semite, Little is a member of the League of the South, which as far as I can tell is an organization of a couple dozen old white guys from Alabama who want to re-establish the Confederacy and rule it by fiat. Now, why does a Maine-bred Californian like Patrick Little join the League of the South?

What exactly, does he think “the South” is?

By culture, was she saying that white racist people should stick together and preserve their...white racist culture?
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My youthful misconceptions of California as a liberal paradise have given way to a realization that too many non-Southerners, like Little and the Newport girl, have crafted a competing fantasy of my home—of the South as a white nationalist paradise, where all the white men are strong, and all the white women are good-looking, a white-celebrating world where you can tell yourself you are the master race without being laughed out of the Super Wal-Mart. A land where people of color can be shipped “back” on a boat or burned in an oven. A white supremacist culture.

I’m darkly amused by the entitlement of the non-Southerner’s racist belief that he has any right to define the South (which is much too big and diverse to be defined anyway)—like somehow he’s entitled to identify with the South and claim it as his own and define what it is, simply because he’s a racist. But I am also troubled by the way these folks, in places like California, associate their own white supremacy with my home, and of course, by default, with me.

Now, some will say if the South didn’t want to be stereotyped as a racist paradise it should have behaved better historically, and I can’t argue with that. But the South has always been more than just its long history of racism. The South has always included a heritage of resistance to white supremacist violence. After all, Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. and Rosa Parks were Southerners, too, weren’t they? At the same time, there are Southerners right now in places like Charlottesville and all over the South who are redefining it as a diverse, multicultural place.

Today, people of color make up about 38% of the state of Virginia, which in 2016 went for Hillary overall by a 5% margin. 80% of Charlottesville voters chose Hillary. Even in deep-South Georgia, people of color make up about 47% of the population (defining “people of color” as everybody but “non-Hispanic whites”), and although Trump won the state, Hillary garnered 45% of the vote, improving on Obama’s 2012 performance there.

A red-painted map camouflages all the purple that today is the reality of the old Confederacy, and the Californian waving a Confederate flag wants to render all these real Southerners invisible.

The only way I know to counter this is to refuse to disappear. To say, no, if you are a racist from New York or Maine or Nevada or California, the South is not your culture—you don’t get to define it, you don’t get to define me. To make sure that any time a Confederate flag flies over a racist hate rally, whether it be in Charlottesville or the deceptively liberal bastion of Portland, there are the voices of actual Southerners (like Charlottesville’s first female Black mayor). To make sure they rise up to prove that white supremacists’ fantasy of a world devoid of people of color, LGBTQ folks, Jews, white liberals, and women who expect you to do your half of the house cleaning, is as futile as it is ugly, pathetic, and dangerous.

A good way people engage every day is by considering each other’s feelings, each other’s sense of security, since this shows some modicum of respect for another. Saying “thank you” when the barista gives you your coffee. Apologizing if you bump into someone on the bus. It’s rewarding, since people generally do not want to associate with those who make them uncomfortable. It feels nice when we’re nice to each other.

As Anthony Zurcher notes, the term “political correctness” is “a derogatory description coined in the 1990s to label those contending, in part, that language was a weapon used by the powerful to deny the interests of the oppressed.” But today, the concept is again making the rounds, aligning with the rise of authoritarianism, white nationalism, and growing anti-progressive sentiment. Those for whom the very existence of the marginalized is a threat find themselves on the defensive. Language, conduct, and attitudes that for so long went unchallenged now are finally being called out by those negatively affected. Instead of acceding or listening to marginalized voices, however, those in power dismiss us, saying we’re only after “political correctness.”

And so, from the pages of The New York Times flow columns complaining of passionate but powerless students saying no to racists and Nazis; prominent men saying feminism goes too far by demanding men stop harassing women or inappropriately touching them; unremarkable academics gaining international notoriety and book deals when claiming laws make them victims of some kind of transgender cabal. All of these are hypersensitive reactions from those with power targeting those without. All claim “political correctness” has gone too far and dismiss, with barely a shrug, the continued, ongoing pain of others.

It makes sense that this would be the reaction: It’s easier for the privileged to dismiss the concerns of those who’ve been marginalized and silenced than to reflect on whether they’re wrong and make the effort to change. The term “political correctness” was invented by the privileged to maintain the status quo, deny the voices of the marginalized, and reject inclusivity for disparate societies.

It’s time we got rid of it.

It’s easier for the privileged to dismiss the concerns of those who’ve been marginalized and silenced than to reflect on whether they’re wrong.
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Trump and the PC Hammer

Perhaps the most famous whiner about the Boogeyman of “political correctness” is the orange menace himself, President Donald Trump. Trump finds every opportunity to chalk up any and all criticism to “political correctness.”

During a debate in 2015 (though what feels like approximately 300 years ago), moderator Megyn Kelly challenged Donald Trump on his views on women. “You’ve called women you don’t like ‘fat pigs,’ ‘dogs,’ ‘slobs,’ and ‘disgusting animals. You once told a contestant on Celebrity Apprentice it would be a pretty picture to see her on her knees,” Kelly explained. In response, Trump said, “I think the big problem this country has is being politically correct… I’ve been challenged by so many people, I don’t frankly have time for total political correctness. And to be honest with you, this country doesn’t have time either.”

He wasn’t a misogynist, he was just not politically correct.

Later, in response to a policy his administration drafted to ban Muslims from the United States, President Trump told a crowd, “I wrote something today that I think is very, very salient, very important and probably not politically correct, but I don’t care.”

He wasn’t a racist, he was just not politically correct.

After the terrorist attacks in London last year, President Trump said, “We must stop being politically correct and get down to the business of security for our people.”

He wasn’t a hypersensitive reactionary, he was just not politically correct.

The Privilege of ‘Civilized’ Political Discourse
theestablishment.co

Basic respect for women, treating Muslim and brown people not as terrorists, and reacting thoughtfully to a terrorist attack are all “politically correct,” according to President Trump. Note the total absence of humanity afforded by the President to those affected by such actions and beliefs. If it’s politically correct, that’s the problem. Who cares who gets hurt?

But his playing the PC card shows its breadth, which thus reveals its shallowness: If it can be used to reinforce anything then it stands for nothing. Instead of interrogating the individual, complex issues at hand, actually considering whether people are affected, complaining about “political correctness” is a conceptual Napalm attack used to simply eradicate any offending bumps on one’s moral landscape.

President Trump’s use of the phrase shows how, no matter the context, if there’s disagreement with his actions or ideas, it must be because he’s not being “politically correct,” turning him into a noble fighter, a truth teller, unafraid of some mythical force that somehow is more powerful than his administration. Take note of this card. Now see how it’s played.

Complaining about 'political correctness' is a conceptual Napalm attack used to simply eradicate any offending bumps on one’s moral landscape.
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“A lot of people are tired of political correctness and being constrained by it… People prefer when there’s an outsider who doesn’t have anything to lose and is willing to say what’s on a lot of people’s minds.”

That’s not President Trump. That’s Nathan Larson, who, according to The Hill, is “a self-declared racist and ex-con who advocates for pedophilia and rape… running for Congress in Virginia’s 10th District.” Larson is “open about his pedophilia so as to remain unconstrained by ‘political correctness.’”

The key component of playing the PC card reveals itself: It negates hurt, harm, and wrongfulness; it dismisses other people’s concerns entirely and therefore other people as worthy of consideration. What’s worse, it assumes moral bankruptness on all sides. If you’re upset that someone advocates rape and racism, you don’t actually care about the victims, you’re just trying to be “politically correct.” It’s an easy way to dismiss any criticism wholesale, while flipping the blame onto those who dare suggest people should be treated fairly.

The key component of playing the PC card reveals itself: It dismisses other people’s concerns entirely and therefore other people as worthy of consideration.
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The hatred of facts and freedom

One of the most bizarre aspects of opposing “political correctness” is how it negates both facts and freedom — two things those who spend their time complaining about “political correctness” claim to prioritize.

First, in terms of facts, Rebecca Carroll notes:

“It is not politically correct to object to the gender pay gap; there’s a whole conservative cottage industry dedicated to proving there is no pay gap… It is not politically correct to highlight the fact that black and brown people are violently profiled, discriminated against and underrepresented in government and industry … It is not politically correct to ensure that transgender people are the arbiters of their own experience, and believe that they should be deferred to on matters of their safety and livelihood.”

It’s not “politically correct” to highlight the lived realities of marginalized people, it’s just correct. When something affects them, their views should be prioritized, however much it might offend the status quo which marginalized them in the first place. Second, complaining about political correctness means a large-scale dismissal of an entire people’s basis for being offended or hurt, which stifles communication. When a white man said to me last year that he viewed South Africans of color, especially black people, as being hypersensitive about apartheid, this was not someone I wanted to converse with: It chilled any conversation we could have.

Shunning Sarah Huckabee Sanders Is The Definition Of Civility
theestablishment.co

What student wants to learn from teachers or lecturers who dismiss concerns as mere adherence to “political correctness,” rather than basic bridges of decency? What female employee would feel safe with a boss who thinks women’s concern for respect in the workplace is just “politically correct” nonsense? Those who complain about “political correctness” often label it as stifling. But, as Lindy West noted:

“White students parading around campus in blackface is itself a silencing tactic. Telling rape victims that they’re ‘coddled’ is a silencing tactic. Teaching marginalised people that their concerns will always be imperiously dismissed, always subordinated to some decontextualised free-speech absolutism is a silencing tactic.”

The continual dismissal of marginalized people’s voices as “politically correct” nonsense means the status quo never changing, means never having to reexamine your beliefs.

Complaints about political correctness come often from straight white cis men — those who’ve not had to face hardship or dehumanization based on their identity. Those who are encouraged to believe their achievements come from meritocracy, not privilege. With the slow change brought about by technology and more platforms for marginalized voices, white men can no longer ignore and will no longer face zero repercussions for their actions. People will and do speak out. With this changing tide, the status quo warriors have had to grab a new paddle. Instead of moving, however, they’re simply going in circles and we see the ripples.

It’s not 'politically correct' to highlight the lived realities of marginalized people, it’s just correct.
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Stop being lazy

Jonathan Chait, in a discussion on “political correctness” on NPR, said: 

“I would define political correctness as a new ideology that is completely intolerant of dissent on issues relating to race and gender. … even if it’s made in response to legitimate racism and legitimate sexism that people have every right to be concerned about, it shuts down Democratic politics in a way that we should be concerned about.”

In response to this point, writer Roxane Gay argued that race and gender are not hypothetical ideas in an intellectual debate. “When we’re talking about gender and race, these are not things that are debatable. For example, I’m a woman,” she said. “And so if I tell you what my experience is as a woman and then someone tries to contradict it when they have no idea what my experience is, it becomes really frustrating. And I will push back against that. And so when it comes to matters of identity, I think people are necessarily rigid in terms of how we discuss it.”

My humanity, and yours, is not a topic for debate. My lived experiences of racism are not there for a strange white man to interrogate. When trauma victims outline what helps them cope, it’s not others’ jobs to tell them to move on. When women tell us catcalling is harassment, it’s not men’s jobs to declare catcalls compliments.

It’s morally lazy to do nothing and never grow; it’s easier to maintain your beliefs are good than recognize perhaps you don’t know the lived experiences of others. The bubble of privilege has protected some from the toxic drops of oppression that are raining down on everyone else.

Marginalized people’s voices deserve to be heard in a society that fails them by propping up the status quo. Indeed, calls for civility after marginalized or targeted people fight back—sometimes less than cordially—do nothing but uphold the status quo. As Katherine Cross notes in her essay on recent acts of “uncivil” behavior, this is straight out of the abuser’s playbook: “There is merit in the observation that abusers define any resistance to their actions as rude and uncivil, that they apply one standard to themselves and another to any who might raise a voice against them. That’s long been the case here.”

All “political correctness” means is basic decency and respect, an active effort to listen, a recognition our actions affect others. Wanting others to feel welcome should be a basic tenet of being a member of society, since a society where people feel equal is a better society for all. So if that feels like an attack, perhaps it’s time to rethink your strategy of defending your beliefs.

The Est. collected open letters on Sessions, the recently upheld Muslim Ban, familial separation and the current administration’s response to asylum seekers and immigrants — good grief our collective heart! — to publish on a dedicated landing page as a kind of evolving pastiche of opinions and concerns, anger and empathy. Resistance is vital.

I used to be one of you.

I’m a child of the Reagan presidency.

Since I was 18, I have consistently voted for your party. That’s seven presidential election cycles where you had my vote. And not just my vote, but my support.

You lost it in 2016, but at first that felt, possibly, like a one-time thing. But in 2018, you lost it forever.

I have built my whole life around the value of globalism. I have championed the American pursuits of life, liberty, and happiness.

You are no longer capable of thinking as the leaders of the free world. You have abandoned the majority of your people to side with those who divide, fear-monger, and hate.

Your weakness in the face of tyranny will be judged by history.

Your closed-mindedness has led to a war on people who are mostly poor, mostly innocent, and mostly brown; parents seeking a better life for their families are your targets.

The vicious fallacy known as ‘Make American Great Again’ has done the opposite.
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Your support of the vicious fallacy known as “Make American Great Again” has done the opposite. In the face of mountains of data showing that immigrants add much more value to our society than they take away, you ignore fact, and spread fiction.

When I was young, I admired the party of Lincoln as what I believed was the original party of diversity. Throughout our history both parties have committed horrible acts of division, but through most of my life, I felt the Republican party ended up getting on board with progressive trends that pushed us towards equality — late and often reluctantly, but we kept striving towards the idea.

That is no longer the case. As a party we have invited in a wide range of racist, homophobic xenophobes who only want to make the divisions among Americans permanent. How can you truly look in the mirror and say you aren’t worried that you’re on the wrong side of history?

Your choice to go along with your leader to put “America First” is quickly making American alone.

We face significant challenges ahead to maintain a public safety net for most of your supporters. You lie to them every day as you take their money and allow them to believe that immigrants are deleterious, instead of educating them on how immigrants will be a vital part of the backbone of the economy and society.

Our farms, our factories, our production plants, our hospitals, and even our tech companies cannot fill all their open positions; we have hundreds of thousands of people desperate to come here to work, work hard, and work in jobs many of your supporters can’t or won’t do.

And instead of integrating them into our workforce, you condone them being put in prisons, watch as their children are taken from them and say nothing; you’ve just given up as the leader of your party leads us into darkness. (And let us not limit immigrants to those who are able to work either, who meet a subjective standard of “worthiness,” we’ve determined.)

You have not just lost my support.

You have turned me into an adversary.

Former White House advisor David Axelrod tweeted today:

Kind of amazed and appalled by the number of folks on Left who applauded the expulsion of @PressSec and her family from a restaurant.

This, in the end, is a triumph for @realDonaldTrump vision of America:

Now we’re divided by red plates & blue plates!

#sad

The only thing that triumphed here is Mike Huckabee-esque anti-humor.

Meanwhile, a more sober take comes to us from the Washington Post editorial board, whose genteel relativism urges us to “let the Trump team eat in peace”:

Those who are insisting that we are in a special moment justifying incivility should think for a moment how many Americans might find their own special moment. How hard is it to imagine, for example, people who strongly believe that abortion is murder deciding that judges or other officials who protect abortion rights should not be able to live peaceably with their families?

It’s not hard at all to imagine what a moral emergency looks like to the extreme right. They’ve murdered abortion doctors and shot up clinics already. We were living in the Post’s grim dystopia for decades before this point. Right-wing extremists, hopped up on their eschatological visions of the world, have indeed taken matters into their own hands repeatedly. They’ve committed massacres at mosques and schools, and from the Pizzagate crowd — deep in thrall to an alternate universe without peer even among the wild fever dreams of conservatism — we’ve only narrowly avoided mass shootings at a pizza parlor and a homeless camp in Arizona.

Thus, I’m less than perturbed at the fact that Sarah Huckabee Sanders was politely asked to leave a restaurant — indeed, she was even told the food she’d already been served was “on the house.” More uncivil, arguably, was the DSA protest that drove Kirstjen Nielsen from a Mexican restaurant in downtown DC, but this involved no violence either and was eminently fair as she’s a cabinet secretary in a public place. By her own claim, she was having a “working dinner” at the restaurant, to boot. So even the Post’s “private time” distinction hardly applies.

The truth is that for all of the recent handwringing about civility, the methods now being employed against the administration’s core supporters are actually quite civil. The manner in which Huckabee Sanders was asked to leave was actually the portrait of civility; it was a communal decision taken by staff, she was informed of the decision in private and politely asked to leave, and was not charged for any orders that had already been delivered. So what happened, exactly? Well, she was shunned. A social consequence was applied to her actions as Press Secretary that served as a powerful reminder: What she does is not normal, and should not be taken lightly.

This seems to be less the embrace of Trumpism than its precise opposite: the enforcement of normative moral standards through the application of polite, non-violent social consequences for immoral acts.

Why Punching Nazis Is Not Only Ethical, But Imperative
theestablishment.co

Trumpism, by its nature, is consequence-free. Just witness how Huckabee Sanders herself abused her power as Press Secretary to publicize the incident on her government account, leveraging her status and calling down a rain of abuse on the restaurant. That she used her @PressSec account to do this is a violation of White House ethics policy. It won’t matter.

This is one of many problems with Trumpism. Scott Pruitt’s bizarre, expensive peccadilloes and overt ethical violations as EPA secretary haven’t cost him his job; Kellyanne Conway spruiking Ivanka Trump’s fashion line in her official capacity didn’t cost her hers; Trump himself experiences next to no oversight from the Republican-dominated Congress and routinely positions himself as being above the law — his simpering defenders on cable news argue much the same.

Therefore, an ordinary citizen took it upon herself to quietly, politely, apply a much needed consequence to a member of a government that thinks itself beyond responsibility to anything but Trump’s whims. That doesn’t seem like a validation of Trumpian callousness, but a repudiation of it.

Trumpism, by its nature, is consequence-free.
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Of course, when you use the smooth, overgeneralizing language of the Posteditorial board — the same rhetorical gesture that categorizes even life-or-death political battles as “disagreements” — this can all be effaced. One act of incivility is as bad as another. I’d dispute that the Red Hen owner’s actions were uncivil, but even in a case where a dollop of rudeness was at play, like the Nielsen protest, such things are necessary for exactly the same reason: Without these mechanisms, these people would experience no meaningful consequences for engineering and supporting horrors.

The people are doing the checking and balancing that our government will not. We should be much more worried that we’ve arrived at that point than about the politesse of a private citizen.

But if we must indulge the “civility” discussion, then it’s worth saying that these acts of civic protest remain peaceful. They are a humane response to inhumanity, and, frankly, one more manifestation of democracy and decency. People who support this administration’s cruel Zero Tolerance regime, whether from a White House podium or from a Twitter account spewing memes and hashtags, should be made to experience the power of shunning. It is, at bottom, a peaceful way to say “this is not okay, and you should go away and think about what you’ve done; then you can rejoin society.”

The people are doing the checking and balancing that our government will not.
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Furthermore, unlike, say, “conscience”-driven bigots who wish to use Christian belief to refuse service to LGBT people, the owner of the Red Hen wasn’t antagonizing any class Huckabee Sanders belonged to. She was responding to Huckabee Sanders’ actions as an individual. The very things she, and she alone, are responsible for. In another time, conservatives might’ve called that “personal responsibility.”

Shunning is harsh in its way — we are social creatures, after all — but it is also humane and non-violent. In short, it is civil. Even better, it’s grassroots. Citizens are taking their responsibilities seriously. As the Red Hen owner said, “This feels like the moment in our democracy when people have to make uncomfortable actions and decisions to uphold their morals.”

That’s more than can be said for Huckabee Sanders, Miller, or Nielsen, who rely on a consequence-free environment in order to do their dirty work.

I’ve often been leery of applying the language of interpersonal abuse dynamics to politics. “Gaslighting” is a word perilously close to being defined out of all meaning, just as “trigger” has been all but stolen from trauma survivors. But there is merit in the observation that abusers define any resistance to their actions as rude and uncivil, that they apply one standard to themselves and another to any who might raise a voice against them. That’s long been the case here.

What Huckabee Sanders experienced was nothing compared to what she’s propagandized for from her podium. She goes home to a warm bed and her loving family, not a cage where she sleeps on concrete under foil; her children will not be parted from her before being spirited through a ramshackle, Kafkaesque prison system that refuses to track its wards.

The Atrocities On Our Border Prove Trump’s Base
Isn’t Worth Talking To
theestablishment.co

A powerful government secretary was denied the momentary privilege of eating at a specific nice restaurant. Even if I had tears left to shed, this would be the last thing to draw them from me. If these people are so concerned about civility in restaurants, then perhaps they can more aggressively take ICE to task for incidents like this.

We should not fall into the moral trap of analogizing a children’s prison camp to a principled denial of service. Or, indeed, analogizing the latter to Jim Crow or shops that discriminate against queer people, as a breathtaking number of people have done in the last few days. We must be smarter and more discerning than this. We owe that much to ourselves.

Where The Washington Post sees sorrow, I see hope. If our government cannot hold its leaders accountable, then the people must.

The Est. collected open letters on Sessions, familial separation and the current administration’s response to asylum seekers and immigrants — good grief our collective heart! — to publish on a dedicated landing page as a kind of evolving pastiche of opinions and concerns, anger and empathy. Resistance is vital.

Dear Mothers,

Not mine.

My mother was allowed in the country without questions — an infant in her arms. My mother was given a green card and told to go forth and prosper in the American Dream. She knew only elementary English.

My mother got a job quickly. She stayed with the same company for decades and rose through the ranks. Bootstraps. My mother had a salary; not extravagant, but enough to take care of me.

My mother became a citizen 17 years after she stepped onto American soil — never once afraid of deportation in the interim. My mother was naturalized and no one was excited but us. A quiet assumption: She was American. Like them.

A “good” immigrant with auburn hair and seafoam eyes. A model immigrant for posters hanging in U.S. Customs and Border Protection offices.

My mother is white.

I am brown.

Dear Anyone Who Is Listening
theestablishment.co

Brown like the mothers who are seized at U.S. borders. Mothers who cannot move so freely through the world for fear of having their children ripped from their arms as they await trial for crimes they did not commit. Brown like the mothers seeking asylum. Mothers who want the same safety for their children my mother provided me. The same chance afforded to my mother as she arrived in a new country. I am brown like the mothers in holding cells, wondering if their children will survive in internment camps.

My mother’s whiteness afforded me the safety to grow up in her arms, not a cage. My mother’s whiteness afforded me protection from a system that criminalizes mothers who look like me. I am often plagued by the idea that if I were my mother, trying to do what is best for my child, my story would not be so kind.

So, Dear Mothers:

You deserve safety.
You deserve respect.
You deserve humanity.

You deserve to live a life like my immigrant mother.

Mothers, I love you.

The Est. collected open letters on Sessions, familial separation and the current administration’s response to asylum seekers and immigrants — good grief our collective heart! — to publish on a dedicated landing page as a kind of evolving pastiche of opinions and concerns, anger and empathy. Resistance is vital.

On the thread of a truly good friend of mine—who supports the policy of Trump and Sessions—I referred to the sadism of the immigration policy.

I was responding to someone, I think a mutual friend, who claimed that the policy was for the purpose of upholding the law. The mutual friend objected, saying I was emotional and name-calling. I posted the following response to her. It is a simple fact that people I love support these horrors. I want to speak to a larger audience about this. Almost all the people who agree with me have friends who are Trump supporters.

This horror needs to be explored, I think, because I believe breaking through to the people we love who are sleepwalking to fascism is our last best hope.

Every single one of us is descended from oppressors and the oppressed. The arguments justifying cruelty circulating now were going around in Europe during Hitler’s rise to power.

Sometimes the truth comes across as an insult. In part because enough nice people were too polite to be frank with their friends who supported the nazis, it ended up with my grandparents and many, many of my family being murdered in the Holocaust. Of course my family was just one of an ocean of families comprised of gypsies, jews, homosexuals, leftists, and decent people who objected to atrocities.

I am thinking, friend of my friend, that you are highly educated and have had every opportunity to understand that the people who come to our borders are in desperate situations, and that our country is largely responsible for creating those conditions.

The sadism and callousness exhibited by a large minority of our citizens must be named. I feel solidarity with those persons whose torture you approve. Patriotism — especially in this country — requires that your feelings of solidarity with other humans be greater than your allegiance to your government, when your government turns to torture.

Sometimes the truth comes across as an insult.
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Because money plays such a big role in our elections, the significant minority of Trump supporters may continue to gain power. Clearly Trump and Sessions have no more compassion than Hitler. They have both shown it for years. This isn’t name calling, this is truth. (Name calling is that stupid stuff that Kathy Griffin and Samantha Bee do.)

We are coming to a crisis. Either good people who have been sleepwalking toward fascism will come to their senses, or all our liberties and our national decency will be gone. Then it will end very badly for all of us, you and me and all of us. But until our tenuous democracy is snuffed out, you will be hearing the truth from all sides, from the too-small majority who knows sadism when they see it.

The conditions that we have had a large hand in creating in Central America are so terrible that humans will follow the biological imperative — let’s call it God’s law — and try to save their children. The Sessions policy will not be effective in significantly deterring immigration. It will be effective in making us poorer, in many ways. Resources are being diverted from serious crime because of this policy that can’t work.

You will be confronted with this truth every day, and you won’t like it. We are connected by our mutual friend, whom I love, and who thinks I am a murderer because I don’t believe abortion is murder. Yet my family and her family have a strong affinity for each other. It does not stop me from loving her, and I don’t think it stops her from loving me. As far as I can tell, she and you have the same opinions on the immigration issues. Perhaps my family would love your family as we do her.

Until our tenuous democracy is snuffed out, you will hear the truth from the too-small majority who knows sadism when they see it.
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But that doesn’t stop this from being true: Ripping babies from their mothers is perverse and evil. Read Memory of Fire, by Eduardo Galeano, Books 1, 2 and 3. This tells the history of all the Americas from the Europeans’ first landing, in vignettes of one, two or three pages. I think that if you actually read them your heart could not remain as hard. I am sorry to have to say that your heart is hard but it is an unfortunate truth that must be said, for our present, our future, and the people referenced earlier who suffered torture and death because people were too enamored of a false civility to say these things that must be said.

If you don’t want to hear this, you are going to have to restrict yourself to the company of those who agree with you, until such time as the fascist takeover is further advanced.

I myself deal with everybody, and am open to friendships with people who think I am a murderer for believing that women have a right to safe and legal abortion. I have to, because people I love are supporting evil, and that mystery is for me a central question in understanding the world.