Image by Constance Kowalik from Pixabay
I have been told by a European buddy that I fret too much about being impolite to objectionable friends and family.
And honestly, yeah, before posting, I take a lot of time to think things through, craft my words, and research and reevaluate my position. Then after posting, I wrestle for days with guilt about having been impolite—but always coming back to the same conclusion: “Somebody had to say it.”
Nevertheless, I feel like an asshole. See, I’m doing it again. Fretting over having been confrontational in whitewashed America.
My takeaway is that in trying to reason with them, I give those objectionable friends and family too much credit for goodheartedness and goodheadedness.
So let me be blunt and be done: If you’re mourning Charlie Kirk, there’s something wrong with you. You’re either too lazy to research his words, too selfish or hateful to care, or too stupid to understand. Take your choice: lazy, selfish, hateful, or stupid.
In any case, you’re not listening. You don’t care. You’re bad people.
For the rest of you reading this—friends, family, and especially those marginalized in America—even if we’ve never met, I love you. If Charlie Kirk and his ilk can hate people they don’t know, then you and I can love people we don’t know.
And honestly, I need you. My privileged, white, Midwestern, late Boomer, mid 20th Century, Evangelical Christian, heterosexual cis male background leaves a lot of ignorance. I’m doing my best here, but I could use a hug.