Stop Being So Damn Nice

Never thought you'd hear that from a minister, did you?

But seriously, stop it. 

Here's the problem.

In 1945 a guy named Karl Popper came to an amazing realization. He checked it out, and it held true, so now we have a theory known as Popper's Paradox, or the Paradox of Tolerance.

Hold onto ya hat cause here it comes.

Popper's Paradox says:

Unlimited tolerance must lead to the disappearance of tolerance. If we extend unlimited tolerance even to those who are intolerant, if we are not prepared to defend a tolerant society against the onslaught of the intolerant, then the tolerant will be destroyed, and tolerance with them.

If a society, in the name of tolerance, is tolerant without limits, their ability to keep being so bloody tolerant will eventually be seized and ended by the intolerant.

We just saw it happen. On March 16, 2016, President Obama appointed Merrick Garland to fill the vacant seat on the Supreme Court. Republican Senate leaders refused to vote on the nomination, perverting the system and holding the position open for 293 days until President Obama's term ended.

A conservative Republican was appointed in his place, changing the face of the court for decades and allowing years of justice work to be destroyed or threatened.

We tolerated the intolerance because it just isn't polite to riot, and now the highest court in our land has been stained and twisted.

Stop being so damn nice.

We tolerate hatred and give it a forum over and over again because we want to "hear all of the options," because "it isn't fair to be one sided."

When did hatred and ignorance become positions we want to get out there just in case someone needs to follow their heart and just go with some light genocide?

Freedom of speech is specific.

Quoting Wikipedia here:

Freedom of expression is recognized as a human right under article 19 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR) and recognized in international human rights law in the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR). Article 19 of the UDHR states that "everyone shall have the right to hold opinions without interference" and "everyone shall have the right to freedom of expression; this right shall include freedom to seek, receive and impart information and ideas of all kinds, regardless of frontiers, either orally, in writing or in print, in the form of art, or through any other media of his choice".

So.

You can hold whatever opinion you want. You can share it, barring some specifically prohibited instances, any way you want.

Great.
Lovely.

You know what that doesn't guarantee you?

An audience.

It doesn't guarantee that there will be no consequences from your opinion holding or sharing.

It doesn't guarantee you support for your position, or a platform on which to give it.

In the US, the 1st Amendment, the one about freedom of speech, is ONLY about laws that Congress can or can't make. It's not about making individuals listen to you.

Listen, liberal folks, granting evil an audience, granting it the courtesy of equal consideration, may seem fair, and maybe it is fair, but it is also a form of self destruction and privilege in which we can no longer indulge.

We can clutch our pearls and claim that we simply won't descend to their level and you know what?

Some of us are going to die so that others just don't sully their white hands and their whiter souls.

It's called a paradox for a reason. In order for us to be allowed to survive, we can't tolerate intolerance.

We can't claim we are too good to play by their playbook, too holy to stoop to their levels, because that is a position of mindless privilege and some of us can't afford it anymore.

Make no mistake. We are engaged in a great war for the soul of our nation. This is not about "people of good will sitting around the table and working out our differences."

They know who we are.

And they literally want some of us dead. They understand if they get their way we will die; there is no mystery. People of color and LGBTQ+ people have understood this for years. People with handicaps deal with it all of the time.

It isn't a misunderstanding. They want us dead.

The far right is willing to go to any extent right now. 

They preach hatred and politics from the pulpit and call it faith.
They steal Supreme Court seats and call it legal.
They torture children and call it security.
They pillage our financial system and call it greatness.
They decimate our schools and call it wisdom.
They destroy our unions and call it freedom.
They ravage our healthcare and call it progress.
They murder our youth and call it fitting.

They savage the weak and the needing, and they call it justice.

And what do we do?

We refuse to talk about the evil inherent in the things they have done and we are willing to grant that they may be misguided or confused, undereducated, or angry for reasons beyond our ken. 

We argue amongst ourselves and we demand ideological and linguistic purity of those who would prefer to be by our sides. We split our votes and we argue about why the most electable liberal candidates don't deserve our support because they are also stained and we, we are so damned pure of heart that we must vote our conscience even if it means the Tea Party wins.

We step back and we obey the laws and we bewail the bad behavior of the other side even as it wins over and over again because we are too good to stoop so low.

We stand in our privilege and we are nice, even as some of us remind everyone over and over again that we are the ones who are and will be dying.

We stand in our privilege and do nothing as Conservative churches preach politics from the pulpit, and turn the hearts and minds of the undereducated to evil.

We stand in our privilege and do nothing as children are herded into concentration camps, because it is currently legal and we don't really want to break the law and put ourselves at risk.

We stand in our privilege and do nothing because it isn't time yet, or yet, or yet, or yet, and we all know it isn't, like, so bad that we'd need to risk our jobs and our houses and the schools where our kids go.

Except for some of us, who know that the time was yesterday, or maybe two years ago.

Some of us who understand that we are still playing by a rulebook that the other side has thrown away.

We are checking to make sure our croquet mallet is the legal weight and that the exact color of our uniforms is allowed and they, they have gotten chainsaws and sawed off shotguns.

And wrapped their shoes in barbed wire tipped with glass.

The day is now and the hour has gotten late and if we are going to preserve a society of law and tolerance we cannot tolerate intolerance for one more day.

We have got to put down our privilege, put down our preciousness, put down our refusal to dirty our hands and join in intersectional action today.

Let me say it again for those in the back.

If we are not willing to join with communities of color, with LGBTQ+ people, with handicapped people, if we are not willing to get into the trenches right now, if we are not willing to fight fire with fire and fight evil with every weapon at our disposal, to fight evil with every dirty trick and underhanded blow and sneak attack we know, if we are not willing to put down our pearls and pick up a God damn stick, than we are going to lose.

And some of us are going to die.

But the rest of you, the ones without pre-existing conditions, the ones who have white skin and able bodies, the ones who are not identified by letters or descriptors because you are centered, the ones with money, the rest of you can comfort yourself that you lived your values.

And you stayed nice.