Dear Centrists

In the wake of Joe Biden being declared presumptive president-elect and four of the most ruthless, combative, and generally disdainful years in modern US history, there has unsurprisingly been push back from the losing team while the winners gloat. It varies from group to group but what I want to address is the notion that those who oppose Trump should somehow show deference or literally a modicum of kindness to those who back(ed) him.

    Under normal circumstances I would agree that, when in doubt, it's best to operate by the Golden Rule, "Treat others how you would like to be treated." It's served many people well thus far and I don't expect it to ever falter. It stokes a worldview of inclusion and fairness, assuming you're using it in good faith and not as justification for an "eye for an eye" attitude. It's a simple rule, easy to learn and easy to master, and is a universally agreed upon beacon for humanity's behavior. At times, though, strict adherence to an ideology can blur the lines of what's right and just; an idea that has taken on a special significance since the rise of the Tea Party and its objectively villainous child: The Alt-Right.

    These are not normal circumstances and they shouldn't be treated as such.

    I'm concerned that people pushing talking-point-spin like, "They feel now like you did four years ago" and "Give them time to process their feelings" have somehow forgotten the past four years. How that's possible I genuinely don't know, so maybe it's better to err on the side of caution and say they haven't forgotten, they just never knew in the first place. Again, I don't really know how that could happen, but here we are.

    These arguments generate a false equivalency; they assume that both sides have nominal issues but at their core still believe in doing what's best for humanity as a whole. That's both naive and objectively incorrect. 20 years ago a persuasive argument could have probably been made, but we are long past that. The issues that divide us, whether we're being played by Big Money or The Media or whoever, are no longer based on minute differences. No one's dickering over abstract bureaucracy or marginal legislation, and they shouldn't be! Those are the types of things the Golden Rule is good for, because it prevents you from losing your cool over something that, in the grand scheme of things, is mostly irrelevant.

    What we are dickering over is logic and basic human rights. Things like:

• The intentional mishandling of a pandemic and the subsequent deaths of 238,000 people (as of this writing).
• Keeping literal children in cages (REGARDLESS OF WHO BUILT THE CAGES) and sterilizing them.
• The normalization of rape, bigotry, and political violence.
  
• The suspension of the Rule of Law with regards to those in power.
• The importance of science and the scientific method in informing our decisions, and understanding what those scientific findings mean.
• Gross negligence and active voter suppression which as been confirmed by the party doing the suppression.
  
• The importance of having leaders who (and I cannot stress this enough) don't lie.
• The inaction of those leaders when they find out our military troops are literally being hunted.
• The threat and normalization of authoritarianism.
• Widening wage gaps between the ultra-wealthy and the rest of us and the perpetual spectre of poverty.
  
• Attacking your own citizens, even as you represent them (whether they like it or not), for using their 1st amendment rights.
• Whether White Nationalism is bad or acceptable (it's bad, full stop).
• The ethical obfuscation of the use of tax payer money for personal ventures.
• Nepotism in government.
• Actively, and loudly, ignoring the findings of our own intelligence agencies.
• Whether electors should be legally appointed or not
• The importance of keeping religion separate from governance. 
• The objectification of women

    I could keep going for a very, very long time. In fact, if you want to, feel free to peruse The Weekly List, which as been posting a weekly list of all the things Trump and his admin have done since November 2016, all in the hopes of helping us remember what having a normal, functioning democracy looks like. It's curated by Amy Siskind, who is also the president of The New Agenda, a national women’s advocacy organization.

    But for the sake of ease let's just look at the list I provided. Many of those happened early on in the presidency and others happened more recently. There is a big of gap in the presidency's middle years, but that's not for lack of content, just for lack of time.

    When you vote for trump, or you defend those who voted for Trump, you are saying those things should be normal. You're saying, "I hold none of these things more important than whatever the reason is I" (or they) "voted for Trump." In fact I can prove that, because in a Pew survey released in August of this year, the top five issues for Trump voters (and their percentage support) were as follows:

1. Economy (88%)
   
2. Violent Crime (74%)
   
3. Immigration (61%)
   
4. Gun Policy (60%)
   
5. Foreign Policy (57%)

    Those five things and Trump's stance on them are more important to the majority of Trump supporters than any of the things in the list further above. Not were more important, are more important. Again, this was as of 3 months ago.

    Bear this in mind when you defend them or offer them an olive branch. The people to whom you're reaching across the aisle support imprisoning children because of where they come from, applying laws only when it benefits themselves, police brutality, and letting hundreds of thousands of people die from negligence more than they support not doing any of those things. And that's just four things! Abhorent, despicable, degenerate things that this administration has committed to multiple times.

    The more you allow them to normalize this behavior and the more you let them get away with these illegal, immoral, unethical belief systems, the more a reasonable and just world slips out of our grasp.

    We cannot keep abiding this. It's unsustainable for democracy and it's unsustainable for the average American citizen's livelihood. You can nitpick and hedge with me about whether any of this behavior actually constitutes them being a Nazi, but even if they aren't you're still playing directly into their hands. They want you to waste your time making excuses for them. Every moment you spend debating whether what they're doing is bad, they get away with more.

    I'm not asking you to agree with my politics, or to research the day-to-day events of our nation more thoroughly. I'm not even asking you to take up arms and go to war. I'm asking you, one human being to another, to recognize the face-value reality of the situation we're in and the futility of finding the gray area with a group who uses that gray area to further their divisive, violent agenda.

    They don't deserve our kindness or our respect. They deserve, at best, our pity. The more you play nice with them, the worse they'll play in return, until eventually they won't need you to play nice anymore because they'll be dictating the rules of the game.

    In fact, now that I'm thinking about it, they may be doing so already.