What Next?

 What do those who were harmed owe to those who harmed or desired to harm them (and living under threat is indeed a form to harm)? The short answer is nothing, at the very least until the intent, threat, or actual harm ends. I can forgive you for punching me but not until the punching stops, and your view that I should be punched and mine that I deserve dignity, safety and self-determination aren't reconcilable until you agree. So asking those who were menaced and harmed by the MAGA cult and policies to welcome and comfort those who sought their harm puts all the burden of the work on those who were harmed. There is, and I have seen this ten million times in gender relations, both a hierarchy about who is supposed to forgive and a way that forgiveness and excuse-making and buffering makes further abuse more likely.

Mayor of Durham, NC: "Now is the time for national unity. Those on the left, the right, and everyone in-between, must begin to work as ONE to create a more just America for all." What does that even mean?

I think there is value in leaving the door open for people to repent and change if that does not compromise your sense of safety, and those of us who were less harmed (hi, fellow white people!) might be a sort of welcoming committee for those purposes. Those 71 million Trump voters are in the same country as us, and the long job is to recruit them with better stories and happier ways of being. But as I wrote last night, there is no middle ground on what is right and true. The victim might want to understand the perpetrator, but she doesn't have to comfort him, especially not in ways that allow him to keep perpetrating harm. Nor does she have to accept his version of what happened.

The truth is not halfway between climate denial and climate science, and while we know that yelling and mocking don't recruit people we also know that abandoning or even softening up your facts doesn't help your cause; it just dilutes your purpose and its clarity for others. You don't need to get everyone on board to support, say, rights for LGBTQIA people; you need to stand firm that those rights are nonnegotiable and in time more and more people will agree with you. Most great changes in rights and policies began with a small minority on the margins, and consensus was built, and not by compromise. The example of passionate commitment and good argument does a lot.

We are not called upon to wage war in this moment but neither are we called upon to offer a unilateral peace. We just won something huge and we do not need to give it away to those who lost.

Rebecca Solnit

11/08/2020