Weapons of despair, and of hope
Our most important work might just be the steady, relentless commitment to de-normalize and de-fetishize violence.
Dear friends:
It’s so hard to write, again, after another horrific attack on schoolchildren (or grocery shoppers, or moviegoers, or concert attendees, or religious worshippers, or… fill in the blank). Attacks that are the direct result of our refusal, as a society, to reject violence and control the weapons that make mass death possible.
The normalization of violence goes on side-by-side with the “thoughts and prayers” for its smallest, most innocent victims. It’s even more than normalization - it’s elevation of violence as aspirational. To be the strongman (almost, but not always, male) who uses violence as if a savior, or divine punisher of those who deviate from the norm: this aspiration is deeply rooted in far-right white supremacist ideology.
So deeply rooted that a white male member of Congress can publish animated content illustrating him murdering a fellow member of Congress (a Latina woman) and aiming at the President, and pass it off as - what? humor? - with zero consequences from the leaders of his party. (See source after the photo.) The same leaders who scorn the “politicization” of the murder of teachers and schoolchildren, when reasonable people point out the rampant access to assault weapons at the core of the problem.
And the same leaders who are so threatened by the mere mention of transgender, lesbian, gay, bisexual, and other identities that they pass laws to ban the discussion of them in children’s classrooms, yet will not allow laws banning the weapons that literally murder those same children. According to the far-right radicals who hold the federal and too many state governments in their thrall, the word “homosexual” is more dangerous to a fourth-grader than a semi-automatic weapon.
If all this raises emotions of anger, disgust, and even despair: you are not alone. But we must not stop there. We must use the energy those emotions give us to take action.
All violence of humans against humans is connected: war, guns, assaults, massacres, intimidation. All violence of humans against humans is also connected to violence against our fellow creatures and our beautiful planet.
Our most important work might just be the steady, relentless commitment to de-normalize and de-fetishize violence. To turn our anger and despair into the most powerful weapons of hope: compassion, understanding, kindness, and inclusion.
Can compassion and inclusion keep us safe in a dangerous world?
I think they are the only things that can. Because they can transform the world in which we live, go to a grocery store, and send our children to school.
Be well, and take good care.
https://www.forbes.com/sites/carlieporterfield/2021/11/17/rep-gosar-censured-after-sharing-violent-animated-video-of-him-killing-aoc/?sh=5e92b61169a0