Ok, it's now time for me to go public about the 'empathy and being nice to Trump and his supporters, because we're civilised, good people and that's how everything works. You sit down and talk things out calmly, mediate, blah blah blah. Don't be meeeeeeeeeeeeeeaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaannnn!' narrative that's going around normalising him - and them.
Fucking BULLSHIT.
If you don't want to listen, if you want to dismiss me as angry, dismiss this as a 'oh that's her' rant, if the ferocity makes you uncomfortable because you need your nice little ordered world, then walk away from this entry. Because it's not MY job to make you comfortable on MY wall. You can look away. I'm not going to be other than I am for you.
My father is a manipulative, emotionally abusive, sadistic waste of carbon molecules, with much in common with Donald Trump and many of his supporters. I spent my *entire childhood* and part of my adulthood navigating that. I got called a 'whore' at the drop of a hat, and worse than that free with my breakfast cereal.
Here's what I learned. *You can't talk to people like my father, Donald Trump, or those supporters*. Any time you try civilised conversation, mediation, negotiation, they think you're weak. They see it as a way to fleece you, manipulate you, take you for everything you've got, mock you, gaslight you. Normal relationship brokering is off the table because they do not share your worldview or your moral centre. People are commodities to them, to be used and then thrown away. So cut the 'let's talk nice to them' narrative and talk to them in a way they understand.
You know what my father understood? He understood me kicking back when he pulled my hair. He understood my yelling at him at the top of the stairs when he had gone too far. He understood my moving out with 2 bin bags, my throwing him out of my flat when he showed up, and my not giving a f*** about what he was going to tell his mother about her 'good granddaughter'. He understood my giving the car back when he threatened to report it as stolen when I went to visit my cousin and her husband. He understood me not speaking to him for the last 12 years. So, as you can see, the ONLY thing he has EVER understood, the ONLY thing that got through, was figuratively putting him up against the wall and getting in his face.
Because what my father values, what *Trump* values, is overt strength - and the balls to shove his face in it. (Interestingly, an ex white supremacist on Twitter said if people had talked nice to him, he'd still be a white supremacist. It was people getting in his face that forced him to change.)
There's no room for nice here. No room for softpedalling. No room for safe spaces - nowhere is safe now. What there is room for is love: ferocious, protective, powerful love that will go to the wall, go any distance to protect the beloved - the tired, the poor, the huddled masses yearning to breathe free, the wretched refuse of others' teeming shores. We take the homeless, tempest-tost and give them sanctuary. THAT is who we ARE, what we fight for. The people, every last one of them. Yes, even those we need to put up against that figurative wall because in their pain and blind rage, they are trying to destroy what is most precious in our humanity. Just as I can recognise my father's awfulness arises from unresolved pain and grief and feel for it - even as I don't give him an inch - so can we understand and feel for those we must fight. But understanding and feeling for them does not mean we do not hold them accountable, that we do not hold them against that wall and get in their face with every means at our disposal: the legal system, protest, a press that fearlessly speaks the *truth* about what's happening, our vote.
We are walking in the dark, and we must light candles to find our way and give us light till the dawn returns. But don't wave a torch around and tell me it's the sun. Let the *truth* be your light, however frightening you find it.
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