Please. Please. Please. Please… stick with me for a minute. Don’t cast aspersions of doubt on my sanity, integrity, morals, or competence, unless and until you finish reading this (almost) short(ish) post.
Ok. Deep breaths, everybody. Here we go!
Beheading fake Donald Trump in a photo shoot is wrong. The photos are vile and disgusting and anyone trying to liken themselves to ISIS needs to have their head examined. This is true even if you do not like Donald Trump. It doesn’t show disagreement with the man’s policies or his ideas. What it reveals is actual hatred. It shows malice on an unsettling level… it shows that, at least in Kathy Griffith’s eyes, Donald Trump is not a human being, or at least not one who has any potential for redemption or whose life has any value. Because of a difference of political opinions.
However, the appropriate response to lunacy is not more lunacy. The appropriate response to devaluing one person’s life is not to threaten the original devalue-er’s life… if you think that the appropriate response is to make death threats against Kathy Griffith, then you also need to get your head checked.
While we’re here, it’s worth pointing out that the effigies and mock killings of President Obama were just as wrong. The argument that those were carried out by noncelebrities and are therefore somehow “less wrong,” is nonsense. If you didn’t speak out against those, you might want to sit this one out, champ. Also, if you shared photos of one and spoke out against the other, I have the worst of news for you: you’ve got some blood on your hands. Like, “Kathy Griffith holding the severed head,” blood. You might want to race to who or whatever moral authority you have in life and seek forgiveness.
One of the most troubling things, in my mind, is that all of this is over differences in opinion. I’m not a Trump guy. Didn’t vote for him. I wasn’t an Obama guy. Didn’t vote for him, either… and yes, I voted in each of those three elections. I have friends who are or were, supporters of each, which, apparently gives me damn near unicorn status. Everyone has become so content to just live in their happy little bubbles, with all their air in the little bubble being pumped in and polluted (is it more comfortable if I call it “filtered?”) by whatever organization most closely reflects their own personal point of view.
Let me just close with this. The people in the other bubbles, with the different ideas and values… they’re people, too. Real people. That gay couple that adopted a kid? Real people. That blue collar worker in flyover territory and his family? Real people. All of our differences of opinion, notwithstanding. Do they have idiots in their ideological bubble? Yes. Yes they do. But, newsflash: SO DO YOU! You have just as many idiots in YOUR bubble! Just like each bubble has smart people with educated and well formed reasons for why they disagree with the people from your bubble. That’s an actual thing, you know? Intelligent people disagreeing on a given topic… and please, don’t tell me that the people on the other side are all idiots and you can’t have a reasonable conversation with any of them. If they universally appear to be idiots, you might actually be the idiot. When you do try to have a conversation with someone from a different bubble that turns out to be an idiot, politely end the conversation. Don’t waste your time trying to have an actual conversation about a given topic with someone that can’t handle it and who is only open to one of the two of you being wrong (that one being you). However, when you walk away, don’t say to yourself, “man, all those people are idiots.” That person was an idiot. You don’t know “all those people.” You haven’t had a conversation with “all those people.” That kind of thinking is (a small part of) how we got ourselves into this mess… with all of us having to endure Kathy Griffith holding a severed mannequin head with orange hair (only equaled by her own) dripping fake blood. And don’t give someone a pass when they are clearly the idiot, just because they happen to come from the same bubble that you hail from.
We need to get our heads straight. The people that we disagree with are actual people whose lives have actual value. We need to discuss ideas and hash things out with a willingness to dig deeper and to sometimes be wrong. We need to keep the same intellectual standard… If something is wrong when it works against us, it is still wrong when it works in our favor. If we can’t figure this stuff out, we are headed down a dark road and, in “Trump” terminology, we’ll all be the “losers.”
thereluctantcommentator 