I’ve seen a lot of calls online for civility in discussing our recent election. Hell, even President Biden called for it in his remarks Wednesday.
In response to this, I feel it’s necessary to say one thing. I apologize in advance for its length.
If the civility that people are seeking is the *civil* disobedience that people like Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. taught, then I agree.
As he said, “freedom is never voluntarily given by the oppressor; it must be demanded by the oppressed.”
As he further said, “Any law that uplifts human personality is just. Any law that degrades human personality is unjust,” and must therefore be opposed with all our strength.
If they mean that we just have to “agree to disagree” as a definition of civility, then I’m sorry to say, I think this approach is unjust, and I cannot, will not, abide by it.
It’s extremely difficult, and dangerous, to “agree to disagree” with someone who supports and votes for an administration who both mocks one of my sons, and has openly turned another of my sons into one of the evil “boogiemen” of this election cycle.
Trump has openly mocked people with physical disabilities that look a lot like the physical movements of my son. He told his own brother that he should just let his nephew die because of the cost of caring for him due to his disabilities.
Moreover, Trump, Vance, and the entirety of the Republican Party have openly attacked the very existence of my other son who is transgendered.
They don’t want him in their world.
They don’t want him to exist.
They are oppressing him. They are seeking to degrade and crush his human personality.
So while I agree that there are a world of things that Republicans and Democrats can and should be willing to “agree to disagree” with one another about when they talk politics and religion, the freedom, equality, and yes very existence of humans can never be something that we should be “civil” about.
Never.
I don’t know why someone might have voted for Trump. Perhaps they don’t know that he is seeking to crush others human personality.
Perhaps they are more concerned about paying 7% (at its highest rate in 2021) more for milk or gas than they are about the existence of their fellow humans.
Perhaps they believe that their god has told them that it’s perfectly fine for them to hate some people.
I don’t know what their thinking was.
What I do know is that the existence of my sons (and yours) in this world isn’t a thing that I will ever agree to disagree with anyone on.
And neither should anyone else.
For again, as Dr. King reminded us while in a jail in Birmingham on the 16th of April 1963, a little less than a year before he would be shot for saying so:
“I cannot sit idly by in Atlanta and not be concerned about what happens in Birmingham. Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere. We are caught in an inescapable network of mutuality, tied in a single garment of destiny. Whatever affects one directly, affects all indirectly.”
“Letter from a Birmingham Jail”
If our leaders are allowed to mock, threaten, scapegoat, crush, and eliminate one person or group of people, there will come a day when they will mock, threaten, scapegoat, crush, and eliminate any person or group of people.
We must all stand against that. If we do not, we will all (both Republicans and Democrats) be crushed by it.
This is what being civil means to me.
