It's been five months since I last actually finished writing a blog post that I decided to share (say hello to a million drafts). There has been a few reasons for this but one of the big ones is that I want my blogs to bring light and create beauty; and that has become increasingly hard to do with conviction in a world that has been so full of darkness. I want to inspire, I want to be that light funny adventure girl with just a touch of faith and heart, and it's been hard to find the honest words for that while growing increasingly frustrated with my environment.
Because the truth is that I am livid.
I am not angry with all Trump supporters or with all police officers or with every person who has a visceral reaction to the phrase "gun control." But I am absolutely bleeping furious with the attitude of complacent apathy so many of us have developed toward injustice. I am angry about the death sentences of Alton Sterling and Philando Castille, whose media legacy will surely become their criminal history and not their Olympic-qualifying swim times. I'm angry about the lack of empathy for non-Western countries bombed by Daesh and our active choice of ignorance if a trendy Facebook filter doesn't follow. And I am angry that America is the only developed country where children are regularly massacred by gun-wielding idiots and nothing has changed.
And I am utterly blown away that it's not those things that bring on the, "Come Jesus nows," of Christian America. No, instead it's when Christmas spirit is dampened by secular America or when religious oppression rears its ugly head in the form of a transgender person going to the bathroom. It's when political correctness is the enemy because apparently America can't be great if it is also kind, considerate, decent.
I hope those things make you uncomfortable, because injustice ALWAYS should.
All of those issues are completely different, but they are all rooted and safe in the silence of our majority. Your silence is oppression. Your lack of concern for your neighbor is the proliferation of hatred.
I am angry that we have grown so numb to certain types of tragedy that it only warrants a reaction if those suffering are like us. I'm angry that it takes a greater evil to bring opposing groups of people together (but only if we can't blame the greater evil on the opposition). I am angry that so many people believe that to voice that an issue matters is also to say that we must think no one else matters. To love one enough to hope they are treated fairly and equally is not to hate the rest. To say that an injustice exists is not to say that none other do. Yes there is black on black crime AND police brutality. Yes there is justified daily fear in being an officer AND a person of color. Yes there are homeless veterans AND legitimate refugees.
Why have we lost our ability to see nuances? Why are we now so polarized that we can't be for the fair treatment of x without saying that y must be composed solely of thugs or racists? Why is it so hard to say, "He didn't do his job well," without worrying that you'll be seen as an unpatriotic police-hating "libtard?"
I am disappointed in myself that I considered for a moment that I should not post anything like this, out of concern that it might disturb the social-media-scrolling peace of friends with different views. Or that no one on Instagram will care anyway because this is too long and emotionally charged. Or that I might give myself away as an opinionated millennial liberal. But, quite frankly, screw that. There are few things more damaging to progress than majority complacency so I HOPE this disturbs you. Injustice is certainly disturbing.
There's a lot of things we can blame the problems America is facing on, but we are solely accountable for our inability to think critically and compassionately, and think beyond immediate relevance to our own lives. We are solely responsible for our own choice of ignorance.
That ignorance bears our collective lack of alarm, action, and compassion in the face of injustice. Not ignorance from never being taught, but ignorance born from never seeking truth. Truth, which I have been told, has nothing to fear from investigation.
There has never been a time where the silent or silencing majority landed on the right side of history-- not in Nazi Germany, not during the Civil Rights movement, and not now. What role is your voice, or lack thereof, playing in the story of progress? Why are you willing to let this (just another mass shooting, just another black man shot dead, just another foreign terrorist attack) become normal? How are you setting aside differences to care for your neighbor before a common enemy demands it of you?
I am livid for change, and I hope you are too.