I have no patience for defeatism.
There are people who are saying, “I have been speaking up, it doesn’t make a difference.”
Bullshit.
You don’t know if it’s making a difference or not. No pebble ever understands the magnitude of the avalanche.
For decades, the reich-wingers have been shifting the Overton window (the window of normalization) to the right. We have to speak up to shift it back.
We have to speak up for standards of behavior, for intelligence, for rationality, for the weight of evidence, for transparency in government. We have to speak up for empathy and compassion and that the true purpose of government is to serve the people. We have to speak up and speak up and speak up —
Because silence is not only surrender, it is death.
facebook/david.gerrold
I got a comment on Jesus Freak. It’s a rare thing these days, getting a comment on a blog that isn’t spam. I get several hundred attempts to take down my site and turn it into another link in a bot net every single day, along with what I’m sure are several hundred comments that amount to advertisements for Viagra. At least, that was the amount of spam comments I used to see and delete. I don’t know what the stats on spam are anymore because the spam detectors autodelete them now. It’s a welcome change. WordPress still tells me how many attempts have been made to get in through the backdoors on the website. The size of that number is frightening these days.
The final line in the comment has haunted me since I read it. These ideas can’t be fought. If they can’t be fought then we have already lost. The people who hold and promote the ideas I denounce in Jesus Freak are already prepared for civil war. Their dreams are fulfilled if we allow them to fabricate a civil war situation and our hopes are destroyed if we join them in that war, even if we ultimately defeat them. We probably will defeat them because their ideas are bad ideas and their beliefs are false, but there is no certainty in war other than the certainty that people will die. Lots of people will die.
The country will change because of this. Will it be a good change? Who can say? The Romans descended into civil war in a time of crisis very similar to ours, and they emerged from that crisis ruled by a dictator. Very frequently this is the outcome of civil war because the systems that allow for democratic rule are degraded and cast into doubt. The allure of a strongman as leader is hard to resist when the uncertainty of war hangs in the air.
Joe Biden is not a strongman, he’s just a decent man and an accomplished politician and that isn’t good enough if what you need is a wartime president. In three years there will be someone who opposes Joe Biden at the polls, someone who will have all the trappings of a strongman wrapped around him. Will we see our way through those treacherous waters? Who knows?
I was looking through my Facebook history a few minutes ago and the above quote from David Gerrold was in my timeline from three years ago. Talk about timely coincidences. Resist defeatism. When someone tells you something you know is bullshit, let them know they are spewing bullshit. If you are going to claim Christianity, then fucking stand on what Jesus said and denounce those prosperity gospel christians around you as the fakirs that they are.
Stop trying to go along just to get along. Challenge the beliefs of others. The election was not rigged for Joe Biden. Republicans have adopted White Nationalism, in form if not in word. Christianists are trying to start a new holy war, and we have to stand up to them and tell them that enough is enough. No more Crusades, we’re done with the religious bullshit. Science is real, the pandemic is real and get your fucking vaccination so that we can finally put the pandemic behind us. Do not go along to get along. Make some fucking noise now or it may well be too late.
