Was Blind, But Now I See
There are no words for what we saw on January 6th 2021, yet Joe Biden reminded us on that same day that words matter. And it is true. Words matter because they have meaning. Trumpists know this, and they weaponize words by seizing meaning from them.
It started on day one. Remember alternative facts? Anyhow, it is time to stop the boring task of listing their every assault on truth and justice. Suffice it to say, they’ve lied every day. And we try to point it out, don’t we? We do the work, chipping away at the people in our lives who believe they have found a leader. But truth is poisonous to their ideologies, so it ricochets off of them. WhataboutWhataboutWhatabout, followed by false equivalencies that are so impenetrably insulting that they leave us speechless. In the face of black mourning, they dare to compare baseless rage to BLM. They see a legitimate black vote, and call it illegal. They see racists, and call them very fine people. This explains their empathy problem, and exposes a vulnerability. They are afraid of meaning.
We share Joe Biden’s aspirational definition of who we are as Americans, even as we see, this actually is who we are, right now. It sucks when we see horror in the mirror. That’s fine. Hold on to the dream, but have the courage to use the right words to describe reality. What did we see on January 6th? If we walk it back and water it down, guess what? We too take away the meaning. We saw graceless white supremacists in the Capitol building. We saw sedition. We saw our racist, xenophobic era, rampant and rabid for the world to see.
To the people of color who were unsurprised that a violent mob of whiteness could do this with virtually zero resistance, we saw what you saw that day. We know you’ve been seeing it for years and years. Our heads are bowed. We will not live in the right’s meaninglessness anymore. We reject their matrix of lies, greed, and racism. The end of marching will occur only after every racist drumbeat is silenced, reformed, and replaced with a vision we all share, to the benefit of culture and community.
It’s time to teach across the aisle. Don’t let them rewrite the terrible legacy of this administration. The white people among us need to help our blindly complicit friends to see that this is textbook white supremacy in 2021. Help them to call it what it is, because honesty is the only way to repair truth.
Remember how Sarah Palin mocked Obama’s beginnings as a Community Organizer? Those words need to have their meaning returned to them. Look to your community. You can’t do this work alone, and you can’t do everything that needs to be done. Work on race relations in your school or church. Organize a neighborhood reading group. Be a helper, a sponsor, a creator. Don’t unfriend, let them see your joyful, beautiful, colorful life. And while they’re watching, never forget:
We have been through it. They have had a brutal, weird victory here, and so the good work is far from over. Nevertheless, we won the election in a big and honest way. Raphael Warnock is Georgia’s first black senator. With Jon Ossoff’s victory, the democrats are given control of the senate. Kamala Harris will be Vice President. And Joe, who has been pretty great the past few days, will be President. Act like a winner for a little bit. Fill your liberty with purpose for others. Fill your vote with activism. Embrace the meaning of the words that are sacrosanct to you, and use that meaning to reclaim this century for everybody.
- Michael Kerschner / Founding Member + Writer / Only You Can Save Us
