Conservative are crazy, right?
I mean, not all conservatives, just the kind that think kneeling during the national anthem is worse than senseless police brutality, or that climate change is a myth constructed by the Chinese for some reason. They’re crazy.
They’re also huge hypocrites. When Hillary Clinton used a private email server it was the worst thing possibly imaginable. It disqualified her as a presidential candidate in their eyes. Yet when large swaths of President Trump’s staff do it, well, eh… Who cares? Huge hypocrites. It’s maddening.
So it makes sense that we want to spend a lot of time and energy pointing this out – especially on social media. We take pleasure in acknowledging this hypocrisy and seeing that others see it too. We feel like we are helping others see the same.
My request: please stop doing this. Stop opposing Trump and his supporters. Stop putting your energy into pointing out their obvious hypocrisy and shallow commitment to their stated values.
Everyone who could ever reasonably be convinced that Trump is terrible is already convinced. He’s left no room for uncertainty about what he represents or who he is. Those who are still with him are entrenched and will be forever. Pointing out hypocrisy and inconsistencies with logic and facts will not change their minds. Appealing to their sense of decency will not change their minds. Nothing will change their minds.
Harping on how crazy Trump and his supporters are does nothing. In fact, it does worse than doing nothing. It actively shifts our attention from actual meaningful change work toward how dumb the “other side” is. It lets us believe that pointing out hypocrisy and faulty logic is the work.
It’s not.
The work
The work is in transcending these old ways of thinking, these delusions. It’s in forming a new vision of how things could and should be. It’s in taking steps to realize that vision. Every time we focus on the stupidity and hypocrisy of the “other side”, we just distract ourselves from bringing about the world that we want and need.
The truth is: it’s easy to call out Trump supporters. They make no sense. They regularly contradict themselves. Many seem to have a soft spot for actual neo-Nazis. And they seem to take joy out of being hateful and dismissive. They are easy targets.
What’s hard is not letting them distract us. What’s hard is not being mad at them – being indifferent to them, ignoring them. Because when we ignore them, we open up universes of space and energy in our minds. We dredge out the sludge of negativity and we let possibility and creativity rush in.
The radical change agent
The radical change agent today does not oppose Trump and his supporters. She ignores them whenever possible and builds the world we need instead.
