You're Really Not Sick of Politics—You're Sick of Hatred

Photo by Elyas Pasban on Unsplash

“I’m just so sick of politics.”

I hear or read these sentiments hundreds of times each day, more and more frequently as we approach the election.

I imagine that regardless of your political leanings, you also think you’re sick of politics—but you aren’t.

I’ve been doing this public work for the last decade, work I began reluctantly as the 2016 presidential campaign began, and I’ve often thought that I was sick of politics, as well. I thought that I was again, today.

But I needed to remind myself that this simply isn’t true, though I am sick of many things:

I'm sick of waking up every morning, checking social media or turning on the news and seeing that we're in an another unnecessary and preventable Constitutional crisis.

I'm sick of having to once again channel the adrenaline to confront a new onslaught of real and manufactured emergencies that will demand hyper-vigilance and sustained attention.

I'm sick of having to desperately appeal to public servants to do the decent and humane thing, to put the common good over their political interests and seeing them again defiantly refuse.

I'm sick of trying to convince professed followers of Jesus that they're supposed to care about other people; that they can’t embody a faith committed to loving their neighbor, while having such contempt for so many of them.

I'm sick of dancing through minefields at family gatherings, around my neighbors, and in friend’s comment sections; doing verbal gymnastics to sidestep relational explosions and to keep loving people I've recently learned unsettling things about.

I'm sick of scrolling through racist, anti-LGBTQ, anti-immigrant, anti-Semitic hate speech filling my social media mentions and feeling like I’m surrounded by people who revel in viciousness.

I'm sick of being reminded daily of the white supremacy that my former church friends are so terribly afflicted with and realizing that I am orphaned from the places I once called my spiritual home.

I'm sick of seeing stories of newly-emboldened bigots showing up as neighbors, elementary school teachers, local politicians, and coffee shop patrons—because they feel they've had a kindred embittered spirit in the White House for four years and want one again.

I'm sick of boastful, nonsensical, intentionally-provocative tweets littered with Democrat slander, wall-building taunts, and abject lies.

I’m sick of watching immigrants and transgender people and public school teachers and young women being continually vilified and demonized and painted as the enemy.

I bet you’re sick of all this stuff, too, which is why I hope you’ll really embrace what I’m about to tell you:

If you’re sick of these things, you’re going to have to deal with them politically.

Yes, much of the exhaustion you’re feeling is due to human stuff: the collective heart sickness of tens of millions of people, addled by false fear, stoked by irrational prejudice, and manipulated into seeing everyone around them as an enemy to be destroyed.

But these things are all directed by those in power, those who set the tone and draft the legislation and create the environment we all live and move and breathe within.

Which is why you cannot allow yourself to become so overwhelmed or apathetic or disinterested that you stop participating in the political process.

In November, each of us: every tired, grief-stricken, battle-scarred, crisis-sickened human being here has the chance to stand together and say no: to fear mongers, to culture warriors, to those who traffic in division and distrust, to those who know that they cannot rule without terrified and warring citizens to weaponize against one another.

This election offers us two distinct choices: a leader and movement of unity and optimism, seeing the best of who we can be together, or a leader and movement that runs on half of the country silencing, eliminating, or hurting the other half.

November 5th will not solve the brokenness of our relationships or heal the hearts of those who harbor resentment, but it will give us the chance to exist in a space where quiet goodness is once again the baseline, where decency is normal, where calm is ordinary.

So yes, we’re all sick of hatred and lies and seemingly never-ending ugliness we’ve been suffering from.

And with our voices at the polls, we can go a long way in one day to getting well.