I Don't Grieve His Hatred, Trump Supporter, I Grieve Yours.
Trump Supporter, this isn’t about him.
It never was.
My sadness has nothing to do with him, despite what you think.
I know who he is—and more accurately, I know what he is.
From the very beginning, he’s just been a spotlight.
He has simply revealed the disfigured ugliness of the place I call home and the people I live alongside—and that is the thing I grieve over. And this is not the mourning over a singular loss; it is a daily, recurring grieving.
I grieve when I see a white woman screaming obscenities at two Muslim teenagers at a stoplight.
I grieve when a Democratic lawmaker and her husband are assassinated in their homes.
I grieve when I see a Jewish professor's office littered with spray-painted swastikas.
I grieve when I watch a father of four being tackled by ICE agents outside immigration offices.
I grieve when I witness white high school seniors making a "Heil Hitler" arm gesture during class photos.
I grieve when I see the contempt from white friends, when young black men die at traffic stops.
I grieve when I find the most vile sickness on my social media feed, hurled toward people of color and women and transgender people.
I grieve when I hear professed Christian pastors calling for the killing of LGBTQ people.
I grieve when I see rambling, racist tirades on subway cars filled with families with young children.
I grieve when I see supremacist candidates being elected and re-elected.
I grieve when I overhear dehumanizing conversations from old, white men about Democratic women leaders in crowded cafés.
I grieve when I sit across holiday tables, and witness bigoted tirades that I'd have thought people I knew and loved were not capable of.
And though all of these things are undoubtedly emboldened by him and encouraged by him and celebrated by him—that is not the source of my despair. It is the reality that all of this vicious, toxic, filth that we are infected with today is something you are largely fine with. The unapologetic hatred is not alarming or discomforting enough to you to move you to action or to speak against it.
Oh sure, you might inwardly twinge with discomfort at one or two of the most egregious offenses, but by and large, you're good with it all.
With your silence as much as with your volume, you show me you are more with him than you are against him, that you are more like him than different from him, and that you and I are increasingly morally incompatible.
So yes, his ascendence has been a raking light illuminating everything hidden, and I am seeing you and so many of those who share this country with me with heartbreaking clarity.
That is why I grieve, friend.
That is why I don't see America or my church or my neighborhood or my family the same anymore, and I'm not sure I ever will again.
The greatest tragedy to me isn't him. It isn't the reality that the person in the highest seat of power in our nation lacks a single benevolent impulse, that he is impervious to compassion, incapable of nobility, and mortally allergic to simple kindness.
The greatest tragedy is how many Americans he now represents—and that he represents you.
That’s where the sadness is and why I mourn the loss of the people like you, whom I once thought I knew.
Long after he is gone, that grief will remain.
This is profoundly powerful, John. Thank you. You articulate what is my experience too and, I suspect, what is experienced by millions of us.
You said it in a way I cannot...and even would I have former friends read this, they would not "get" it. Last week saw the loss of another "friend" who finally realized he had gone beyond my pale. Thank you for expressing so well those things we all feel.