Silence is a Statement Now, and Here's What It's Saying

Photo by Johannes Krupinski on Unsplash

The volume of the monsters is unavoidable right now.

Their vitriol is everywhere: pouring into comment sections, flooding school board meetings, arriving unannounced in neighborhood gatherings, and littering the White House social media feed.

The bigots are feeling emboldened, the racists have been empowered—and the noise they are making is the stuff of nightmares for the millions here whose peace has been shattered since January 20th.

They absorb the epithets shouted by strangers in coffee shops, they sustain the blows of incoherent Presidential press conference diatribes, they are brought to their knees by predatory Executive Orders, they are crushed beneath the weight of a weaponized Cabinet using its bully pulpit to amplify propaganda against them.

But worse than the vile sounds coming from a sprawling movement of obscenity here in America is the sickening silence in response to it. It is not the presence of ugliness that is most disheartening, but the absence of its courageous counterpoint.

I’m not sure this nation is capable of meeting these days, of having the collective intestinal fortitude to stand against what’s here and what is rapidly unfolding. Whether we’re too lazy or too selfish or simply too ignorant to realize what is at stake, the net result is that a vast majority of Americans are MIA, conscientious objectors in the war against authoritarianism—and it’s heartbreaking.

I always believed that good people all had a moral borderline: a point that, once crossed, would move them to move, propelling them into the fray, consequences and blowback be damned. And with each passing day of this unfathomable barbarism, I think of my family members, my longtime friends, of people filling the churches I once served, of people moving their grass across the street from me and asking myself, “What the hell are these people waiting for?”

I wonder just what kind of horror they’re holding out for, whether there will be a line that rattles them alive.

We’re only four months in.
He’s illegally snatching people off the streets.
He’s killing cancer research.
He’s ignoring due process.
He’s trying to suspend habeas corpus.
He’s decimating our economy for sport.
He’s ignoring court rulings.
He’s arresting opposing politicians.
He’s alienating our allies and conspiring with our enemies.
He’s gutting our agencies of support for the poorest and most at-risk.

And none of that has been enough to pull hundreds of millions of Americans from complacency, tribalism, and apathy. They are holding their tongues and their breath, as if waiting for someone or something to swoop in and rescue them, when the reality is that no one else is coming, that they are the ones who are supposed to be showing up.

I don’t give a damn if you’ve always voted Republican or your friends are all Trump supporters or if you’re not a confrontational person. It’s time you stopped hiding behind that cop-out cowardice.

At some point, either your humanity kicks in or it doesn’t. Either you find your voice or you allow the empty void to testify loudly on your behalf.

We have reached a harsh duality: you’re either with him or with Humanity. You are either one who speaks in opposition to evil or who says nothing and partners with it.

At this point, silence is a forceful, screaming declaration that says:
I am not personally hurting enough yet to change anything.
I am still operating under the myth of my safety.
I am not kept awake by the nightmares that others are living through.
I am not engaged or informed enough to understand the gravity of the moment.
I am not willing to encounter the turbulence that authenticity brings.

As grievously wounded this nation is by the legion of those who continually spew hatred, the quiet of those I once believed would not tolerate it might be the fatal blow.

To all our fellow Americans saying nothing right now: we hear you.