The Fascists and The Fence-Sitters

Photo by Dusty Barnes on Unsplash

The fence can be a valuable place for a spell.

Many times when facing complex problems or nuanced situations, it’s helpful to sit between two extremes to try and find the specific spot of balance that brings reasonable compromise.

The fence can be the place where empathy is incubated so that understanding can be born. It can allow you to objectively hear differing sides in order to broker agreement between them and craft a productive way forward.

But other times, sitting on the fence will only get you splinters in your ass and a nightmare all around you.

These are such times.

Fascism is here and silence and inaction are what it thrives on. Any “both sides” equivalencies right now amount to complicity with it.

Both sides are not trying to take away people's healthcare, their right to marry—or the freedoms of speech, religion, and the Press.
Both sides are not indiscriminately rounding up human beings based on their pigmentation or intentionally deporting them based on their politics.
Both sides are not obliterating funding for children living in food scarcity, for public school education, for cancer research, or for the Arts.