Community Over Politics
Each act, each occasion, is worse than the last, but only a little worse. You wait for the next and the next. You wait for one great shocking occasion, thinking that others, when such a shock comes, will join with you in resisting somehow. You don’t want to act, or even talk, alone; you don’t want to ‘go out of your way to make trouble.’
Banned books. Burning books. Talk of traitors and demon possession in churches, calling out witches. Jewish Space Lasers.
A thousand tiny steps. That’s how Democracies fall. Each individual step just small enough to be plausibly and tailored to walk the lines and stay in the margin of uncertainty. You’re being alarmist, people say, until suddenly on 1/6 hundreds of people, many armed, attack the capital. Then the whitewashing: it was only legitimate public discourse.
How long are we going to continue asking if it’s yet time to be alarmed? The time has come, and people already need our help. Lean in and remember that our community — those people to our left and right — are more important than any political opinion or talking point.
