Living: airbnb in Englewood, CO
Working: Modworks, Denver, CO
Laundry: @airbnb
This week in laundry I lament the trenches.
I may have done laundry last week on Friday, but I didn’t post until late Saturday evening.
As soon as I posted, I saw the reports of the Orlando shooting stream in.
And maybe it was because I was just turning in to bed, but I didn’t think much of it. My first reaction was, honestly, that this was just another typical American affair.
I suppose I’ve become accustomed to the violence. To gun violence. To domestic violence. To hate towards the Hispanic, towards Mexicans, towards Muslims, towards the LGBTQ community. From religious extremists. From masculine extremists. From violence extremists. Really from any extremist. It all feels normal here in our modern America. So I wasn’t surprised.
It wasn’t until Monday came in, and everyone ran for the trenches, that the weight and depth sunk in.
Before I move on, let me be clear.
What happened in Orlando is many things. It’s complex.
But whatever you choose to make of it, it is undeniably, first and foremost, a hate crime perpetrated against a marginalized community. A community struggling to achieve their civil rights & equality in the pursuit of life, liberty, and happiness – a community that often receives a lot of anger, contempt, and lack of compassion. A community that often operates in fear – and with good reason.
To not acknowledge this at the core of the events in Orlando would disrespect the dead and wounded. For all the things that the Orlando shooting is and comes to represent, the victims are the ones who bear that burden in order for the massacre to be and represent those things.
But it’s more than that. In fact it’s so much more that it somehow reaches out and touches the very heart of America. Gay Rights. Gun Rights. Immigrant Rights. Human Rights. Privacy Rights. Religious Rights. Partisanship, presidents, elections, and terrorism. And an international hatred ignited in the hearth of the Cold War. It’s as American as pie. Or the banjo.
or National Parks
And it does so not just by what happened, but when it happened. It happened during Pride month. It happened during Ramadan. And it happened at the tail end of the presidential primary – that special moment every four years when we the people and our media are most focused not on what’s best for all of us, but what’s best for each of us.
Denver shows some Pride
It’s a moment when groups of us are told not what we need to hear, but exactly what we want to hear. Because that’s what it takes to win primaries in a bipartisan country – you tell a quarter of the country exactly what they want to hear in alienation of the others.
I didn’t realize this until I witnessed Geraldo Rivera, locked in one of many talking head debates over gun control, or radical Islam, or LGBTQ equality, or some other issue stoked in the fire of Orlando, cry out in such frustration that it overwhelmed all other debate:
It’s like this around here every four years. It’s like this around here every four years.
What happened is complex not because of what happened, but why it happened, and when it happened. And because it’s complex it gives each of us the justification we need to take what we already believe, and believe it even more so. It gives us the ammunition to prove to ourselves we’re right.
And it’s fueled by the current moment in our presidential primary cycle – we’re so accustomed to hearing exactly what we want to hear from politicians fighting amongst themselves for support from a minority of the US population – so used to the soothing voice that comforts us to let us know “you are right and everyone else is wrong” – we’ve become so entrenched in our own views and beliefs – that we’ve forgotten the courage it takes to compromise. We’ve forgotten the courage it takes to hold enough compassion for our fellow man to truly understand where they’re coming from and why they believe what they believe.
not the only thing that divides America
On gun control/rights you could claim more guns were needed to combat the assailant. Or you could claim more control was needed to prevent his ease of access to efficient machines designed for destruction.
On religious extremism you could claim ISIS inspired action, from the 911 calls made. Or you could claim domestic terror at the outcome of toxic masculinity, since the gunman was a US citizen who pledged allegiance to three separate factions at war with each other, as well as the reports of his closeted confusion.
You could cry Islamic terror, for the hate crime intended to inspire fear, or because ISIS claims responsibility despite any evidence of involvement. Or you could avoid the term all together, for fear of escalating the hate and marginalization of yet another minority race and religion, fueled by divisive primary politics.
And because there are so many core issues at hand, on any given issue, instead of looking at the opposite side of the coin or the whole breadth of spectrum, you can simply dismiss what you don’t agree with by pointing to another issue.
“This isn’t about gay rights. This is about Islamic Terrorism”. “This isn’t about ISIL, this is about the gun epidemic”. “This isn’t about the NRA, this is about bad intelligence gathering”.
We never have to challenge our own beliefs and views because we can simply shift the focus. We never have to challenge our own beliefs and views because we’re so accustomed to being told they’re right from our partisan primary campaigners. So we go about, digging a trench for ourselves and our like-minded kin. In safety. While the others, who must be wrong, foolishly dig themselves into their own trenches.
And we stay there because we’re afraid. We’re afraid to come out to the middle ground. We’re afraid that if we do, everyone else will just stay in their trenches – making us a target while they stay safe. Making us the loser, while everyone else stays safe in their trenches.
We should train ourselves stop digging into trenches
Who could blame us? Really, I think it’s just another symptom of the culture of shame. In the trenches, we all agree, so we don’t shame each other. But out of the trenches we let the shame fly. And it’s unproductive because rather than moving forward, the shame exhausts us and we just climb back into our trenches where it’s safe. Where it’s safe and nothing changes.
The shame of being wrong – of being idiots and losers – instead of the mistake of misinformation prevents us from coming out of our trenches to seek a middle ground.
Social media deepens our trenches. Our social media feeds cater to our own beliefs. Don’t like what you read? Just unfollow or unfriend. It incubates us in our trenches, and prevents us from having to challenge ourselves. It basically does the same thing as a politician in the primary cycle.
Curious what a trench looks like? Take a peek at this interactive article by the Wall Street Journal. It creates two fictional facebook feeds – one for the left, one for the right. Take a look at how closely one of those feeds matches your own trench. And then, spend some time in the other, even if you don’t like what you see. It’s still important to see it.
In the shadow of so much division, partisanship, shaming, and entrenchment steeped in hate and shrouded in fear I easily despair.
But then I remember we used to kill each other over the right to own each other. So maybe things can get better.
America’s come a long way
What happened in Orlando is complex. It’s complicated, not just for what happened, by why it happened, when it happened. And the trenches prevent us from talking about it openly. Because of fear, and shame, and all sorts of things really.
It wasn’t until Thursday that I finally saw some middle ground, out of the trenches. The opinion includes references to both the Matrix and Harry Potter. The title’s clickbait, and maybe I’m just too much of a millennial to comprehend controversial politics without a couple of pop culture references, but I liked it and think it’s worth a read. The author is a British Muslim.
I don’t recommend taking that opinion as gospel. Because it isn’t. But it highlights the complexity; the multitude of issues. Most importantly, it highlights the fear.
It’s clear we’re all afraid. Afraid they’ll take our lives. Afraid they’ll take our safety. Afraid they’ll hurt our friends. Afraid they’ll persecute our families. Afraid they’ll take our guns. Afraid they won’t take the guns away. Afraid of the lobbyists. Afraid of the politics. And they could be anybody – fill in the blank.
No matter how you want to paint what happened, I think we all agree the assailant was an extremist. You’d have to be by definition – to commit any such form of violence is a pretty extreme thing to do.
And really that just means that he, like the rest of us, was deep in the trenches. If not just a little bit more so.
This train car, from the Colorado Railroad Museum, is not the only observation in this post
I have friends that are Muslim. I have friends that are gun owners. I have friends that are LGBTQ community members. And I’m afraid. I’m afraid for their safety. I’m afraid for their ability to live a happy life, free from persecution, to the same extent and with equal rights that everyone else enjoys. I’m afraid of what might happen in the heat of hate.
It’s a hate that’s born from fear. It’s a fear that keeps us in our trenches. It is a fear that can only be overcome through the courage to hold compassion. Compassion for those like us still cowering in the trenches. All of the trenches.
While I’m willing to challenge my own beliefs on many things, there is one belief that I will never change. I believe that my friends, all my friends, have an equal right to the pursuit of life, liberty, and happiness to the same extent as everyone else. And that includes the right to live free from fear of persecution.
It’s a belief I will never change because my friends give me happiness. Because they give me courage. Because they give my life value. And because they would do the same for me.
Through their compassion, they’ve earned my loyalty, and my defense of their right to happiness. Muslim, gun enthusiast, gay, or transgender.
Yeah. It’s kindof like that.
The world is full of compromise. Growing up, this was one of the hardest things for me to accept. But I now embrace it.
The world is made on compromise. Anyone in a healthy and enduring marriage or partnership understands this.
The world is made of compromise. Relationships are about compromise. Participating as a citizen in one of the most powerful democracies on the planet is about compromise. Being a human on earth is about compromise. As much as we like to romanticize and idolize the triumph of conviction.
But as long as we’re dug into our trenches – dug in through our fears – compromise just isn’t viable.
For fear is the thing that divides us. And yet, fear is the thing that we all have in common.
That, and maybe laundry.
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