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Pavlovitz: I Don't Grieve Over His Cruelty. I Grieve Over Yours.
John Pavlovitz is a writer, pastor, and activist from Wake Forest, North Carolina. In the past four years his blog Stuff That Needs To Be Said has reached a diverse worldwide audience. A 20-year veteran in the trenches of local church ministry, John is committed to equality, diversity, and justiceboth inside and outside faith communities. In 2017 he released his first book, A Bigger Table. His new book, Hope and Other Superpowers, arrived on November 6th.
I Dont Grieve Over His Cruelty. I Grieve Over Yours.
I really dont care about him.
I know you think I do, but my sadness really has nothing to do with him.
I know who he isand more accurately, I know what he is.
I know that he is just a mirror.
He has simply revealed clearly the disfigured ugliness of the place I call home and the people I live here alongsideand that is the thing I grieve over. And this is not the mourning over a singular loss, it is a daily grieving.
I grieve when I see elementary school teachers dressed up like a border wall for Halloween.
I grieve when I see white a woman screaming obscenities at two Muslims teenagers at a stop light.
I grieve when I see a Jewish professors 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 Id 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 himthat is not the source of my despair. It is the reality that all of this vicious, toxic, filth that we are infected with todayis something you are largely fine with. The rising 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 youre 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 himand that you and I are increasingly morally incompatible.
So yes, he is a mirror, and I am seeing you my countrymen and women through him.
That is why I grieve, friend.
That is why I dont see America or my church or my neighborhood or my family the same anymore, and Im not sure I ever will again.
The greatest tragedy to me, isnt him. It isnt that the person supposedly leading our country 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.
I really dont care about him.
I know you think I do, but my sadness really has nothing to do with him.
I know who he isand more accurately, I know what he is.
I know that he is just a mirror.
He has simply revealed clearly the disfigured ugliness of the place I call home and the people I live here alongsideand that is the thing I grieve over. And this is not the mourning over a singular loss, it is a daily grieving.
I grieve when I see elementary school teachers dressed up like a border wall for Halloween.
I grieve when I see white a woman screaming obscenities at two Muslims teenagers at a stop light.
I grieve when I see a Jewish professors 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 Id 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 himthat is not the source of my despair. It is the reality that all of this vicious, toxic, filth that we are infected with todayis something you are largely fine with. The rising 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 youre 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 himand that you and I are increasingly morally incompatible.
So yes, he is a mirror, and I am seeing you my countrymen and women through him.
That is why I grieve, friend.
That is why I dont see America or my church or my neighborhood or my family the same anymore, and Im not sure I ever will again.
The greatest tragedy to me, isnt him. It isnt that the person supposedly leading our country 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.
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Pavlovitz: I Don't Grieve Over His Cruelty. I Grieve Over Yours. (Original Post)
Martin Eden
Jan 2019
OP
He expressed everything I've been feeling since November '16. If it was just trump, a clown
lunamagica
Jan 2019
#1
lunamagica
(9,967 posts)1. He expressed everything I've been feeling since November '16. If it was just trump, a clown
a buffoon...but he is the reflection of millions. This is what hurts me so much. Love didn't trump hate...hate won.
It hurts so, so much...it sickens me, physically, literally sickens me
Martin Eden
(12,802 posts)2. Trump is a symptom.
The disease is terribly distressing.