Ok, so the American government is executing its citizens in the streets.
This is not hyperbole. It’s what happened to Renee Nicole Good and Alex Pretti, two protesters executed by antagonistic government agents simply because they were in the way.
First, though, I want to acknowledge that minority communities in this country have been experiencing government overreach and violence waved off as necessary to protect the public for a very long time.
This is, however, the first time in my lifetime a president and his staff are overtly supporting the execution of peacefully protesting citizens.
(Don’t bother disagreeing; we’ve all seen multiple videos of the same event, and though I’m definitely a “benefit of the doubt” kinda guy, those two were executed by ICE agents. Full stop.)
As a man who’s professional vocation often focuses on helping men heal the psychological and emotional wounds of disconnection, helping men back into contact with their authentic selves, their heart-connected selves, so they learn to be more relational, more attuned to others and the natural world around us … well, what we’re witnessing right now is simply the extreme violent expression of un-attuned non-relational men – and the harsh women enabling them – enacting the old masculine doctrine of “power over” and ”might makes right,” the very antithesis of civilized society.
I tend to publicly stay away from politics because I don’t want to alienate men who don’t think like me; I don’t want them to not be served by my relational work just because we disagree on immigration or tax policy.
But we’re beyond politics.
As a student of history, the parallels between what we are seeing since Trump came to power in 2016 and the rise of other oppressive regimes before is overwhelmingly clear.
Today, our immigration enforcement organization, ICE, is becoming eerily similar to the SS militia the Nazi party created in the 1930s (that was eventually officially rolled into the state police force) in part to enforce limits on whoever the Nazi party considered non-Germans and any citizens deemed enemies of the German state. Their violent ways weren’t just supported, but encouraged, at the highest levels of leadership.
This is happening in America right now: The highest leaders in the land justifying the point-blank executions by gov’t agents of citizens clearly exercising non-violent protest within their rights to do so.
Democratically elected governments don’t get to use violence on protesting citizens, even if those protests hinder the government’s agenda. That’s what protests are supposed to do. If the government is doing something enough people don’t like, those people can organize, get out into the streets, and even get in the way to make their voices be heard by the leaders who otherwise can’t hear it.
That’s democracy for you: messy and loud.
Only repressive regimes use violence to silence people. Because authoritarians, like bitter fathers who can stand neither laughter nor tears from kids at the dinner table, are far too internally fragile to hear any voice of dissent.
Trump is the exquisite embodiment of the internally fragile male who is empty at his core, feels perpetually victimized and disrespected by the world, and so uses his status and resources to bully others into a false respect that only endures so long as the threat of violence persists.
That’s Trump. Cross him, and he – or his likewise fragile and cowardly sheep supporters who aren’t allowed to have minds of their own – will make you pay.
It’s horrifying that we put such a man into office of President of the United States … not once, but twice (maybe even a third time if he gets his way, which he may well).
But here we are.
I don’t expect my words alone to change anything. But the more voices added to the growing chorus of people standing up to tyranny, the better for us all.
Silence is how tyranny wins.
America will never be great until it embraces the messiness of diversity, until we are courageous enough as a people to only elect men and women who seek not to dominate others, exert power OVER others, but who instead prioritize collaboration, who understand we are much stronger as a nation with all voices at the table, who aren’t afraid to sit down with people who don’t think or look like them.
For now, we’re stuck with a government that has shown zero capacity for real compassion, no ability to consider different views on complex issues, and clearly believes that perfect solutions to complex issues actually exist, and that by exerting enough force over others we can realize those perfect solutions … given all that, it’s hard to see things getting better before they get worse.
But as I reflect on this descent into darkness America seems to be walking, I am comforted by Martin Luther King JR’s famous conviction that
“the arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends towards justice.”
I believe that. Like the racist civil war generals whose statues have been torn down and their names removed from schools and military bases, someday Trump’s name will be erased from the Kennedy Center and whatever other monuments to truly great men he hijacks as his own. He will be remembered not as a great man, but as a fragile man, who could only get his way by the threat of violence because no one truly respected him, who could only win peace medals by taking them from women, and who encouraged violence against his own citizens because he was a fragile naked emperor with no clothes.
In the meantime, I will continue my activism by calling men forth into the most urgent work of our lives: the confrontation with our shadow selves, the ways in which we turn away from life, resist life, and harm others and ourselves by allowing fear to lead us instead of love.
The world doesn’t need more strong individualistic “my way or the highway” men.
The world needs more courageously relational men.
Thank you for reading.