There is a line, You Know Where it is

 I have been a proud progressive for all of my adult life, although I admit that in the earliest part of that period, I’m not sure I fully understood everything that entailed. In those days, there were liberal and conservative Democrats, liberal and conservative Republicans, and liberal and conservative Independents, a reminder that ideology once described tendencies rather than tribal identities. At the very least, early in life, most of us get our politics from our parents.

My father did not indoctrinate me with his politics, but he took us to marches and protests when circumstances permitted. I vaguely remember playing around the reflecting pool as Dr. King revealed his dream, unaware at the time that I was witnessing history rather than simply inhabiting it. I also remember my mother explaining to us one Christmas that we might not get all the things we wanted because some little girls had died in an explosion in the basement of a church. I remember not quite understanding exactly what she was saying, but much later in life, I realized that she was trying to explain that they had donated money to the relief effort.

My sisters and I grew into our own political views, not indoctrinated but gently guided through their quiet tutelage, shaped more by example than instruction. I don’t think my upbringing is any different from anyone else’s. The stories may be different, but the circumstances are most likely the same, because moral formation rarely depends on uniqueness.

Similarly, I remember a Chief in A School explaining to me that he learned from his father what he eventually came to understand were horrible, disgusting, racist beliefs, things he had to unlearn once he joined the Navy, where proximity to difference shattered inherited prejudice. My point is simple: we learn what we live, until experience forces us to confront what we were taught.

Having said that, I realize there have to be people within my sphere of interaction who voted for Donald Trump in 2024. I wish I could say I understand why you knowingly voted for a thrice-convicted felon who refused to accept the results of an election he lost, an act that strikes at the core of democratic legitimacy. I wish I could understand why you voted for a man who summoned his supporters to the nation’s capital, where he delivered a hate-filled oratory, whipped them into a murderous frenzy, and then directed them to march down the street and attack the citadel of our democracy. I wish I could understand how you knowingly voted for an adjudicated rapist. But hey, Joe Biden was old, and history shows that successful Democratic politicians have a troubling habit of spontaneously combusting shortly after age 83, so clearly this was the responsible choice. In the immortal words of Fred Flintstone, “A man’s gotta do what a man’s gotta do.”

So I cannot declare you mala in se simply for that uncharacteristically unsupported and, in my opinion, profoundly unwise action, even if it required an extraordinary suspension of judgment.

But you cannot, in good conscience, truthfully say that you support the likes of Robert F. Kennedy Jr., Pam Bondi, Kash Patel, Linda McMahon, and Tulsi Gabbard, individuals who have repeatedly proven themselves not only incompetent but unworthy of the public trust, to be elevated to Cabinet-level positions, where incompetence is magnified by power.

You cannot honestly claim that ICE agents must be masked to avoid identification, unlike police, firefighters, soldiers, sailors, marines, and airmen, because their privacy somehow outweighs the civil rights of the people they target or the rights of the public at large.

You cannot truly support ICE agents marching into the parking lots of your local Home Depot, violently accosting and arresting people standing in line, hoping to be hired by you to do work you cannot or will not do yourself, for far less than you would ever pay a licensed local contractor to do the same job.

You most certainly cannot watch a video of a young mother being shot in the head by those very ICE officers and then be satisfied with the statements made about that incident by your president. You cannot listen to the description of the event by Kristi Noem and believe the event she is describing in any way resembles the event you just witnessed in that video. If she’s lying about what you’re seeing, it follows that she’s lying about the justification.

You cannot listen to Kristi Noem say, about the shooting of Alex Pretti, that:

“An individual approached U.S. Border Patrol officers with a nine-millimeter semi-automatic handgun. The officers attempted to disarm this individual, but the armed suspect reacted violently. Fearing for his life and the lives of his fellow officers around him, an agent fired defensive shots.”

If you watched that video and you are satisfied with Kristi Noem’s depiction, there is no need for me to try to convince you otherwise.

My larger point is this: although I cannot understand why you voted for Trump, it was your right as an American to do so. But the fact that you voted for Donald Trump does not mean you have to support his idiotic, hateful, and dangerous policies.

I'm just saying.