I recently saw this Instagram post from Benny Johnson about the video of Selena Gomez crying about the Trump administration’s deportations of illegal immigrants. Johnson, and various other right-leaning people whom he quotes in his post, argue that Gomez should instead be crying about all of the people killed by fentanyl overdoses, the people murdered and/or raped by illegal immigrants, and the 300,000 migrant children who have gone missing.
While I don’t agree with the sexist stereotypes in the post regarding which ages and genders of people tend to be the victims of which types of crimes (people of either gender and any age can be raped, and people of either gender can overdose on fentanyl), nor do I agree with the characterization of Gomez’s video as a “meltdown” (that’s insulting to autistic people because a meltdown is a term used to describe an autistic person’s involuntary reaction to a sensorily or otherwise overwhelming situation), I do think that the post makes some valid points.
Riley Gaines, one of the people quoted in Johnson’s post, points out: “Laken Riley was one of many. Selena Gomez did not cry for her.”
This is true. And it reminded me of another thing that Selena Gomez did not cry about: the statues that were brutally and viciously destroyed at the hands of the BLM movement and “woke” ideology. Selena Gomez did not cry for the soldier statues whose heads were smashed to pieces with sledgehammers in Portsmouth, Virginia as people cheered and a brass band played. She did not cry for the statues hung with nooses from traffic lights in a North Carolina town. She did not cry for Christopher Columbus, lynched on the steps of the Minnesota state capitol as his murderers raised their hands in triumph and posed for photos with his pitiful, face-down body. She did not cry for Robert E. Lee when his head was sawed from his body and his face sliced off before he was placed into a white-hot furnace and reduced to molten bronze.
I’m going to stop giving examples, because thinking about these atrocities and typing the words to describe them makes me feel sick to my stomach. And these are only a few examples among hundreds. To say that I’ve cried for what happened to these statues is an understatement. Over the past four and a half years, I’ve sobbed uncontrollably on more occasions than I can count, wailed, screamed until my voice was hoarse, punched walls, thrown furniture, and shed enough tears to fill an ocean. I’ve experienced pain so intense, so agonizing, and so excruciating that it is impossible to fully describe. No words can do it justice. What happened to these statues is the most angering, saddening, heartbreaking thing that has ever taken place in the world.
For Selena Gomez to cry for what is happening with illegal immigrants, while ignoring the far worse situation that has happened and that continues to happen with statues, demonstrates a complete lack of both logic and empathy. What happened to these statues – not what is happening with illegal immigrants – is what is actually upsetting. What happened to these statues is what Selena Gomez should be crying for. In fact, what happened to these statues is what everyone should be crying for. The entire population should be unanimously shouting from the rooftops, screaming at the top of their lungs, protesting in the streets, demanding justice, for what happened to these statues.
But Selena Gomez doesn’t care about the statues, and neither do most people. To cry about immigrants being deported, but not about the statues, demonstrates a lack of empathy on the part of both Selena Gomez and society as a whole.
Yup, let’s only allow statues that you personally like to exist!
Let’s only allow statues that reflect the views, perspectives, and stories of the majority! Clearly, that’s what it means to be diverse and inclusive!
Also, restoring a statue that was removed is totally the same thing as building a new statue!
Sounds logical.
Not.
Plus, what would be wrong with putting up statues of Hitler and Putin, anyways? Hitler and Putin are historical figures (the latter is still alive, so maybe not technically a historical figure yet) that both you and the majority of people happen not to like. But how well-liked or popular a person is, has nothing to do with whether they are good or bad.
You consider your own personal dislike of a historical figure as obvious proof that it would be ridiculous to put up a statue of them. In other words, you act as if your own personal likes and dislikes are the sole determinant of goodness and badness, and you treat this as obviously true. When in reality, this isn’t true at all, let alone obviously so. Your personal likes and dislikes might match up perfectly with the majority’s, because you have no capacity for independent thought, but this doesn’t make them any more legitimate than anyone else’s. Minority views and perspectives are just as legitimate, and just as deserving of being reflected in statues and public art, as yours are.
“Hell, yeah! Let’s put up statues of Hitler and Putin!”
Um, yeah. And that’s bad, how?
Translation: “Hell yeah! Let’s put up statues of people that I don’t like!”
As if it the existence of views and perspectives other than your own, is somehow ridiculous. As if it’s ridiculous for statues to exist that honor anyone but bland, mundane people that the majority approves of. Completely ignoring the fact that this not only defeats the entire purpose of statues but also creates a world in which life isn’t worth living.
You think that you’re so smart, you think that you’ve somehow defeated the argument for restoring the memorial at Arlington National Cemetery with this purported “gotcha” comment. But your comment isn’t the hot take that you think it is. In reality, all that your comment demonstrates is your own mindless intolerance and moral bankruptcy.
“Hell yeah! Let’s create a world in which everything that makes life worth living has been destroyed!”
“Belongs in the dumpster of history,” you wrote, under a picture of one of the few things in the world that is beautiful and meaningful.
Yup, the idea that people who are different from you might actually have the right to exist “belongs in the dumpster of history.” Sounds reasonable. Makes perfect sense. Not.
How could you see something magical, one of the few sources of happiness and joy that actually exist, and think that it belongs in a metaphorical “dumpster”?
But then I realized. You’ve never had to deal with the pain, the shame, of not fitting in. Of not being able to make friends. Of having everything you say, everything you wear, everything you do, criticized. Of being told that if only you changed the way you talked, dressed, stood, sat, moved, felt, thought, spent your time, then you would be healthy, and people would like you. You were never bullied and had your parents respond by telling you that you should stop wearing dresses and stop wearing your hair in pigtails, because then people would be less likely to bully you.
You’re not different. You don’t think for yourself. You follow social norms. You have friends. You fit in. You’re a bland, mundane person who is just like everyone else.
You’ve never suffered. You’ve never felt pain.
In fact, you’re not really a person at all, because if you were, you would have a soul, and if you had a soul, then you too would be filled with awe and wonder at the statue that is being built, rather than claiming that it belongs in a metaphorical “dumpster.”
You’re a lump of flesh and blood with no soul, no mind, and no capacity for independent thought.
God forbid that people who are different from you exist.
God forbid that people who are different from you be honored with monuments.
Can’t have that. Can’t have any diversity allowed to exist in the world. Can’t have anything that actually makes life worth living.
Clearly, in your eyes, only people like you have the right to exist, and anyone who is different deserves to be put into a metaphorical “dumpster.”
Without the Confederacy, history is bland and mundane, just a long tale of mindless, conformist people who are all the same, who all think the same, and who all do the same things. And what is the point of that? What is the point of studying that, honoring that, being interested in that? What is the point of living at all?
There is none.
The Confederacy is my special interest. The Confederacy is what makes my life worth living. The Confederacy is magical to me. It is the most beautiful thing in the world, and nothing else can compare. How could you, how dare you, how could you possibly consider my special interest to be something that belongs in a dumpster?
in conclusion, I hope that you die a slow and painful death, and that once you’re gone no one remembers you. That’s what you deserve for being a mindless bully. That’s what you deserve for having the cruelty, nastiness, and utter moral bankruptcy to claim that my special interest “belongs in the dumpster of history.” In reality, you are the one who belongs in the dumpster of history. You have no empathy, no character, no mind, no capacity for independent thought, and no soul.
Four years ago today, after spending months lauding, worshipping, and deifying the perpetrators of riots in which the people I love were murdered, society decided to erupt in an orgy of vicious condemnation of a group of people like me who had the audacity to actually hold a protest expressing our views.
For the entire late spring and summer of 2020, in nearly every city and state, intolerant bullies held violent and hateful demonstrations during which they demanded that members of the majority never again have to encounter a person who is different from the norm, that people like me be obliterated from existence, that the only perspective acknowledged be their own, that all voices other than theirs be silenced. My “friends” responded to this by unanimously flooding social media with mindless expressions of solidarity with the bullies. Politicians responded by effusively praising the bullies, groveling at their feet, and falling all over each other in their eagerness to fulfill the bullies’ demands. Our country’s public art, public spaces, place names, and calendars were redone to ensure that people like me could no longer feel included, to erase every possible trace of non-majority perspectives, stories, and viewpoints.
On January 6, 2021, people like me protested. We were hurt and angry at the way that we had been treated, as anyone with even half a brain would be in our situation. After being subjected to months of the cruelest and most appalling treatment imaginable, finally we fought back. Our hurt and anger were 100% justified, as were all of our actions. My “friends” responded to this by expressing their disgust and complaining that it made them sick to their stomachs to see people like me standing up for ourselves and expressing our views. The pro-bullying activists who up until that point had been masquerading as the news media responded by viciously attacking and condemning us in the harshest terms imaginable. Live on air, the disgraceful excuses for human beings who called themselves political commentators called us idiots, morons, “traitors,” white supremacists, and worse.
Four years ago today, one of the people like me who participated in the protest, Ashli Babbitt, was murdered. And society responded not by criticizing the person who murdered her, but by condemning and ridiculing her for having participated in the protest in the first place. Society reacted by blaming her for her own murder.
Today, Donald Trump will be certified as president. Nothing can bring Ashli Babbitt back, but this day gives me a small bit of satisfaction. Nothing can truly undo the atrocity that was perpetrated against people like me four years ago, but this day does undo it a little bit. This day gives me, and all people like me, a victory. Because what the participants in the protest were trying to achieve four years ago, has actually happened. Donald Trump is going to be president. Today, people like me have won. And the mindless and intolerant society that decided to sadistically attack, condemn, shame, insult, and murder us, merely for expressing views that are different from those of the majority, lost.
To say that it serves them right, would be an understatement.
The military watchdog group STARRS (Stand Together Against Racism and Radicalism in the Services)
has published an article correctly condemning the atrocity that was committed at Arlington National Cemetery one year ago.
“Of all the woke agenda advanced by the Biden-Harris Defense Department, arguably the worst was the removal of the Reconciliation Memorial at Arlington National Cemetery.
In a little covered event, a massive crane was driven into Arlington National Cemetery at the end of Hanukkah and the process of dismantling a historic memorial, the brainchild of US President William McKinley (the last president to serve in the Civil War), from Section 16 was accomplished…
If hauling down a monument to veterans in cemetery isn’t bad enough, this particular Memorial was actually the headstone for the sculptor, Moses Ezekiel. His brother got special approval to inter his brother at its base and it is has always been considered the headstone by the family.”
The article states of the Biden administration, “Their agenda was division, not unity.” I agree with that and would also add that their agenda was (and continues to be) the complete and utter obliteration from existence of every person who is different from the norm in any way. I am such a person, and that is why fighting back against atrocities such as the one committed at Arlington is so important to me.
“Any society which suppresses the heritage of its conquered minorities, prevents their history or denies them their symbols, has sown the seeds of their own destruction.”
Today’s election is a very important moment for our country. I’ve identified as a Republican for many years and have volunteered for various Republican campaigns and organizations, but the past few years have really changed how I see the world. Tomorrow I will be voting for Donald Trump. I feel more strongly about this decision than I’ve felt about my choice in any other election, and here are three reasons why:
I never thought that the continued existence of historical statues would become a political issue. Tragically, countless statues have been permanently removed, torn down, and destroyed, something that has been devastating to me. Donald Trump is the only candidate who has spoken out for statues. He has stood up for them in his public remarks, signed an executive order increasing punishments for people who harm statues, and signed an executive order calling for a new statue garden (unfortunately canceled by Biden).
Additionally, I never thought that the United States government would require people to undergo a medical procedure. Yet that is exactly what the Biden administration did by introducing an OSHA rule mandating the covid vaccine. In my opinion, this is a huge violation of individual rights, and I would never support any politician from the Biden administration as a result.
The horrible thing that happened to the Christopher Columbus statue in St. Paul, Minnesota is important enough to list as its own reason. The images of what was done to this statue – see this blog post for more details – are horrific, traumatizing, and seared permanently into my consciousness. Tim Walz deliberately chose to allow the atrocity to happen, and late characterized it as an understandable act of “civil disobedience.” The Italian American Civil Rights League issued a press release correctly characterizing what happened as “racism” and “a flagrant hate crime,” which you can read here. Additionally, Dr. Christopher Binetti published animportant article, an excerpt of which is below:
When rioters came to destroy the Columbus monument on the grounds of the state Capitol in Saint Paul, Governor Walz ordered state troopers, who were on the scene, to stand down and let it happen. The main culprit, shown lassoing the head of Columbus in broad daylight, was penalized for his crime with only community service. Walz never returned the statue to its rightful pedestal. Italian Americans have been in a state of second class citizenship under Walz, ever since.
Italian Americans are not safe anywhere in America because of Walz’s actions. Thanks to him, the attack on the Columbus monument in St. Paul was copied all over the country: In Richmond, Chicago, Philadelphia, Boston, New York, Pittsburgh, Columbus, Ohio, etc…
Walz wants to erase us because he loathes us as Italians. This is not about Columbus or even Howard Zinn, whose warped views of history Walz seems to embrace. This is about the dehumanization of Italian Americans in Minnesota and throughout America. Remember, that in order to destroy Columbus, his statue had to be physically lynched. No one seemed to care about that symbolism; how it reminded us of the horrifying lynching and riotous massacre of Italians, in 1891, in New Orleans. Make no mistake, Walz loathes Italians.
Binetti correctly, and importantly, characterizes what happened as “the lynching and tearing down of the Columbus monument.” Indeed, a mob of bigots and bullies decided to viciously lynch Christopher Columbus at the Minnesota state capitol, and Tim Walz decided that it was OK for this to happen. This statue, and the horrible thing that was done to him, must never be forgotten.
For these reasons, my little statues and I are voting for Donald Trump.
You used to be mine. Obviously, not in a literal sense, and not in a legal sense. But I always thought of you as mine. My own special statue.
You stood in the park, on your awkwardly large pedestal, looking out over the sloping green lawn and the colorful flower beds. You were the perfect centerpiece, nestled between two leafy trellises. Boats bobbed gently in the ocean behind you, its glittering blue surface stretching towards the horizon. No one really seemed to notice or care about you. Tourists didn’t snap photos, businesspeople walked briskly past, children frolicked in the park but never seemed to glance your way. But I noticed you. Your existence meant everything to me.
I remember the first time I saw you. It was a warm, summer night in 2009, and I was volunteering at a political event at a restaurant called Tia’s. From the patio, I saw you, lit up beautifully in the fading light of dusk. I was surprised to see you. Until that moment, I had no idea that you existed. I had been taught in elementary school that you were evil and horrible, and I was surprised that any public place would have a statue of you, let alone a city with such a liberal reputation as Boston. Your existence meant that Boston was a place for me. It meant that people like me – people who are unpopular, rejected, misunderstood, different from the norm – were welcome there. I had never really identified much with the city or state that I am from, but from that day on I was proud to be from Boston. From that day on, I became interested in exploring Boston and photographing its neighborhoods and landmarks. From that day on, you were mine.
Years passed, and I visited you numerous times during my travels. I graduated from college and switched jobs a few times, eventually landing at a law firm that was just a short walk from your park. I went to visit you nearly every day during that time. I looked forward to my lunchtime walks, which took me along a gravel path, past tulips and sunflowers, up a short flight of stairs, and under the trellis to where you stood on your pedestal. Every time I walked past you, you made me smile. When I had a stressful day at work, you lifted my spirits. Sometimes, seeing you was the only positive thing in my day. Some people might have been put off by your serious expression, your arms crossed sternly over your chest. But I found you beautiful. You were different from all the other statues in Boston. You were like me.
I didn’t think about how you came to be in the park that bore your name. I didn’t think about who made you, or when, or how the money was raised to do so. I didn’t think about who legally owned you, whose property you were, or who was responsible for your protection or maintenance.
I loved you.
Every day, you were there, surveying the park from your marble pedestal at the intersection of the two trellises.
I thought that you would always be there.
Photo titled “Standing Vigil” by Nate Dow. To me, this photo perfectly encapsulates the way that things used to be, the way that things are supposed to be. This is Christopher in his rightful place. I wish that I had taken a photo like this of Christopher, but he was murdered before I had the chance. Link: https://www.flickr.com/photos/natedow/49782524371/
June 10, 2020 changed all that. Four and a half years later, I am overcome by grief and rage so strong that my soul feels like it is being eviscerated, when I think about what happened on that date. I remember where I was when I found out. I was working from home, in my living room, and decided to turn on the 4:00 local news. What I saw on the TV screen caused a sickening feeling like nothing that I had ever felt before, and which words still cannot full describe. That day changed me irrevocably. The Marissa that existed before June 10, 2020 is dead. The bigot who ripped your head off your shoulders and smashed it on the ground killed her, just as much as he killed you.
The mayor issued a bland, lukewarm statement. The police department made a perfunctory promise to investigate the crime, but no leads ever turned up. The Friends of Christopher Columbus Park, the organization that was supposed to take care of you, took no position on your murder and instead continued to post pictures of flowers, kids’ activities, and pumpkin festivals, as if you had never existed. The Boston Arts Commission held hearings at which, voice shaky and hands trembling, I testified, desperate to be heard, desperate to convey how much you meant to me. In what would be a sign of things to come, my voice didn’t matter. The city announced that they would give you to the Knights of Columbus, to be displayed at their new headquarters, which would also serve as low-income housing. Events continued to be held in the park, street musicians strummed their guitars, people took part in outdoor yoga and zumba classes, workers strode briskly through as if nothing had changed, children played tag around your pitiful empty pedestal, seemingly oblivious to its tragic significance.
I learned things about you that I hadn’t known before, researching every fact and compiling every bit of information that I could, as if that would somehow enable me to make sense of what had happened. I learned that you had been created by a sculptor named Andrew J. Mazzola, out of marble from Carrara, Italy. You were commissioned by an organization called the Friends of Christopher Columbus Committee and then donated to the city of Boston, which placed you under the jurisdiction of the Boston Arts Commission. Numerous citizens and businesses of the North End had contributed money for your creation. On October 21, 1979, you were unveiled in the beautiful park on the waterfront, at a ceremony that was attended by Mayor Kevin White, Governor John Volpe, and various dignitaries.
Now, thanks to the bigot who destroyed my world on June 10, 2020, the thought of that park, with its stately trellises, its colorful flowers, and its sunny waterfront, makes me sick to my stomach. Now, I have no pride in being from Boston, no interest in its history or culture, and almost no interest in its sports teams. It’s difficult for me to bring myself to take the train into the city that I used to love. I quit my job at the law firm, in large part due to what happened to you. It was too difficult to continue on as if nothing was wrong, surrounded by so many painful associations and reminders.
Is that what they wanted? Was that the goal of this despicable action? To destroy the life of an autistic person by taking away the one thing that made me feel represented and included? To inflict indescribable, excruciating pain on a person who did nothing but try to get through each day as best as she could? To make me feel like the entire world hates me, and like I would be better off dead? Because that’s what was accomplished. By physically ripping you to pieces and obliterating you from the park that is your rightful home, the bigot psychologically and spiritually ripped me to pieces as well. I don’t call that social justice. I don’t call it diversity, I don’t call it equity, and I certainly don’t call it inclusion.
Three years later, you rose from the dead. Your head was somehow reattached to your shoulders, and you materialized in the parking lot of the new Knights of Columbus building. I visited you a couple of times, talked to you, left you flowers and a note. I saw the cracks in your neck and near your hairline. I marveled at your resilience and strength, and at the skill of the sculptors who put you back together. Just as I was starting to heal, to feel somewhat okay about your new location, you moved again, this time to the Peace Garden at St. Leonard’s Church. Apparently, the leaders of the Italian American and North End communities had gotten together and arranged for the Knights to gift you to the church. In late summer, I visited you in your new home, but I haven’t been able to bring myself to post the pictures.
The consensus among the Italian American community is that the Peace Garden is a better location than the parking lot. And logically, I see the good points about your new home. I want to like it. I want, more than anything in the world, to be able to feel that your story has a happy ending. But I don’t like it. And this resolution doesn’t make me happy.
You used to be mine. And now you aren’t.
Before 2020, I had never really thought about the fact that you were owned by the City of Boston and maintained jointly by the city and the Friends of Christopher Columbus Park. When I contacted the Friends to voice my hurt at your murder and their neutrality regarding it, they defended the security measures that they had taken but refused to apologize for “focusing on the positive.” I felt like a fool, a weirdo, for being so emotionally invested in what I realized was a piece of stone owned by someone else. If the organization tasked with protecting you isn’t upset about your destruction, I asked myself, then why am I so devastated? As you’ve come into the ownership of the Knights and then the church, I’ve experienced similar sentiments. I question myself and my feelings. I wonder if by loving you so much, I’m somehow sticking my nose where it doesn’t belong. I wonder if I am the equivalent of a stalker, obsessively focused on a celebrity who doesn’t even know they exist. Community leaders worked out a deal for your transfer, coordinated the logistics, and announced it to the public once you were already in your new home. I wasn’t privy to this process, and logically I see that I would have no right to be. But somehow the fact that your fate is up to others, and that numerous people are far more involved with you than I will ever be, feels like a knife twisting in my chest.
Things were more straightforward back when you were in the park, where you are meant to be. You were simply mine. I didn’t need to think about any of these things, to feel left out, to feel like a stalker. But now, the innocence is gone. Now I realize that you were never really mine at all.
Perhaps a day will come when I will be able to appreciate the fact that you rose from the ashes, that you endure, albeit with some additional scars that you didn’t have previously. Perhaps a day will come when I will be thankful that you are in the heart of the North End, with flowers planted around you, cared for by people who like and respect you. I’ll be thankful that I can visit you easily, that your location is highly visible but still secure behind a metal fence. Perhaps I’ll appreciate the fact that, as a devout Catholic, you’d likely be flattered to be among a statue garden of saints. Perhaps I’ll be happy that you are happy in your new location, and entertain the idea that you might even prefer it to the old one. Perhaps I’ll be amused by the idea of you hanging out with your new friends. Perhaps I’ll even contact the church office, talk with them, and try to become involved in the church.
But today is not that day. Right now, all I feel is sadness. The thought of you in the Peace Garden, surrounded by your saintly friends, brings nothing but stabbing pain. Now, all I want is for things to go back to the way they were before. I know that this is impossible, and I know that there is no practical utility in feeling this way, but it is the way that I feel, and my brain just can’t move past it. All I want is for things to be the way that they are the picture above. The picture depicts you the way that you are supposed to be. And right now, for me, nothing else is acceptable.
You used to be mine. And now, thanks to the actions of a heartless and soulless bigot, completely lacking in empathy for anyone other than himself, everything is ruined.
Lately, I have been finding it difficult to go on.
I have been thinking about the idea that everyone has the right to their own perspective, their own viewpoint, their own feelings, their own emotions. Some people would argue that it makes no sense to say that a person’s feelings are wrong, or that someone has no right to feel angry or upset at a situation. According to this way of thinking, if a person is angry or upset at a situation, then they automatically have a right to feel that way, because that is the way that they feel. As a believer in objective moral truth, I am skeptical of this idea. I believe that if something is objectively not bad, then no one has the right to criticize it or feel any negative emotions about it, because to do so is to punish someone who has done nothing wrong.
But I digress. Regardless of which side is right in this philosophical debate, what has bothered me so much about the events of the past four and a half years is that people have not merely felt, or voiced, negative emotions about the historical figures that I love. They have enacted those feelings in ways that have involved the physical destruction of the historical figures. And regardless of one’s feelings about the historical figures that I love, regardless of what one thinks about their merit as historical figures, everyone should agree that physically eradicating historical figures from the earth is wrong. Everyone should agree that disliking someone does not give you the right to murder them.
Yet everyone, clearly, does not agree with this.
I’ve had to watch, through pictures, videos, news reports, and social media posts, the man that I love be strangled, lynched, beheaded, smashed to pieces, drowned, burned. I have had absolutely no power to stop this, to prevent it, to reverse it, to gain any sort of compensation or restitution for that harm that has been done to me. I don’t even have the power to voice my pain and be heard. Because no matter how hard I try, no matter many different ways of explaining I attempt, society refuses to recognize that any harm has been done to me at all. Whenever I try to express my viewpoint, to voice my grief and anger, to present any sort of argument for why what happened was wrong, I am met with insults and ridicule. People call me a racist, an idiot, a moron, say that I should be barred from public spaces, laugh in my face using Facebook’s hideous “laughing face” reaction. When I contact public officials, I am either ignored entirely, or lectured about how I am wrong, and how the murder of the man that I love was a good thing, and how I need to have more empathy for others and to educate myself about the harm caused. The fact that harm was caused to me by the murder of the man that I love is denied and disregarded. The idea of others actually having empathy for me is not even acknowledged as a possibility.
This is why I’m outraged upon coming across the following quote from Tim Walz: “How is it fair that you’re paying your taxes every year, and Donald Trump hasn’t paid any federal tax in the last 15 years?”
Walz’s sentiments are so lacking in empathy that it’s appalling.
After being forced to watch the man that I love be strangled, lynched, beheaded, smashed to pieces, drowned, and burned, dozens upon dozens of times, I don’t care a whit about how much tax money Donald Trump pays. What I care about is the man that I love, and the fact that he was murdered.
Tim Walz, in fact, made a deliberate decision to allow the man I love to be murdered. Tim Walz knew that a group of bigots and bullies were planning to lynch Christopher Columbus at the state capitol building in St. Paul, Minnesota on a particular day and at a particular time. And he ordered the state police to stand down, to do nothing, to make no attempt to stop the lynching. So the man that I love was lynched, brutally and excruciatingly, on the steps of the state capitol, as dozens of cops stood and watched. The images of the noose being tied around his neck, his metal body crashing to the ground, a bigot named Mike Forcia standing on Christopher’s pedestal and thrusting his arms into the air in sickening triumph, mindless bigots posing with their knees on Christopher’s neck as he lay pitifully face down on the ground, a line of cops standing at attention and doing absolutely nothing as these horrifying events took place, are indelibly seared into my mind. The excruciating agony will be with me forever. It burns my consciousness and torments my soul as I type this sentence.
But to Tim Walz, the lynching of the man that I love does not matter. It is not important, not a problem, not worth doing anything about. Tim Walz thinks that the amount of taxes paid by Donald Trump is more important than Christopher’s life, more important than the soul-crushing trauma and pain that I’ve been subjected to.
Lately, my mood has been low and down, my soul feels crushed, and everything feels heavy. For four and a half years I’ve lived with trauma that never goes away, that contaminates nearly every person, organization, place, and activity, that eats at my mind when I’m trying to fall asleep, that erupts into a volcano of anguish at the smallest reminder. And no one cares. Society thinks that the problem is me, that the man I love deserved to be murdered, that I am racist and bad for loving him, and that I need to change so that I’m not as upset about the fact that he was murdered. It’s difficult to imagine a path forward, a life that could be meaningful, given these circumstances.
Meanwhile, the people who lynched the man that I love have faced no negative consequences at all. Their needs are being met, just as they always have been. They haven’t suffered trauma. They are told that they are perfectly fine the way they are (righteous and honorable even, depending on who you ask), that they don’t need to change. They are able to live their lives, spend time with friends and family, love their romantic partners, raise their children, engage in their hobbies, and voice their views without criticism, without insults, without laughing face emojis. Tim Walz is able to campaign for Vice President of the United States with his wife and children by his side, participate in debates, speeches, and interviews on meaningless issues, and almost entirely avoid any accountability for his decision to facilitate the lynching of the man that I love.
In the eyes of society, the people who hurt me, the people who murdered the man that I love, hold the moral high ground. In the eyes of society, I am condemned as shameful, disgusting, and morally bad for having been hurt, and the man I love is ridiculed for having been murdered.
In other words, the person who has done nothing wrong in this situation bears 100% of the negative consequences, and the people who have done something wrong, by causing the horrible situation, bear 0% of the consequences.
