Letter to a complacent friend

Dear old friend,

You say you love me and genuinely want to connect — but only if I leave politics out of our conversations. The problem is you’ve been convinced that just about everything is political. Everything but your Jeep, your kids’ lives — one of whom is in the Navy — Disneyland, and the neutrality you get to enjoy because others, not just soldiers, fight for your right to live inside a perfectly beige aesthetic, ahem Sand.

You think caring for others and protecting them is political. Human rights — political. Wondering what freedom actually means — political. Which is a pretty interesting question to sit with as the parent of a sailor, isn’t it? Or is that too real?

You think asking what is happening inside ICE detention facilities is flippantly political — even though more people have died in custody this year than ever before, and the administration has actively blocked oversight — from journalists, from elected officials — through policies and memoranda designed to keep what happens inside those facilities invisible to the public. We who foot the bill. This after Rep. Jerry Nadler reported that inmates’ meals were paltry and contained maggots over at Delaney Hall in New Jersey.

The president is a political figure. The border is a political object. But treating human beings without dignity or care is not politics. It’s cruelty. And turning a blind eye isn’t neutrality. It’s participation.

This is what I carry instead:

I have real grief watching our country lose its integrity and soul. As any serious person should — watching democracy crumble, watching the most heartbreaking human rights violations unfold while comfortable people stay silent. Not even a word. Not even acknowledgment of those who are trying. It’s unbelievable. And honestly it tells me which of my friends would probably have my back in a crisis and which ones would quietly whisper to themselves “well, she brought it on herself” while voyeuristically watching my life unfold without lifting a finger.

Now, I am no saint or savior when it comes to helping the oppressed. But I am not going to willfully ignore the fact that people are suffering in ways you and I can barely imagine. Families ripped apart. Countries destroyed. Paramilitary. Concentration camps with no transparency. People disappearing. This is really happening. And the least we can do is witness it. Don’t let them wallpaper a new narrative over it. Don’t let them gaslight us into disbelieving our own eyes, and don’t let them rewrite history even before the ink has dried.

You might be surprised to know that I’m not really political anymore. Both parties have failed us, and I genuinely don’t know who I’ll vote for next time. I’m not interested in culture war noise — I realize now it’s been amplified specifically to divide us. And whatever I did to take part in that, I am genuinely sorry. What I care about is human rights and human flourishing. That shouldn’t even be called politics. It should just be called humanity. Patriotism, even. Any serious faith tradition would call it basic obligation.

And I am not just worried about human rights, I am worried about our own humanity. Technocracy is here with its devastating effects. IQs have dropped measurably since the 2010s. Attention is gone. Book readers are practically radicals now. We are being digitally lobotomized slowly and calling it convenience. Do you know what cattle were before they were cattle? Does that animal even exist anymore? They were called aurochs. The last known one died in Poland in 1627. We are heading in that direction.

What we’re living in wants us to turn a blind eye to evil — to consume instead of create, to outsource everything that once happened at the household and village level, to be fine with theft as long as it’s white collar and preferably powerful and wealthy.

Honestly, I think some people secretly want someone to just shut people like me up. So they won’t be bothered. Even friends. I am beginning to suspect this of you.

Not everyone has the privilege of staying tucked into their dream.

You say you love me. But love doesn’t mean censoring our conversations to the point that you remain untouched by me. Love isn’t a shield.

And human rights is a moral baseline, not politics. Wanting to protect the dignity, integrity, and flourishing of your country is plain old patriotism and it’s also love — which has been marketed to you as politics.

And you keep taking the bait.