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So here’s the deal my darlings, my darlings on the internet and even on the ground IRL, I’ve had quite enough of some meanspirited accusations of racism, misogyny, bigotry, and homophobia. I’ve had enough, this needs to stop, because it is unkind, it is disrespectful,  and it is untrue. It’s a whisper smear campaign a bit like people would once whisper “communist” to get back at their neighbors or their employees, or anyone else they wanted to blackball. It’s a form of bullying, one I find totally unacceptable.

Also, if anyone still desires to change the world, I assure you that screaming “racist” at people who are racist does nothing to make the world a better place, in fact, it actually fuels a much bigger problem. A much bigger problem that people with wisdom and experience understand, people who recognize the nuances of human behavior.

Pardon the pun, but wiser people understand that the nature of the world is not cut and dry, not black and white, not men against women, not us against them.

“There are none worthy not one,” and that includes people who are transgendered, victims of abuse, and black folks too. To act as if virtue and integrity is something assigned based on current social identity, on protected status and group affiliation, is just plain ignorant and irrational. Actually,  it is racist.

I am not an, “ignorant uneducated hick from the boonies,” nor a “fossil from the dark ages.” I did not slaughter the Indians nor did I enslave black people. I did not perpetuate the need for the Stonewall riots, nor fund the patriarchy.  Not only am I going to refuse to pay reparations for social injustice, you actually owe me something.

An apology.

I learned who I truly was at worship with brown people, at the feet of the oppressed, and while on the streets  dumpster diving for dinner. There is nothing privileged about me. I didn’t grow up with two parents in “white America.” I grew up when I was barely five years old, forced to try to help my mother deliver my little brother at home, as quietly as possible so no one would know.

I don’t come from the right side of the tracks. I am a train wreck of scars, of generational curses, of numerous  injustices, of endless trauma and suffering and grief. And yet, God is still on the throne, and God is good.

So here’s how this works, we are required to love, honor, and cherish our parents, even our rabid right ring, foaming at the mouth, racist-Trump- supporting-Neanderthal parents-from-the-Dark Ages. Because that’s who we are. That’s how we roll.  We love one another no matter what, because relationships are important, because family is everything. Because how well we love difficult people is what defines us. Us, not them.

I have had to learn how to love my far left, radical Marxist, crazy, atheist parents, amid a great deal of dysfunction and abuse, not so much for their sake, but for my own. Bitterness, unforgiveness, hatred, doesn’t hurt other people nearly as much as it hurts us. What were they wrong about? Most things. To this day I tune out my mothers rants about the faked moon landing conspiracy and her hero worship of Che Guevara. I tune it out and I buy her a latte. I give her a hug and I take her to see the sunset. We people are not our politics, we are not our opinions, we are not our I-dentities, we are souls with bodies trying to live in fallen world.

This place I live in has built up some big walls. Those walls are coming down. These family divisions, these churchians divisions, these political divisions, this rugged individualist mentality is going to fall. It is a done deal, because I am absolutely unwilling to allow it to continue.

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