Being the Change You Want to See

Many people came to the New World for profit, whether as conquistadores seeking treasure or second-third-fourth-fifth sons escaping class rules or investor groups targeting specific resources. Women fled to the New World because they couldn’t divorce abusive husbands, but across an ocean they could become someone else.

Criminals escaped justice by slithering onto these shores. Those who couldn’t afford the trip indentured themselves into years or decades of servitude.

Millions of Black bodies were kidnapped and stuffed into slave ships. Few came here willingly, if they made it at all.

And yes, some came to worship their version of God without interference from the state, even though many of those folks also became wealthy through land ownership or successful business ventures. Save the savage while taking his home. Not the original Prosperity Gospel, but certainly a version.

I don’t know why my ancestors came to the US on either side, but my father’s people were in Virginia when it was a British colony. At least one served in the Virginia House of Burgesses, the lower body of elected officials that preceded the House of Delegates. An ancestor fought in the Revolution and achieved the rank of captain. The paperwork that traces this genealogy doesn’t note why any of them ventured to the New World. I don’t imagine noble motives.

While I’ve written about this government’s taxation without representation policies this week, today I want to address a different theme I’m starting to see across Substack: Calls for violence.

I suspect some of these actors are planted by this government, its enablers, or nefarious foreign actors to trick regular citizens into making threats or agreeing with others who threaten violence.

I think some passionately believe we must stop this trajectory however we can. More than one has pointed out that violence is part of our national identity.

Still others may not consider how words flung onto the internet can be used. How one felt when they typed and hit Post or the nightmare day they had or what else they were grieving: Those nuances aren’t conveyed in posts that celebrate another’s misfortune, death, or destruction.

I will not countenance or endorse comments that call for violence against this crowd, even ambiguously. We must use legal means to vote them out, and we must ceaselessly tell those elected officials to prosecute Constitutional violations according to our Rule of Law, even if that means millions of Americans peacefully surround DC and sing songs in frog costumes until they comply.

I don’t mean by Congressional show hearings where nobody is charged, tried, or punished. A new Congress’s first order of business must be instituting a system to charge, arrest, try, and convict everyone who flouted the Constitution. This cannot be another case of we need to be bigger people and move on from this unpleasant chapter.

Here’s a November 2024 newsletter where I called for a non-violent economic boycott. I haven’t been the only person begging Americans to join a peaceful National Strike:

As a survivor of WCN, these videos aren’t funny. There’s no humor. I can’t laugh because I feel like vomiting.

These videos are not about the person who’s preaching in captive spaces; THEY ARE ABOUT THE REACTION OF THE TARGETED CROWD.

In WCN silos, these videos are used as examples of how much the rest of the world hates Christians. Congregations are told we want to invade their churches and shut them up in this manner or worse. When people tell these performers to sit down, shut up, fuck themselves, and more, this is presented as “evidence” of how murderous those beyond WCN are.

If victims can’t ignore them, I encourage them to say something along the lines of It seems like you’re having a tough day. Can I give you a hug and show you some compassion and love?

We don’t have to agree with these people to offer them basic humanity. If more victims reacted this way, these videos would stop because there would be no radicalizing propaganda. It’s hard to claim the world hates White Christian Nationalists when everyone they meet displays empathy, compassion, and love.

I know it’s scary frustrating maddening infuriating to watch this crowd run roughshod over everything without consequence while violating human rights and criming at every turn. But we will not create the country or the world we want by resorting to violence or jettisoning our own humanity.

I hope we never forget that.