Stop scolding
They are tired of seeing things change. They’re tired of pride parades, of drag queens, of non cis-het people expressing themselves. They’re tired of gender roles being challenged. They’re tired of seeing unfamiliar shades of skin everywhere; they’re convinced that there’s an invasion of foreigners.
They want psychological comfort, they want a return to their childhood “normalcy”, they want these troublesome characters to go away, they want their neighborhoods to look the way it did when they were young, they want to be macho men and pretty women, they want to fall back on their stereotypes and have everyone nod in agreement. In other words, they want to “make America great again”, and they’re willing to hire Trump to make it happen.
And to be clear, I think they are wrong, and they harmed themselves gravely with this decision, because they’ve empowered people who will exploit them. I don’t think they realize just how much they’ve been robbed. Their realization will come far too late.
Also to be clear, progress is never made by begging the mainstream to change their mind. Progress is often hard-won, and carved and fought with blood and tears, but in the end, progress is only sustained when it manages to change the systems of everyday life. In other words, progress must have some minimum measure of popular support to remain viable, long enough to become enshrined in systemic change.
I feel that this time progressives have left too many people behind. We’ve alienated and dehumanized too many too easily. We’ve made it easier for charlatans to weaponize our message to make us look like caricatures. All of this would be fine if we also built a base of support that would be larger than the support we lost, but we didn’t.
What I’m forced to accept here is that people are tired of getting scolded. They’re tired of walking on eggshells because they know you’ll catch them in an “Aha!” moment if they actually spoke their mind. They’re tired of being painted as bad people for doing what they’ve been brought up to do all their lives. They are as much a victim of the system even as they perpetuate it.
I’m not sure what this means going forward, but we need to stop scolding, and start bringing people along. We need to start accepting people for who they are, even when who they are is “bigots”, because people have to start somewhere in their journey to progress. This does not mean we need to tolerate intolerance, but maybe it means we need to let more things slide in daily conversation, and not let our urge to do a “gotcha” overshadow the need to make an ally for the long run.
No, we aren’t their teachers, we’re not their servants, and we don’t owe them an education or a safe space. But it’s also obvious to me that our hardline stance isn’t working. It’s time to think of a better way.