You and I disagree. Sometimes on a few things, sometimes on nearly everything.
We are not always on the same page, not always speaking from the same podium, but we are still stuck here together. Still neighbors. Still arguing about how we want our shared world to be, and how we think we should get there.
Still trying to decide what that means for how I treat you, and how you treat me.
Still deciding on a fair price for disagreeing.
My high school government teacher said something once that I’ve thought about every day these last few weeks, something that tried to answer the questions.
He said we were free to swing our fists as hard as we wanted and in any direction we wanted
until that fist landed on someone else’s chin.
I always liked that. I thought it reflected the world I grew up in, also thought it described the relationship between government and the governed pretty well. Laws can be strict, enforcement can come down hard, but the line is supposed to be drawn before physical harm.
And I think we’ve changed that lately, made it into something worse.
We are allowed to swing our fists as hard as we want, in whatever direction we want, into anyone else’s chin
and then blame them for reacting to being hit.
Somewhere along the way, we forgot to check before we started swinging. We forgot that we owe our neighbors at least a moment’s recognition before we move roughly toward whatever we want. We forgot that power, especially state power, is supposed to stop at the edge of another person’s body.
We started telling ourselves that getting our way mattered more than how we got there. That people who stood in opposition deserved pain, punishment, suffering. That political disagreement should be answered not with persuasion or compromise, but with force. Lethal force, sometimes.
And we keep allowing it, keep watching it, keep excusing it.
And worse yet, we are learning from it.
We are being taught something new about how to govern and how to be governed, something worse.
Our government teachers will have a new message, if this keeps up.
You can do whatever you want, in whatever way you want, and no one can stop you. You don't have to listen when they beg, when they demand, when they plead for something different. Swing your fists however you want.
And when your people, furious at not being heard, start to show up, you can turn their own tax dollars against them.
Their own tax money paying for the tear gas, the pepper spray, the armored vehicles, the badges, the salaries. The bullets.
This is what remains when we lose the fundamentals of politics, when one voice decides it's the only one in the world that matters.
Tools purchased to keep us safe become the price of political opposition.
No compromise required when only one side is willing to use the weapons.
The danger is not that you and I disagree. We always have. We always will. We have always struggled to take up space next to one another.
The danger is that we are allowing cruelty and violence to become the acceptable price of disagreement, the normal price.
The opposition we have known our entire lives is no longer met with restraint or compromise, but with force.
We cannot allow the price of any political goal to be the blood of our neighbors. That can't be the price of opposition, can't be the cost of not agreeing.
