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"You should not honor men more than truth."
-- Plato
Recently someone suggested I should "lighten up" on my criticism of Mr. Trump and his regime. That's not going to happen. To be silent is to be complicit. Throughout my career I've been threatened, trolled, falsely accused, defamed, shamed, and humiliated. None of it stopped me from standing up for my convictions and ardently pursuing the truth.
During my brief time as a GOP legislator I went against the party's platform, supporting the legalization of medical THC because a constituent from a neighboring district had a child who found no other means of relief from his multiple daily seizures. Prominent donors contacted journalists to publish hit pieces on me and bribed legislative staffers to generate rumors about me -- including one alleging I was a spy personally recruited by Barack Obama to gather information on the GOP. I didn't care. I made a promise to a desperate mother that I would do everything I could to help her child. Several legislators have made promises to that parent over the years and have done nothing to advance the cause. The difference between the pandering politicians and myself is that I have a backbone and I'm not afraid to use it -- even if it costs me.
In pursuit of the truth, I've followed more money trails than Peter Cottontail has hopped bunny trails.
I spent the better part of the last decade infiltrating and investigating religious extremist movements in both the Catholic and Orthodox traditions. I was good at what I did, working my way into high-ranking positions. Well known, respected, and influential religious leaders not only trusted me, but volunteered some of their deepest, darkest, most morally reprehensible secrets. I know both the danger and hypocrisy of Christian Nationalism.
I've sat on screened-in porches in the Deep South on humid summer evenings listening to Black Americans who lived through segregation. I'll never forget the looks in their eyes as they recounted the hatred and bigotry they endured long after the civil rights movement. The stories I heard were horrific; stories I never heard in the classroom growing up in a small Kansas town.
I've listened over tears and coffee to a Holocaust survivor who shared unimaginably terrible stories of being a little girl in a Polish concentration camp. She recalled in vivid detail the sights, the sounds, and the smells of genocide. She trembled as she noted how the current political climate is rife with rhetoric that could usher in a return to those dark days.
My shoulder has been a resting place for the head of a disappointed friend who was passed over for a position because of her gender. My ear has heard a client weeping just hours after his LGBTQ night club became the site of a senseless mass shooting because of the sexual orientation of its clientele.
Rod Serling once said, "The tools of conquest do not necessarily come with bombs and explosions and fallout. There are weapons that are simply thoughts, attitudes, prejudices -- to be found only in the minds of men. For the record, prejudices can kill and suspicion can destroy, and a thoughtless, frightened search for a scapegoat has a fallout all its own for the children, and the children yet unborn. And the pity of it is that these things cannot be confined to the Twilight Zone."
America has become the Twilight Zone. While Donald Trump and his administration are not necessarily the cause, they are most certainly a symptom. In spite of what's become of this nation, I hold "truths to be self evident," which is precisely why I cannot "lighten up" -- not now, not ever. Prejudices and attitudes, as Serling notes, lead to conquest. I refuse to adopt an apathetic attitude in order for a demagogue to establish a self-serving empire of malice.
The Nobel laureate and Pulitzer prize-winning author, William Faulkner once wrote, "Never be afraid to raise your voice for honesty and truth and compassion against injustice and lying and greed."
During the Nazi occupation of France in World War II, the German occupiers banned American literature. Reading black-market copies of works by Faulkner became an act of defiance. Today, fascists who occupy government positions seek, among other things, to ban books in America. In the spirit of Faulkner, this is our moment, not to "lighten up," but rather to speak up for honesty, truth, and compassion. Precisely because, as another famous author, George Orwell, reminds us, "During times of universal deceit, telling the truth becomes a revolutionary act."