I started writing this post a while ago, not long after the mass shooting in San Bernardino, California. At the time I had titled it, Guns, Safety, and Freedom: Why we can’t have it all and what we can do about it. I had been inspired (or uninspired as the case may have been) by a swarm of responses that appeared on Facebook almost right away. In my estimation, the responses were predictable, which also made them lazy and nauseating.
I get that following tragedy, people tend to turn to whatever medium gives them a response, and that in such moments, an enduringly comforting or wise response is not always necessary, though it is recommended. I also get that to the brokenhearted and/or pissed-off, comforting and wise responses are not always obvious. And so in our well-intentioned pursuit of helpful healing, rather than pursuing a sobering dose of peaceful clarity, we drink, sleep, isolate, and surf any available crowd, as we fall down drunk right into the middle of our Facebook news feed.
On December 22, 2015, after Syed Rizwan Farook and his wife, Tashfeen Malik, opened fire on a holiday party, killing 14 coworkers and injuring 22 others, it was hard to predict what the first post on my news feed would be that evening. I mean, thanks to the mechanisms of Facebook, understandings of friendship are as solid or as loose fitting as a baby’s diaper following a good meal. With the simple click of a button, I can accept or decline people to be my friends. Once accepted, I can keep them while still adding more, or I can drop them one-by-one or all-at-once. And they can do the same with me. No reasons must be provided. We neither have to have ever met nor have plans to ever meet. In fact, we don’t even have to recognize each other. We might simply find interest in some article or picture that the other person posted on their page. We might both have an answer to a question that our mutual friend, three times removed, has asked about the best place to service their electric hedge trimmer. I might have caught the fact that your grandmother just died and she was from upstate New York and she lived for a long time with Alzheimer’s and you remember when she still knew your face and, well, my grandmother has Alzheimer’s and I worry that someday she won’t remember me either.
Now I’m not silly enough to think that I’m the first person ever to point out this rather unique quality of friendship as made possible by Facebook. Nor am I so ridiculous as to think that Facebook holds responsibility for the quality, shallow as they may be, of some of my friendships. I know people who can’t bring themselves to walk out their front door, let alone to meet a friend for lunch on a busy sidewalk. That they can touch their world and be touched back because of Facebook makes me feel both glad and sad. I also knew a man who had hundreds of friends on Facebook and bought rounds at the bar nearly every night, but when he died of an unfortunate drug overdose, the funeral director and I were the only ones who came to pay our respects.
My point is this: it’s becoming harder and harder to figure out what makes for friendship in our world today. When Syed Rizwan Farook took aim and opened fire no one in attendance at the party saw it coming. He was their coworker; to some a likely friend. Yet after the fact, some did say, we should have seen it coming, which is what we always say when the person we want to blame and punish is dead. Why we don’t just leave blame alone, I don’t know. Sometimes it just doesn’t seem like enough for people to die. We want to see someone suffer.
When I logged onto my Facebook Home page, I saw that one of my friends had posted a link to a national address the President had delivered a few days earlier in which he laid out some statistics regarding gun use and gun control in the U.S. Perhaps I ought to have clicked on the link to hear the speech for myself, but I didn’t. It was clear from my friend’s comments about the speech that he didn’t intend for me to actually listen to it. Underneath the link he posted another link and tagged it, ” Now for the REAL facts about guns.”
Over the past year, as presidential elections have been unfolding, candidates and their supporters have talked relentlessly about facts. Donald Trump has said, and just said so again today, that homicide rates in cities across our country are up from previous years. Hillary Clinton says they are down. Donald Trump says the deficit is on a rocket ship to the moon. Hillary Clinton says it’s getting lower every day. Donald Trump says we are less safe. Hillary Clinton says we are not in so great a danger. We have heard about the alarming number of black individuals who have been killed by police, and the equally disdainful number of police who have been killed in return. We have been told that some of the killing is justified, that the acquittal of police officers ought to help convince us of this, but it doesn’t, because we’re not sure the courts aren’t rigged. Conservatives say Liberals are trying to repeal the 2nd Amendment to take their guns away. Liberals say the 2nd Amendment isn’t license to have any gun you want.
So what is true? What are the facts? Clearly there are none. That when it comes to guns, safety, and what freedom is in a democracy, there are no facts. Because in a democracy the only indisputable facts are the ones we can actually agree on. Everything else is simply chicken feed to be pecked at, fiercely gobbled up, or blown away by an opposing wind. In a democracy, we can’t have it all, all the time. In a democracy this also means we can’t be led by someone who either believes they have it all already or who promises they can get it all for us.
I have listened to Mr. Trump. He promises to make America first again. He promises to make America win again. Mr. Trump, I’m part of America. So please listen now to me: I don’t need to be first. I don’t need to win, and I certainly don’t need or want for you to do my winning for me.
Do I want to see better jobs for the poor and hard-working? Yes. Do I want to walk around my city and fly across country free from harm and paranoia? Yes. Do I want to send my kids to college without having to take out a second mortgage on my house? Yes. There are lots of things I’d like to have. But having these things is not a reliable indicator of who is placing first. At the same time, not having these things is not an indicator of who is losing. In my experience, as in my ideal world, one cannot secure safety and freedom merely by stating their terms for safety and freedom. One cannot be safe and free of their own accord. There is no category for individual safety and freedom, at least not when you’re running for president. This also means that safety and freedom are not barking points at a carnival. Step right up, get a ring around the bottle and pick your prize—safety or freedom!
So Mr. Trump, I don’t need you to convince me of your power to make me safe and free. I need you to lead me in the way of safety and freedom, and for this you need to do more than speak to my worst fears in a calming voice (a calming voice I have not heard). You must let me see a better version of myself in you. We need not become each other, for we cannot be the same. It would be enough for you to be someone that I could see myself wanting to be with in the dark, when I don’t know my way. Of course, this would require you to see me as someone you’d like to be with when the lights go out. I can’t imagine this ever happening, though. You seem way too afraid to ever reach out in the darkness.
I say this based on how much you yell and warn me against certain people. I can only assume how very afraid you are. But we can’t both be afraid. It simply won’t get us anywhere. So I cannot be afraid. Because someone has to come in second, and in last. Clearly you wouldn’t be able to handle that. I’ll do my best to.
But you probably shouldn’t be President. Until your politic is to take the same risks you are making others take—getting pushed back across borders to live where there is no safety or freedom, showing a willingness to trust those who absolutely terrify you (you want me to trust you and you terrify me)—you probably shouldn’t be President.
Then again, if we could agree that in the end, it’s the very least among us who ought to have first prize anyway—and seeing as that’s not likely to be you or me, and our better part would be to start making it so now—well, that could change everything. And I do mean everything.
PleaseGrace 