Unpublished, but not Unsent v5

Photo by Jacqueline Day on Unsplash

Dear Editor,

November 4th, 2020 is turning out to feel nightmarishly like November 9th, 2016. In putting my finger on what bothers me most, it’s this - in 2016, I naively asked myself, “in 1933, what would I have done, as a German citizen, in Nazi Germany?” My answer was, I *hoped, that I would have condemned Nazi supporters, be they family, friends, or colleagues. So that’s what I did in 2016. I ended long-term friendships with trump supporters I have known since preschool, fought rabidly with Republican family members, and ended business relationships with Republican professionals.

In 2020, the vitriol escalated; my own parents have swung to the right-wing and I feel utterly abandoned. As a social entrepreneur, I’m egotistical enough to feel especially offended when loved ones do not trust my instinct about trump and the Republicans. Haven’t I spent my entire career practicing fair trade; haven’t I, at the very least, earned the right to be vouched for when it comes to identifying pretty obvious injustice? [I wish it was that simple…]

But faced with another election loss, in order to survive another four years worrying about progressive ideals being demonized by fox news, I will need to find another way. I will not change what I am fighting for, but HOW I fight might have to change.

What’s most difficult is discerning the legitimacy of the threat. I want to believe that I would have stood up to a Nazi neighbor. But I’m tired of losing friends. How, I wonder, have four long years of trump’s compulsive lying not made Republican voters them ask themselves: “in 1933, what would I have done, as a German citizen, in Nazi Germany?”