“I side with humanity” is the newest catchphrase being used by people who really mean, “I side with some humanity but not all humanity. The phrase emerged in response to the aggressive ICE surges and deportation practices.
Narratives of good, innocent people being ripped out of their cars and sent to holding facilities, families being pulled apart, people afraid to go out in public lest they be “kidnapped” by ICE - that’s what started the latest outrage and campaign to pronounce anyone who supports the deportation of people in this county illegally.
What escalated the implication of this phrase from the usual blanket pronouncements against Trump and anyone who voted for him, to pure vitriol and new levels of loathing is the deaths of two protestors.
It is natural to be upset that two people were shot to death. No one in their right mind would dispute that. What is frustrating, though, is the tunnel vision these tragedies narrowed so many people’s sight to.
Contrary to what the liberal media, propaganda dispensers, and politicians vomit out at us, it is in fact possible to feel and think two things at once.
It is possible to feel sadness over things like the deaths of the two protestors, or the anguish of innocent children caught up in the deportations, and to support the Border Patrol, ICE agents, and the overall sanctity of our borders. It is indeed possible to recognize and feel sorrow over the plight of all the desperate, innocent people seeking refuge in this country and want the solution to that to involve law and order. It is even possible to want to see immigration reform and be angry at the practice of saddling American citizens with the cost of caring for millions of people who receive free health care, phones, housing, and education while our paychecks cover less and less each month - while the politicians making those decisions make millions in the stock market and other areas.
Feeling and thinking two things at once does not mean you don’t “side with humanity.” It means you side with all of humanity, instead of only the people you agree with or like. It means you care about all injustice, instead of just the select incidents that fit a narrative.
I, for one, am sick and tired of being held in contempt because I don’t value one innocent life over another. Palestine vs. Israel, Ukraine vs. Russia, good people here legally vs. good loving people here illegally, black vs. white, trans vs. the rest of us….. Each time I see or hear one tragedy or another I have a very hard time with the notion that I am only “allowed” to grieve for the “right” victims.
I wonder how many people who “stand with humanity” recognize the ICE agents as human beings, with kids and spouses and siblings and people who love them, too? Would they have been happier if an ICE agent was fatally struck by a vehicle, rather than defending himself? I wonder if they care about the thousands of Christians being slaughtered in Nigeria even though those stories are not headlines? Or the courageous Iranians being executed probably as I type this?
I know a lot of them do, in fact care. Just not as loudly as they care about defending people who are stalking, harassing, and attempting to mow down other human beings who are performing lawful duties.
I wonder, too, if standing with humanity extends to the humanity growing inside a mother’s womb, or is exclusively reserved for the woman whose womb it is.
Two can play at that game - a game no one ever wins.
So here’s an idea:
How about we stop letting that game play us, and we start thinking rationally, instead? How about we stop letting ourselves be sold the lie that we can’t associate with people who disagree with us? How about we realize that most of our disagreements are not about humanity, or what we want for ourselves one another, but about our ideas on how to achieve those outcomes?
And then let’s stop letting all the politicians and all the media play us like Nancy’s husband plays the stock market?
When your moral outrage dismisses the suffering and rights of people whose only offense is to fall on the other side of the political point you want to make, you don’t really “stand for humanity,” after all.
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