Punching Nazis for Fun and Profit
My recipe for not hating myself consists of three elements:
1. Keep changing -- and by changing, I mean improving, and by improving, I don't mean "be more productive." I mean be a better person today than I was yesterday. Better means more patient, more kind, more loving. Not richer.
2. Practice gratitude. If I'm constantly looking for things to be thankful for, I don't have time for self-pity, and self-pity destroys.
3. Punch Nazis.
I want to go into Nazi punching in a little more detail. There's nothing wrong with balling up your fist and smashing a Nazi right in the face -- I realize some of you are constitutionally incapable of violence, which is good. The human race needs those people to survive. But the true essence of Nazi punching is active resistance. It's the absolute refusal to accept the normalization of evil. If your Republican Sunday school teacher doesn't personally support ripping immigrant children from their parents and locking them in camps, but he keeps voting for the people who do, I hate to break it to you: your Sunday school teacher is a Nazi. Take every chance you get to remind him of that. If you don't, you and him are standing together in a Nazi bar to take communion.
You can give a pass on Nazi punching to your 90-year-old aunt, your dog, and yourself if you get hives just thinking about confrontation.
I realize this is not the way to win friends and influence people, but:
A) You don't need Nazi friends.
B) You're definitely influencing the poor bastard who thinks he's Making America Great Again. And you're showing your fellow travelers that it's OK to resist.
Active resistance means vigilance, not polarization. We got polarized when half of America decided the Nazification of our country was acceptable, by tacitly accepting:
- Laws targeting religious groups, like the Muslim ban
- A president who says immigrants are "poisoning the blood of our country" -- the same phrase Hitler used in Mein Kampf
- The elevation of white people above people of color for refugee status: Afrikaners get fast-tracked resettlement while everyone else's asylum claims stall for years
- Roughly $170 billion in new funding for a federal police agency (ICE) with a documented pattern of deadly force and, per the Supreme Court, the blessing to stop Americans like Mubashir Hussen, 20 years old, who kept repeating "I'm a citizen" while masked agents wouldn't look at his ID
- Culling the Armed Forces based on race, gender, and adherence to the political beliefs of the supreme leader
I could go on, but hopefully you get the idea. Speaking out against those things is an absolute requirement if you want to stop the bastards imposing them on a country with a proud history of not putting up with crap like that. We really do have that history. My grandmother lost her younger brother, Gratton McFadyen to Nazi bullets outside of Rome in 1944. He was a North Carolina farm boy who had never been outside the state until he went to war. The son he never met is my cousin, David. We aren't that far removed from being a nation of anti-fascists.
If Nazi punching isn't a core part of your identity yet, that's OK. See Rule One, above. I'm counting on you to carry this message as best you can. It's OK to be scared, to be tired, and to be unsure exactly what to do in the face of the banal evil we find ourselves confronted with. Just know that you want future you to be proud of present you, because when it mattered, you were there. All you had to do was punch some Nazis.