We Are Better Together

Fractured Moral Copass

People are complicated. In the last 10 years, I have grappled with how a person can seem kind and have a moral compass that appalls me. Sometimes those with the fractured moral compass are polite and intelligent.

Elizabeth Spiers stated in The Nation, “The man who said, “Black women do not have brain processing power to be taken seriously. You have to go steal a white person’s slot” said it while wearing a nice shirt and a tie on a podcast instead of tattered overalls in the parking lot of a rural Walmart. That does not make it any less racist.” Talia Lavin posted on BlueSky, “civility is when a white guy calls for minorities to be eliminated in a calm voice while wearing an expensive suit.” 

What is political opinion? What is hate speech? What is it called when a person who has immense political power speaks about people who are not White or not Christian or not cisgender or not heterosexual or not American as if they are less than? Is it hate speech? Is it political opinion? I don’t particularly care how we define it, but if the focal point of someone’s political opinion is exclusion, I would say that is hateful. At the very least, it is not kind. A political opinion is not inherently respectable because the person speaking is eloquent and quick to respond at a Q&A. A political opinion is not automatically acceptable because the person quotes scripture and keeps composure.

Jamelle Bouie wrote in The New York Times, “We can mourn [him]. We can send prayers to his friends and family. We can take stock of the gravity of this event. We can — and should — do all of this and more without pretending he was something, as a public figure, that he was not.” 

And maybe some who mourn do not know about his harmful rhetoric of recent years. Maybe they don’t know he said women lie about being raped. Maybe they don’t know he said Martin Luther King Jr. was a bad person. Maybe they don’t know that he said Islam is not compatible with civilization. Or maybe they did know. Maybe they believe in every controversial statement he ever uttered. Maybe they adored his image of a good Christian man fighting the good fight and decided that the hateful rhetoric was an unfortunate part of his “debate me bro” personality. 

Spiers also wrote, “I do not believe anyone should be murdered because of their views, but that is because I don’t believe people should be murdered generally, regardless of who they are or what they’ve done.” I wholeheartedly agree. No one deserves to be murdered or experience violence of any kind. I can confidently declare this is a value I have held as long as I have been cognizant of death and violence. 

This does not mean that I always post publicly about my sadness over each tragedy – the school shootings, genocide in Gaza, immigrants detained under inhumane conditions, people killed by police, and I could go on and on and on. But I do often. It’s what I talk about in therapy. It’s what dominates conversations with friends, family, and even acquaintances. 

I am confused if this is the first time someone has felt that sadness and pain over violence against someone they did not personally know. And why now? What was it about him that other victims of violence did not possess? What makes him a victim that necessitates public displays of grief from people who do not publicly mourn other victims? What does this say about us?  

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