“I can be someone else’s and still my own.” — Shel Silverstein

When right wing cable networks and right wing internet silos relentlessly send a barrage of hate and misinformation to their followers’ eyeballs it is not enough to speak the truth once and let it be. It must be repeated and reinforced with the same ferocity or it will die on the vine. A large part of that is in understanding what exactly is being sold.

The concept of being someone else’s missing piece seems so foreign to us. The idea that we could be there to support someone else seems like crazy talk. The idea that we can keep our individuality while also living as a part of the collective is antithetical to anything we have heard before. That is exactly what they are working against. They have us believing that words like “collective” are communist. They are steadily working towards a world where anything involving “we”, “us”, or “the group” is also communist. That is why it sounds so foreign.

This past Sunday was the last Sunday of the liturgical year. It was the story of Jesus separating the sheep and goats. The sheep fed him, gave him drink, clothed him, comforted him, and visited him when they visited the least of these. The goats did not. The challenge is realizing that the biggest enemy to Christianity does not come from outside Christianity. It doesn’t come from Muslims, Buddhists, or Hindus. It doesn’t come from secular humanists, atheists, or agnostics. It comes from people that call themselves Christians, but have lost the script.

Those same people that call themselves Christians would take a message like that of the Missing Piece and call it communist. The idea of helping another is foreign. They need to pick themselves from their bootstraps. They can’t be be given anything. They need to earn it. I would simply like to introduce those folks to a person that called himself Jesus. He fed the hungry. He healed the sick. He brought hope to the hopeless. He didn’t ask for their insurance card. He didn’t ask for identification or papers. He didn’t check for attendance at the synagogue. He just gave of himself.

I know this seems like a radical concept, but the antidote for hate isn’t hate. It is love. It is relentless love because that hate can seem relentless. It is sustained and repeated love. It is unequivocal and it is undying love. It is unqualified. The forces of evil want you to think you are alone. They want you to distrust the institutions we used to rely on. They want you to think your neighbors are out to get you. They want you to arm yourself to the teeth and shoot first. They don’t want you to even ask questions later. They tell us  that the world hates you. They say that the world wants to take what is yours and the only thing that can stop it is you and your hate.

You don’t combat that by hating that messenger. You don’t combat that by simply saying once that this is wrong. You defeat it by repeating it every chance you get. You defeat it by pouring water on that out of control brushfire. That fire is hate. The water is love. Love means that we have to give of ourselves. It means it will come back to us. We have to believe that. We have to know that. We have to share that with the world.

In England there are signs everywhere to “mind the gap.” If we translate that into English we would discover they are talking about the gap between the platform and the train. Since public transportation really isn’t a thing here in Texas, we can certainly borrow that term and apply it to our politics.

We see two gaps that threaten long-term stability in our country. The first gap is the gap between how many people consider themselves to be moderate, liberal, progressive, or leftist and how many of those politicians actually end up representing us in Congress. Yet, the percentage of total voters registering as Democrats is growing. So, there is a gap between the number of representatives that are Democrats and the number that should be Democrats.

That’s a problem that’s not easily fixed. As we have seen in Texas, the GOP has a stranglehold on the state. Very few particularly like any of the Republicans that occupy state offices and yet they continue to vote for them. This has been a two decade tradition. They have rigged the game to make it easier for them to win. It will take a doubling of efforts to get that turned around and we see the same thing nationwide.

The second gap is one Democrats can address and address immediately. This is the gap between what gets done in Washington, Austin, and any other government center and what people actually think on the issues. Take any issue and you can see clear fault lines of where the public actually is on the issue. You could talk abortion, gun control, health care, public safety, education, or any other issue.

What Americans think on these issues is pretty clear. Overwhelming majorities agree on numerous planks on all of those issues. Yet, we are told America is a center-right country with center-right values. The problem is that this statement has no basis in fact when you actually look at public opinion polling on each of those issues individually. The GOP is on the wrong side of each issue and it isn’t even particularly close.

Democrats collectively make the mistake of getting off message. Either they overshoot these widespread popular opinions by suggesting things beyond what the general public want or they bungle up the messaging with slogans that don’t reflect the will of the people. These things are simple. Let’s keep them simple.

For instance, Americans want background checks on gun sales, don’t want guns in the hands of dangerous criminals, and generally don’t want automatic weapons in anyone’s hands. These are easy things to keep hitting over and over again. Yet, Beto O’Rourke introduced the idea of gun confiscation. That pushed the envelope too far and made him seem extreme. So, stick to background checks, keeping guns away from criminals, and an assault weapons ban. That’s easy messaging that will resonate with the majority.

It’s about simple messaging. When people understand what you are for and they are for the same things they vote for you. When they think you are an extremist or if they don’t understand what you are for they don’t vote for you. It’s really as simple as that. You find out what they like and then keep repeating that you are for that and the other side is against that. You keep repeating that until they understand. You keep repeating it. That is how you close the gap.

“28 Days Later” was one of the more frightening plots I’ve sat through. I suppose one could claim that it belongs somewhere on the zombie pantheon, but the way things got started was unique. Somehow monkeys were being tested and were filled with so much rage that their entire physical composition changed.

Of course, whether it is completely realistic to go from 0 to 100 by simply getting a little blood mixed with yours is neither here nor there. It’s a movie and you suspend disbelief long enough to enjoy it. If we turn our attention to real life we notice that things seem to be trending in that direction. People aren’t becoming zombie-like or anything like that. At least they aren’t yet.

The Will Smith/Chris Rock incident by itself isn’t proof of anything. It was a public display of someone losing their cool that happened to be captured on national television. What is alarming is the reaction that all of us had to that event. Some people sided with Rock while others sided with Smith. Many claimed they were both in the wrong. Taking sides is not what’s alarming here. What’s alarming is how people identified with Smith and the anger he had.

People openly fantasized about who they would smack if given the chance. Others turned the incident into memes and used it as a collective joke. I have to cop to the humor portion. I told a few jokes on social media myself.

Violence is a symptom. More to the point, the fantasies and jokes about violence are also a symptom. We are an angry people. Anger has managed to soak into our lives much like a virus. How we fight for what we want changes. After all, there is a reason why people call politics blood sport these days.

Maybe the key in this whole thing is identifying a common enemy. America has always been at its best when we can focus our collective energies on a common enemy. We could be talking about our own revolution. We could be talking about Hitler, Mussolini, and Japan in World War II.

The problem these days is that the common enemy is becoming more and more elusive. That common enemy is rage. It seeps into our lives and eventually gets us to do and say things that we never would have done in the first place. It gets the MAGA folks to abandon any last bastions of humanity to back a black hole of a human being. He says things they wish they could say. He lives the way they think they want to live.

Naturally, those that oppose MAGA and Q also find themselves giving into rage. We are angry that our world is so ugly and people seem to be giving into the ugliness. We are angry that even after all these years, people seem to give into racism, sexism, xenophobia, and all other forms of bigotry. We are angry that after all of the hard work of previous generations, the advancements that we made seem to be in peril.

We are collectively angry because it seems we have a process that nobody thinks is fair. One side thinks there is massive voter fraud because their guy lost. Another side thinks gerrymandering and other voter suppression tactics have their thumbs on the scales. We certainly believe one of those more than the other, but anger is the thing that unites them.

More than allowing one side to win or lose, it is anger that we cannot allow to win. Fighting fire with fire feels good in the moment. It feels better than the alternative. Yet, is it really better? If anger pushes us to fight for what we want then did we win anything? It can feel like we did in the moment, but when the dust settles we will find that anger is undefeated and it’s coming for us all.