When thinking of this topic I’ve thought of the different accounts I have heard and read from women that have been victimized by men. We’ve heard it in the news lately. Danny Masterson of “That 70s Show” fame was sentenced to 30 years to life for rape. Local sports figure Kevin Porter Jr. has been arrested for domestic violence and the accounts are awful. I’ve read other accounts as well that made my blood boil.

I could retell their story, but it is not my story to tell. The difficulty here is that we are cast into three different lots. We could be the aggressors themselves. We could be innocent bystanders, but unlike the Seinfeld finale, bystanding is not necessarily innocent. Finally, you can be an ally or advocate. I think most of us know what we want to be, but we struggle to do it. We don’t know how to be an ally. If we act without knowing then we can make things worse. So, many of us become the innocent bystander not because we don’t care but because we don’t know how to help.

A large part of this thought experiment was done when thinking of sexism as a tool of fascism and there certainly are economic drivers here we could get into. Suffice it to say, this is an extension of a conversation about the “other”. If I am able to look down on someone then that means I’m not at the bottom of the totem poll. I work in a field dominated by women. Education has always been that way. Like most people in their forties and fifties, I have gotten to the point in my life when I am beginning to take stock in what I’ve accomplished. Erik Erickson had his stages of psychosocial development. It’s at this point where I realize my career path has mostly played itself out. I wanted to be a school counselor. Heck, maybe I could have been principal. Those are becoming less likely by the year.

I could choose to blame someone else for that gap between where I wanted to be and where I am. I could choose to blame myself. I could also choose to accept and be happy with my lot in life. A number of men choose the first one. More than a few of us point the finger at women. After all, back in the “good ole days” women knew their place. Now, they are competing with us and sometimes they are better than us. My wife is the smartest person in any room she enters. That always includes any room we are both in. I was lucky to learn that lesson a long time ago. Some men never have.

Even good men have difficulty fully leaning into that goodness. We struggle to call out the jackasses and sons of bitches in our herd. When the whole Danny Masterson thing was going down, Ashton Kutcher and Mila Kunis were caught backing the wrong horse. Many of us have had similar experiences even though they didn’t play out on page six of the New York Post. Someone we knew acted like an ass and instead of calling it out we were silent or even defended them. Most of us want to be allies but are unwilling or unable to put in the work to do it. Sometimes we don’t know what to say and do. Sometimes we know and choose the path of least resistance. People like Masterson and Porter Jr. belong in jail. That’s true no matter how talented they are. That’s certainly not everything, but hopefully it is a good beginning.

Labels have ruined our politics. I could parcel out which side does it better or more often, but what would be the point exactly? The general problem is that I can throw a label at you and immediately brand you as something positive or negative just based on the connotation that the label has. In many instances the definition in people’s minds aren’t even accurate. So, following are a group of statements that fit as definitions for terms thrown around in public.

1. Different races possess distinct characteristics, abilities, or qualities, especially so as to distinguish them as inferior or superior to one another.
2. Men should hold the power and women should largely be excluded from it.
3. Most of the means of production, distribution, and exchange should be owned or regulated by the community as a whole.
4. A political system headed by a dictator in which the government controls business and labor where opposition is not permitted.
5. The enforced separation of different racial groups in a country or community.
6. People should be able to marry whoever they want regardless of race, gender identity, religion, or age.

If I spent enough time focusing on it, I could likely craft a series of statements that those on the left would subscribe to and those on the right would subscribe to. It would be interesting to see how many statements we could get people to agree to. Would people that consider themselves as progressive or conservative actually continue to support progressive or conservative ideals?

I’m sure many of you recognized fascism and socialism above. Obviously, the first issue is that many in the political sphere know that the common person has no earthly clue what those things actually are. So, they can throw that label at anyone and have it stick because the label can fit anything. Since the label is harmful then using the label becomes a weapon.

This is also unfortunately where we descend into questions of good and evil and what those terms really mean. Does the mere belief in something make someone good or evil? Or, do we have to wait and see how those beliefs manifest themselves to determine if the individual is good or evil? Certainly, I think we can acknowledge that numerous people believe numbers one, two, and five.

We could throw number six in there too, but I added a little something extra to six to make it a much more difficult statement to support without qualification. I suspect a lot of these statements have “yeah,,,but” thoughts attached to them. That’s what makes politics so difficult. The world is rife with “yeah…buts”. No matter what personal moral code one follows, they all would agree that what we do is far more important than what we say. I have a sinking suspicion that if we allowed people to openly accept or reject such simple statements we’d see much more agreement overall and many of our politicians would be left in the cold looking for a place to land. Then again, I could be wrong.

Theologians tell us that God forgives and forgives absolutely. It has taken a lifetime to understand that what they are talking about is really redemption and not forgiveness. Forgiveness is really a human condition. It means we simply drop those negative feelings and move on. That has always been the secret. Forgiveness is more about us than it is about them. We don’t allow that anger and pain to consume us. Yet, it doesn’t mean that the relationship returns to normal or even at all.

Redemption, on the other hand, is a return of the relationship. That’s what the theologians call forgiveness from God. The slate is wiped clean and all transgressions are forgotten. Most of us aren’t capable of that. We have to protect our psyche and someone that repeatedly runs roughshod over our psyche cannot return to the previous condition. We can leave the pain behind and refuse to allow that person’s actions to occupy our thoughts. We can’t treat them the same way as before though.

This is where racism, xenophobia, sexism, and homophobia comes in. It is where the Q nonsense comes in. It is where the anti-vax nonsense comes in. This topic is the one topic that ties it all together. Yesterday, we looked at conservative social media and whether they could have a safe space to spew their hatred. There’s a reason why they want and need that safe space. When we shun that kind of thought we don’t get rid of it. We just drive it underground where it can’t readily be seen.

The question comes on whether someone can let their hate flag fly and then later live to regret it. If they do then is there a path back to redemption for them? We have seen numerous people recant their feelings on the vaccine once they’ve landed in the hospital. Should they survive, can they be forgiven and can they be redeemed? They can be forgiven relatively easily, but that doesn’t mean they are redeemed.

It comes down to recognizing windows of opportunity. Hundreds if not thousands of anti-vaxxers and Q devotees are realizing that they backed the wrong horse. They realize they were lied to. They realize they were duped. The question comes on whether we are capable of extending the olive branch to welcome them back to normal society.

The same is true of racists, homophobes, sexists, and xenophobes. There is that key moment where everything comes tumbling down. I say this because I’ve experienced it myself. Those feelings were more private because I knew they were wrong. I was able to cast them aside and be welcomed in. However, I have to admit that I had not gone out on a limb to make an ass out of myself either.

That’s how I know there are a lot of these folks out there. They feel the way they do, but they are too polite and even too ashamed to be publicly outed. Without a path to redemption they have to stay in that space. They exist in the shadows between everything we know that is good and everything we know that isn’t. It’s the main reason why we are left wondering how some of our elected officials get where they are in the first place.

There is something within ourselves that doesn’t allow us to redeem. In ourselves it is obvious that shame overwhelms us. In others, it is anger and jealousy of a former scourge getting credit for their conversion. For others, it is a lack of trust that the conversion is real. We’ve been burned before. We have to take that chance. Otherwise, it will always be us versus them.