Originally published a few years back… it was another unheeded warning.

Sometimes I stop and wonder, “Why don’t the people I thought were my friends speak out to denounce the hatred leveled against my family?”

“Why do they remain silent?”

People need to turn on their conscience. I think of it as an empathy switch. With it off, you shuffle through life. You accept the misery of your reality. You put one foot in front of the other and get to the end of the day.

When the switch is on, you perceive color. It’s fitting that the rainbow is one symbol of tolerance and people who hate tolerance hate color. “Don’t shove all that color in my face,” they scream, ignorant of the fact that color is necessary for beauty.

It can be easy to get lulled into the lethargic mindset. You drive to work and look out the window at all the people who are suffering. You sit at work and do your job indifferent to the pain that is inflicted on everyone around you. You go home and get drunk and watch movies and have dreams in gray where the last thing you even consider is learning how to fly.

When I mentioned my immigrant wife to a longtime friend, he said, “Well, she has to prove she can make some kind of contribution right? They don’t just let her in for nothing.”

He said this casually like it was a completely rational thought to have. He was a person who was swimming in a sea of conservative beliefs. He’d come to the incorrect conclusion that their philosophy must have some element of validity.

Why?

Just because?

I should have started screaming at him, but my switch was halfway turned off at the time too. No, I shouldn’t have screamed. Screaming isn’t the right response. I should have asked him questions.

“So, you believe human life only has value if it’s responsible for some sort of arbitrary contribution? Who sets the parameters for what contributions are valid? Are those parameters fair?”

People don’t think about these things. Its easier to go through life doing what you’re told and assuming the people doing the telling actually thought through all the consequences of their rules and regulations.

They didn’t.

I shouldn’t have to apologize because my wife is an immigrant. I haven’t broken any law. Neither has she. I’m tired of the way immigrants are vilified in the news. It leads to hostility. It leads to open acts of aggression.

To eliminate that hostility and aggression, all we need to do is be fair with the message. Right now the message is unfair. Politicians have invented something called a “border crisis” and they talk about it incessantly for their own personal gain.

They need a border crisis to distract from the fact that the economy has been doing well under Democratic leadership. If the economy is doing well, some politicians know they can’t get elected. They want to get elected because that’s the path to a six figure job with terrific benefits.

They don’t want to work minimum wage because minimum wage is kept intentionally low just to make people suffer.

They don’t care who has to suffer in order for them to get what they want.

So, these opportunistic politicians have to create an enemy and incite constant anger against that enemy. They picked my wife. The hatred directed at my wife trickles down to my children.

People think there’s nothing wrong with saying the campaign phrase, “build the wall.” I’m not allowed to go into a school and teach a lesson to the community about how that phrase is racist and incites violence against completely innocent people.

Innocent people like my wife and children.

I’m not allowed to say that.

I’m not allowed to protect them.

“Quit being political,” say the opportunistic politicians who want health care benefits and an inflated salary for themselves but not the rest of us. Their supporters agree with them even though they’ll never have health care benefits and an inflated salary.

The supporters are nourished by hatred alone.

Meanwhile, I’m not allowed to have reasonable conversations with even otherwise rational people. Where are my allies? Where are the people who will admit that the phrase “build the wall” incites violence and that it’s a disgrace this was ever tolerated as an acceptable slogan in a civilized society?

Everybody’s numbed themselves to allow these kind of atrocities to go on around them all the time. They look at these horrible behaviors. They perceive them. Then they shake their heads and say, “There’s nothing I can do.”

There’s one thing you can do, you can say it’s racist to say “build the wall.”

Just say it.

As I walk through my community, I’m fearful of people who still wave their MAGA banners. These are people who are okay with the idea of revolution. These are people who are okay with the idea of throwing ballots in the garbage. These are people who are okay with the idea of marching on the Capitol with the intent to cause violence.

Everything in the preceding paragraph is considered controversial to say. We should be teaching that in schools.

To live in the United States is to live in a perpetual state of terror. Violence is constantly incited against groups that are perceived as weak or vulnerable. Why don’t we care? It’s not hidden. They do it straight out in the open where everyone can see.

Why would it be so terrible to focus on perceiving the beauty of life?

Why do we have to endure all these passive attacks on completely innocent people?

I won’t forgive conservatives for what I’ve had to go through over the last few years. It has been a never ending campaign of hostility directed at my wife and children. My wife and children have done nothing wrong. We shouldn’t be made to feel like criminals.

If we have women and children knocking at our doors, at our borders, seeking aid, then we have to give it. Otherwise we’re monsters.

Just ask these questions, “Do you want all those kids to drown in the Rio Grande? Will you celebrate as their lifeless bodies wash up on the shores? What the hell is wrong with you? Those are human beings!”

Make everyone you interact with see some color.

You have a right to marry the person that you love. You have a right to start a family. You have a right to care for your family.

Nobody should feel entitled to come along and demand that you provide evidence to show how your family is making a contribution. That’s never an honest question. No matter how much you give, they’ll always demand you give more.

They only demand that because they have something to gain through exploiting you. They have something to gain by directing hostility against you.

Decent people in our society have to stop being so passive when confronted with acts of hostility directed at the innocent. The world isn’t gray. The world is in color. We need to start seeing the color. We need to start calling out the opportunists and stop both the overt and subtle ways they manufacture hatred.

Flip your switch.

Stop being passive.

You aren’t a decent person if you don’t speak out in defense of the innocent. It’s as simple as that.

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