They are taking American lives- now they are coming for our humanity

For Ron DeSantis a trans man in Miami is not a human being who has agonized over his identity, he is just a prop in campaign stump speech

My heart is broken; I am in pieces. Another racist slaughter, this time in Buffalo. Another massacre of school children, this time in Texas. How are we to get out of this wild and lawless time?

We know what we need to do. Ban assault weapons, raise the age requirements for gun ownership, implement serious background checks and red flag laws, and stop pretending the Second Amendment creates a universal right to gun ownership. These things will help end the carnage. But doing any of them, well that runs into the same problem I often write about- the autocratic madness of the American right. 

For them, freedom means the government cannot tell anyone what to do. You want an assault weapon? Buy one. Heck buy ten. You don’t want to wear a mask in a pandemic? Don’t. You want to keep your hard-earned cash? We won’t hire IRS agents so, well who’s to know?  You want your factory to pollute, or you want to refuse to serve customers who are gay? Why should the government tell you otherwise- it’s a free country!

But, well, you want an abortion? Don’t even think about it. You want to equal representation under the law, guess again. You want you vote to count? Don’t be silly. 

This is the America today’s GOP has created. And if we let them, it will get worse. Much worse. Their idolatrous worship of guns and autocrats has killed far too many Americans. Now they want our humanity too.

In Ohio, that state’s Supreme Court declared its legislative maps illegal. The GOP legislature ignored them. Rule of law? Not if it gets in the way of a good gerrymander! With autocrats the law is what they say it is. If you disagree, you are the criminal. In Pennsylvania the Republican Gubernatorial candidate promise not to certify any election where Democrats get the most votes. Because any election where Democrats win is a fraud. With all autocrats the vote count is what they say it is. 

All this is connected. So is the chaos on city streets. Because if we are scared enough, if we are distracted enough, if we are enraged enough, maybe we won’t notice when they take our democracy away. 

The Uvalde police force did not do its job. That’s not to say that they could have prevented the overly armed and armored killer from taking those precious lives even had they been competent. But with autocrats, competent government is whatever government they lead. With autocrats, Donald Trump is a great leader and Joe Biden a dotard.  Never mind that Trump could not even build a wall. Meanwhile Democrats are building airports and roads and watermains and electric charging stations. 

Republicans can send thoughts and prayers. Democrats do that too, but then we follow up with policies that work and practices that lift people up when they’ve been knocked down. 

Republicans like Tucker Carlson, experts at ad hominem attacks and cruel reification, call that socialism, and then they call people who do it child pornographers. Never mind that only one congressman is under criminal investigation for child sex trafficking- and he’s a Republican. For autocrats, after all, reality is what they say it is. 

This past week there was a story that got national attention. A Chicago area school changed its grading practices to create a separate system for black students to ensure equal outcomes. The story said teachers could no longer consider things like disruptive behavior, not showing up, and turning in late work.  Commentators quickly described this is an outrage brought on by the liberal left. Insulting to black families. Unfair to everyone else.

The thing is, the story was a lie. It appeared on a right-wing propaganda site that some people mistake for a news organization because it pretends to be one. With autocrats, though, facts do not matter, and we are what they say we are. For Putin, young Russians are not individuals with their own lives and hopes. They are only cannon fodder for his dream of a greater Russia. For Ron DeSantis a trans man in Miami is not a human being who has agonized over his identity, he is just a prop in campaign stump speech. With autocrats, we are not a who, we are a what. Only the thing they need us to be. 

So, the murdered in Uvalde, and Buffalo, and Tulsa and in more than 214 mass shooting already this year, they are not humans whose lives were cruelly cut short, they are just proof that we should be scared enough to buy steel doors and more guns.

I am broken by the tragedies in Buffalo and Uvalde. But I am not willing to be what the autocrats need me to be, and I hope you are not either. Right now, they need us to be afraid and have given us much to fear. More than afraid, they need us to be things -props for their ad populum appeal. But the thing is, my humanity is not for sale, and neither is yours. They do not get to say who we are.

Democracy works when we treat each other as human beings with dignity and respect, when we afford each other the freedom to

be ourselves, and when we work together to build a common prosperity. There is a moral imperative in this: if you believe that each of us is an individual with natural and civil rights, and if you believe that all are created equal, then fight for our democracy because it is the only form of government where these ideas survive.