The Quiet in the Land

 I think I’ve figured out why Americans are always shooting each other. 

My rage is at a rolling boil. You might not think so, but I do have a lid on it. It’s challenging to live this way, always ready to pop off, always ready to rumble, always pressing up against your own values. Since Trump started his 51st State rhetoric, I regularly forget that I’m a pacifist. Maybe I’m actually not one at all. You never know until you’re squeezed, what is going to come out of you. 

Whatever you’re doing now is what you would have done then. 

Is that dramatic? I think about that every single day. 

I’m so angry.

Martin Luther King Jr. said, “I have decided to stick with love - hate is too great to bear.” I have been mulling that one over, too, thinking deeply about how he must have been feeling before he came to that place of resolve.

Rage.

Funny how I had never considered the rage before. I’ve never felt this kind of rage before. Maybe it’s white privilege, but I don’t want to let go of the burden just yet.

People have been so quiet - have you noticed? In my corner of the internet over the last month it’s been, like, deathly quiet. Except for kittens. And recipes. And holiday photos. And Michael W. Smith videos. And the occasional Freedom Convoy supporter dropping ALL IN CAPITAL LETTERS warnings about extremely wicked, shockingly evil and vile Mark Carney.

There are a few things that have happened over this past month that I believe are worth talking about.

The wealthiest man in the world, arguably high on ketamine and power, snapped a crisp seig heil on national television. 

Nobody cared, and now it’s a trend. 

A woman in Idaho was physically pulled out of a town hall meeting because she said, “Is this a town hall meeting, or a lecture?” She said it too many times, too loudly, while somebody else was talking. 

The deferential man at the end of the row moved out of the way for the men in black who refused to identify themselves; together they dragged her out of her shoes, out from a row of seats, and zip tied her. 

Her friends were interviewed afterward. Who knew she had friends? 

Rage, rage. 

The president of Ukraine got pistol whipped in the White House. The president of the Divided States let a hack reporter and his Hillbilly VP dress down Zelenskyy in front of Russian media. Trump put hands on him. He shoved him. He tried to extort him. He tried to humiliate him. He tried to gaslight him. 

I know explosive narcissistic rage when I see it.

I don’t know if it was planned, but I do know someone was triggered.

Trump vision-casted for his Holy Land Riviera Resort, and his beautiful Christians loved it. They’re all about the cleansing. They’re singing and praying in the Oval Office as though God were in the midst of them. It doesn’t work any more to say those aren’t real Christians. Just like America can’t say any more, this isn’t who we are every time a kindergartener gets shot. 

It’s beyond ironic. It’s beyond hypocrisy. It’s beyond the pale. It makes me want to flip a table. 

As though the people of Ukraine don’t pray. As though the people of Gaza don’t pray. As though tens of thousands of demoralized Canadians sitting in their living rooms in front of their tv sets, watching their honour and dignity slide around like a puck on ice don’t pray, and maybe even plead a little bit, with tears, God, please. I know you have bigger things, and you don’t care about hockey, but you know this is not about hockey - God we’re abused, and exhausted. We need this. God have mercy. 

I’m not claiming God is on our side.

 

I’m so angry at Christians, I don’t want to be one. I don’t want to be associated.

He has shown you, O man, what is good and what the Lord requires of you. To do justly, to love mercy, to walk humbly with the Lord your God.

There is going to come a reckoning. Maybe that’s just the rage talking.

My mother worries that my anger is not good for me. I am keeping it. 

Now is the time to object.

I object to all of it. To illegal threats and declarations of war on Canada, to theft and rape and gloating, to disrespect and violations, to arrogant words and haughty eyes, to a pause on aid to Ukraine until Trump gets a grovelling sorry and mineral rights, to sieg heils and to people who defend them, to removing sanctions on Russia, to concentration camps, to Guantanamo Bay, to 51st State, to FuckTrudeau signs, to Pierre Poilievre’s divisive slander and worn out slogans, to quislings, to election interference, to bots and trolls and traitors, to disinformation and google experts, to rage baiting, to buying Greenland, to the Gulf of America, to tariffs, to deforesting National Parks, to fake assassination attempts, to lies, to liars, to lying liars with overdrawn lips and gold crosses around their necks, to billionaires, to apathetic voters, to absolute utter fools, to the Tkachuk brothers, to bulldozing Gaza, to floating golden balloon Trump heads, to DJT and JD and DOGE, to Musk wearing his child as a human shield, to Trump golfing while the world burns, to betrayal and back-stabbing, to anti-maskers, anti-vaxxers and measles, to convoys and infiltrators, opportunists, extortionists and cowards, to Kevin O’Leary, Jordan Peterson, Wayne Gretzky, Franklin Graham and MAGA hats, to losing friends, to taking the Lords name in vain, and to Bethel and Hillsong and the American evangelicalism that put antichrist in the White House - I object to all of it. 

You have to know, it’s never going to be easier than it is right now to object. It’s only going to get harder. In America, it’s starting to be illegal.

Go not gently into that dark night.

Rage. Rage against the dying of the light.