No MAGA, We Will Not Be Uniting

History will not look back on this moment tenderly, and you don’t have to live it tenderly either.

Photo by David Todd McCarty on Unsplash

Even before the election, I was seeing social media posts from MAGA fans about letting Trump “heal our land” and finally becoming united again.

Here’s one of these sentiments in the wild:

”At the end of the day, I think most of us are more alike than we are different. We all want what is best for our family, community and country. We might have differing views of how to get there. I think the most important shift happening at the moment is for all of us as Americans to come together as one... I wasn’t happy last election cycle, but I accepted and moved on.”

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Are you seeing comments like that too?

First of all, it’s laughable to think that Trump has any interest whatsoever in unity. He’s a chaos agent who thrives on grievance politics, rage bait, and vengeance. He blasted onto the political scene with lies about Obama’s nationality and has been lowering the bar ever since.

Trump isn’t even interested in unity within his own party. He refused to court any of Nikki Haley’s voters, who had incredibly valid concerns about his presidency, instead forcing Haley to bend the knee and do that work herself.

“President Trump asked me to speak to this convention in the name of unity,” Haley said at the RNC. “I’ll start by making one thing perfectly clear. Donald Trump has my strong endorsement.”

It reminds me just how short our memories are. Hitler was also democratically elected. After a global pandemic and subsequent economic crisis, he convinced the electorate that Jews, homosexuals, and intellectuals were the problem and he was the only one who could solve it. Those who forget history are doomed to repeat it.

I, for one, will not be unifying with MAGA cultists, and I resent the accusation that we have things in common when our values are so obviously misaligned. Sure, we both want our children to be happy, healthy, and educated, but MAGA wants to take public tax dollars and give them to rich kids in private schools. Sure, we both agree that a cancer patient’s life is determined by the quality of care they get, but MAGA wants the haves to have healthcare and the have nots to die. Sure, we both want grocery prices to be cheaper, but MAGA wants to blame people who have nothing instead of the wealthy elite who profit off all of our suffering.

“But the poor person does not exist as an inescapable fact of destiny. His or her existence is not politically neutral, and it is not ethically innocent. The poor are a by-product of the system in which we live and for which we are responsible. They are marginalized by our social and cultural world. They are the oppressed, exploited proletariat, robbed of the fruit of their labor and despoiled of their humanity. Hence the poverty of the poor is not a call to generous relief action, but a demand that we go and build a different social order.”

― Gustavo Gutiérrez

If MAGA wants to scapegoat, vilify, and humiliate immigrants, we have nothing in common.

If MAGA wants to hurt political opponents, lock them up, shoot them in the face, we have nothing in common.

If MAGA wants women to be treated like second class citizens with no rights and no purpose outside the home, we have nothing in common.

If MAGA wants tens of thousands of career public servants to be fired and replaced with Trump sycophants who won’t stand up to him when he does all the illegal stuff he’s about to do, we have nothing in common.

If MAGA wants librarians to be treated like pornographers and criminalized for doing their job, we have nothing in common.

If MAGA wants to attack trans kids, we have nothing in common.

If MAGA wants service members to be ejected from the military because they are gay, we have nothing in common.

If MAGA wants teachers to stop teaching basic stuff like the U.S.’s history with slavery or Native American genocide because it might make a white kid in the classroom feel bad to know what actually happened, we have nothing in common.

I’m not going to be nice about our differences. Niceness is a social contract that MAGA broke when they voted to put a 34-count convicted felon, twice-impeached adjudicated sexual offender who doesn’t care whether Americans live our die in the Oval Office. FOR A SECOND TIME.

We don’t owe MAGA politeness or comfort, we owe them truth telling. If MAGA can’t handle that, they can have our silence or our scorn. I don’t care if MAGA thinks I hate them. Their feelings are not my job anymore. My job is preparing for what is to come. And I will not respond to MAGA with hearts and niceness and rainbows and bullshit.

I’m not some fringe radical leftist. I was a conservative Christian Independent voter for most of my life, and I’m considered a moderate Democrat now. I’m repeating what Trump has said and done and what MAGA voted for. If that’s extreme, then that’s a them problem, not a me problem.

People say, “Don’t let politics ruin your relationships.” This isn’t political. Political differences are blithe and boring and mostly legal mambo jumbo that almost no one enjoys (except political nerds. Let’s hear it for the political nerds!).

This is personal: The person MAGA voted for has fomented racism against Hispanics. I am Hispanic. He’s bragged about grabbing women by the pussy. I am a woman. He has attacked trans kids, unions, librarians, the National Weather Service, parents of young children, people with pre-existing conditions, childless cat ladies, refugees, people who live in poverty, Black Americans, Puerto Ricans, on and on and on.

And I know how dark his plans are because I’ve read Project 2025.

It will hurt me, and it will hurt the people I care about.

You cannot tell someone you respect them, and then vote for someone who harms them.

This isn’t about political differences, this is about the soul of America and deciding who we are going to be. History will not look back on this moment tenderly, and you don’t have to live it tenderly either. We aren’t just going to fall in line and smile and nod as queer kids are attacked and books are burned and immigrants are rounded up and innocent people are thrown in prison.

We’re going to fight like hell against it.

Onward, Democracy Defenders!