I believe that each of us has a responsibility to help one another do what is right and good. I don't believe we can stand back and let others do harm--as humans, we have a responsiblity to one another to foster best possible living.
In thinking about the #trump terror this morning, I realized how the silence, passivity, cronyism, and nepotism related to Trump's actions and efforts truly created the violent storm that errupted at The Capitol. Together Trump and his cronies and family members staged and incited a violent insurrection that terrorized, injured, killed, vandalized, looted, and obstructed justice--together these self-serving insurgents irresponsibly and criminally led to the murder, injury, and terror of American citizens, costly destructive vandalism and looting at our nation's Capitol, and the obstruction of justice by impeding the confirmation of the electoral college win for Joe Biden in a free and fair election.
All who contributed to and perpetrated these acts were irresponsible and criminal to one another and to the American people. Those who willfully incited one another to engage in the violence, led each other down a path of destruction for themselves and others. This was horrible, illegal, deadly, and inhumane.
We all have a responsibility to help each other do the right thing.
We can take this down to our own lives at times when we were challenged by this call to be responsible, humane, and rightful in our actions.
I thought back to a time when I made a bad choice out of frustration and anger. Someone reported my actions, and I met with the consequences of my harsh words. Those who witnessed my words could have helped me at that moment in many ways. They could have easily talked me down with words such as, "I know that you're passionate about this issue, but when you raise your voice, you make it impossible for me to hear you, " or "Please stop for a minute, let me talk to you--I don't think your volume or the words you are using really represent who you are or what you are advocating for. Let me help you." Even better, when the conflict started, those who worked with me could have worked for a more humane solution to the problem. Instead those with power simply silenced me and poked fun at my passion--after all, I was a female elementary school teacher with little social power in a community with mostly male leaders who seemed to value their power more than the mission of teaching children well.
Instead, people stood back, let me go, and then reported me. I owned my words, and then worked to remedy that poor judgement and action in multiple ways. It was an error I used to develop better skill, but a lot of time and angst would have been saved if people helped me out from the start.
I've often had tough conversations with my loved ones in similar situations. When they've been tempted to act inappropriately, I've had that deep and unpleasant conversation with them about their responsibility and need to act with humanity, grace, and truth rather than react with selfish anger and harm. We all have to help each other when passions run high and our best judgement is compromised.
When we have the courage to help one another before any danger or troubling acts occur, we truly do act with responsiblity. Too often when I read reports of terrible, life-harming events, I think about what could have been done to prevent such acts. When we see signs of hate, anger, harm, or hurt, we must act to prevent such horrible events. When we don't act, we not only support the hate and harm that follows, but we are left with the stain of the harmful acts in our own lives. I remember a past harsh event in the news and as the event was untangled, it was clear that there were many signs of the perpetrator's increasing violent and sick behavior, yet many stayed silent rather than act, and eventually an unthinkable act occurred. One could say that this happened with Trump too--his words and actions increasingly put Americans in danger. People did speak up, but too many supported him too leading to the deadly violence on January 6th.
With our best commitment to do this, we will still find that terrible events occur, but that shouldn't deter us from acting now to work to prevent as much inhumanity as we can--we must work for the common good in any way we can with our words and actions. We must prevent further hate and harm by speaking up earlier rather than later.
Imagine if Trump cronies and family members had stood up for what is right and good rather than join Trump in his deadly spread of misinformation, lies, and propaganda. Imagine if they had the courage to tell him to stand down and do what is right for humanity. If that happened we would have had a much greater handle on the deadly pandemic and lives would have been saved--we also would not have had to witness the carnage at the deadly White House insurrection, pay to repair the Capitol from all the looting and vandalism, attend funerals, grieve the death of American citizens, pay the medical bills for the injured, work tremendous hours of overtime, incur the human and monetary costs of that overtime work, send countless National Guard to DC, or upset our routines due to safety precautions set after the violence. The fact that the Trump team irresponsibly support each others' infidelity to oath of office, abuse of power, and resulting violence, vandalism and obstruction of justice created a wave of destruction that continues to haunt and hurt the American people.
We all have a responsibility to help each other do what is right and good. Think about the people in your own life--how can you better support their good work and good living? What can you say and what can you do? When we look out for one another, we build a better world.