Grief and Accountability

Accountability and Grief

Yesterday I saw an article about a man who had lived in the United States for almost 30 years being deported to Mexico. He came here as a child, and married a U.S. citizen and yet this still happened. I am married to a U.S. citizen and I have a green card as a result. I don’t understand why this man does not. But that’s a side point, what I really want to say is that my heart is broken. In some ways it has been broken for years, ever since Putin invaded Ukraine and my family and community decided to back him and called opposing opinions fake news (in Russian). My heart break deepened in late 2016 when I saw the results of the American election and was forced to face the winner’s voters on a regular basis. I know that many people have lost their rights since that day, people from marginal communities are afraid. And yet the white majority continues to dehumanize others, I listen to it way too often, and I know that those people spewing hate and calling it something else cannot imagine or do not care or both the pain they are inflicting on others. In the last few years I’ve come to see how much our species enjoys inflicting pain, so many of us feel self-righteous and point fingers demanding to be heard because we insist our opinions are right. Very few of us ever self-examine, ever ask ourselves tough questions, instead we love to live in our bubbles, to stay comfortable and deny reality. I work with climate change deniers, who make fun of those who think differently.

At what point are we held accountable? I look at the Trump supporters in my life and think of that man and countless others that have been deported as a result of their collective decision to vote republican in 2016. I turn on fox news and listen to them cackling with obvious enjoyment at the idea of separating a family, knowing full well that most of their viewers agree with them.  I think about the disaster heading straight for us called climate change and how those people and their collective decisions are holding us all hostage to a dangerous reality. I believe reality has a way of asserting itself whether we like it or not, you can pretend gravity doesn’t exist but if you test the theory you’ll find that it does. The same is true of climate change, and yet here we are. Every day I ask myself at what point will we hold those who gave us this world accountable? I don’t just mean the oligarchs but their enablers in the global population too. I think about the people who voted for Adolf Hitler in 1933 and wonder what they thought in 1945, I’m guessing even if they learned a lesson it probably didn’t lessen their bigotry.

I am angry, and grieving. I want to look into the eyes of my relatives (some of whom think Ramzan Kadyrov is a heroic patriot instead of a genocidal killer) and call them out for their disgraceful inhumanity. I want to do the same to Trump voters and to anyone else who thinks to justify evil through the lens of their own cultural interpretation of right and wrong. At what point will we hold them accountable? And lastly how do I hold myself accountable for the decisions that I make and the decisions they entail. I wish I knew.

My apologies for this post, I really felt the need to let my thoughts out.

With Love

Natalie