“At times in this life it can be a
challenge to figure out who the bad people are, but sometimes they help you. Sometimes they do the work for you.
Sometimes with their
every vulgar, bitter word from their mouth, they testify to their personal
malignancy and they make it easy to identify them.
“Generally speaking, there are things
that good people do and things good people don’t do. Good people don’t refer to entire
countries as ‘shit holes’—most notably countries that have given birth to our
very humanity; ones that for hundreds of years have been colonized and poached
and mined of their riches by powerful white men; countries whose people have
been enslaved and sold and forced to come and build your country.
“Good people by any measurement we might
use—simply don’t say such things. Of course good people also don’t say
they could grab women by the genitalia, either. They don’t defend racists and Nazis and
call them ‘fine people,’ days after murdering a young girl and terrorizing an
American city. They don’t brag about their penis size during debates, or suggest
protestors at campaign rallies should be roughed up, or crack jokes about
captured war heroes, or make fun of the physically disabled. They don’t.
“Good people don’t tweet
anti-Muslim rhetoric in the moments immediately following a bombing in order to
bolster a position. They
don’t leave American territories filled with brown-skinned people without power
for months upon months, after publicly ridiculing their public servants and
questioning their people’s resolve. They don’t pull children from the
arms of their parents and place them in cages and detention centers.
They don’t erase
protections for the water and the air, for the elderly, the terminally ill, the
LGBTQ. They
don’t take away healthcare from the sick and the poor without an alternative. They don’t gouge the
working poor and shelter the wealthy. They
don’t abuse their unrivaled platform to Twitter-bait world leaders and to taunt
private citizens.
But this President is not a good human being, and there’s simply no way around this truth. He is the ugliest personification of the He will be the ever lowering bar of our legacy in the world.
“And what is painfully obvious in these
moments, isn’t simply that the person alleging to lead this country is a
terrible human being—it is that anyone left still defending him, applauding
him, justifying him, amen-ing him, probably is too. At this point, the only reason left to
support this President is that he reflects your hateful heart; he shares your
contempt of people of color, your hostility toward outsiders, your toxic
misogyny, your ignorant bigotry, your feeling of supremacy.
“A white President calling countries
filled with people of color It should be universally condemned. Humanity should be in agreement in
abhorring it. And
yet today (like so many other seemingly rock bottom days in the past twelve
months) they will be out there: white people claiming to be
“They will dig their heels in to explain
away or to defend, what at the end of the day is simply a bad human being
saying the things that bad human beings say because their hearts harbor very
bad things. No,
good people don’t call countries filled with beautiful, creative, loving men
and women shit holes or do most of the horrible things he does.
And good people
don’t defend people who do. You’re going to have to make a choice
here”—John Pavlovitz.
Good People Don’t Defend a Bad Man by John Pavlovitz
