Good for you and your new pretty flowers.

Good for you for your fun recent purchase, latest hobby, recent trip.

I don’t begrudge you these delights, but when they overshadow all else and you ask,

“Why do we have to talk about politics?”

‘Cause it feels important.

‘Cause it feels like the most important.

Here, in the richest country in the world, people are going hungry because of the actions of our government.

That feels bigger than politics. That feels like a wildly problematic value system.

People are being blown up in the Atlantic Ocean.

People can’t buy their medicine, study what they want, be who they are, love who they love, because of the power mongers who think it’s theirs to decide. (Newsflash: it’s not.)

I think about the harm, and the people dying, and ones whose livelihoods, families, hopes, homes are being stripped away, and it feels too important NOT to talk about.

You complained about your heating bill going up under the last administration, but the wealthiest people in the country just got a tax cut bigger than our income in a year, they’re being protected from accountability for grievous, heinous crimes against humanity – child humanity, no less – and you seem more annoyed that people are asking questions.

You don’t understand why I want to talk about it. I wonder why you don’t.

How can we not? Or are you afraid you might have to change your mind?

I had nothing but respect for you. As a human, as a “good” human being.

But now I just feel disappointment.

Your Christianity doesn’t seem very Christlike.

Are you not grieved that people are losing their food stamps just because they live in a blue state?

Are you not grieved that we’ve pulled SO MUCH humanitarian aid the world over that not just helped people by the millions, but that earned us goodwill?

Are you not grieved that we’re a laughing stock?

Are you not grieved that the color of ones’ skin is the sole decider of whether or not someone deserves consideration, understanding, or due process?

I guess I’m grateful to receive your kindness, as far as it goes, but I also wonder if I’m complicit to the greater problem if I receive said kindness when I know you’re not extending it to others that look or worship differently than you.

Super bummed. I wonder where the line is for you? When things are important enough to talk about?

Your discomfort may feel inconvenient, but I’d venture a guess that it’s waaay less uncomfortable than what the folks are experiencing who’re actually suffering under the aforementioned atrocities.

I mean, good for you and your comfortably oblivious life and option of not having to fear being arrested when you go to the grocery store.

But for tons and tons of other humans? Just like you? This shit is real.

I wonder when it’ll be for you?

Complacency looks like complicity and refusal to wrestle feels like hate. Not-love.

On the evolutionary continuum as a species? Let’s be better. Let’s share more, uplift more, grow in awareness, put ourselves in someone else’s shoes, help more. Not less. Not go backwards like we are right now.

Let’s start by tryna talk about it. We’re not business as usual. We’re in good vs. evil, right vs. wrong territory. It matters.