Republished with permission from John Pavlovitz
There are all sorts of reasons for this: a seeming endless state of national urgency,
a fierce and unrelenting tribalism, the evaporating of basic compassion for other people.
I’m tired of the relentless attacks on voting rights of people of color, of sustained assaults on the rights of women to have autonomy over their own bodies, of unceasing culture wars against transgender teenagers and migrant families and public school teachers.
I’m tired of of abject conspiratorial nonsense coming out of the mouths of people I once had deep respect for, of a rising contempt for our courts and systems and laws and safeguards.
I’m tried of seeing people losing their homes because they need a routine operation, of a church and a political party who intentionally traffic in misinformation and prejudice.
That would all be enough to syphon anyone’s emotional and physical resources.
But today I realized one of the greatest reasons I feel this thorough depletion, is that I am tired of caring about Republicans more than they seem to.
They can’t understand that they too are at the heart of my activism and my advocacy:
- I don’t only want affordable healthcare just for my family and those I agree with, but for Republicans’ families; so they aren’t also emotionally swallowed up and financially devastated by sickness or injury. I want to spare them that additional trauma, as well.
- I want them to get vaccinated and to trust science, not just because it will make me feel safer but because I don’t want a single Republican or Conservative to die prematurely and needlessly. I don’t want to see their children being orphaned by a Fox News fabrication. I don’t want their childhoods playing out in the terrible shadow of so much unnecessary loss either.
- I don’t want women to get to choose what happens to and within their bodies solely for my daughter or for the daughters of Progressives, but for their daughters; because I value their lives and believe they are sacred and worthy of a voice and the agency to determine their own path.
- I want more regulation on guns, not only because Liberals and Democrats will be safer but because the rapid-fire carnage of high-powered weapons is nonpartisan in its catastrophic violence; because those careening bullets indiscriminately violate the bodies and destroy the organs and cease the hearts of Conservative’s children and friends and spouses and partners. I want fewer red voter funerals, too.
- I want a responsible, planet-friendly nation and government, not because I want only generations of Blue voters to be able to revel in the breathtaking beauty of this place and to have air and water and ground that sustain them, but because this is Republican voters’ homes, too.
- I want them to see the value of a black life and to show kindness toward refugees and to have empathy for LGBTQ people, not because it makes me feel morally right—but because I want them to feel the wide-open, beautiful expansive view of the world you get when you discard a religion and a politics of fear.
- I want Republican voters to reject the lawlessness and narcissism of their vile political messiah because his complete lack of a noble impulse and his contempt for the sovereignty of this nation is an existential threat to every American, including them. He doesn’t give a sh*t about any of us.
That’s what is so exhausting about these days.
I know without a doubt that I care about the lives of Republican voters far more than Republican politicians and pastors do.
I care about them infinitely more than Donald Trump ever could or ever will.
And on many days, because of the cultic state in which they find themselves, I feel like I care more about Republican’s lives than they do.
They’ve been taught to see me as the enemy, when I am inherently for them, and they cling to people who are predatory toward them.
They want to win, even if that victory is hollow and leads to their victimization and fewer freedoms for them.
They believe the lie that I hate them when I am trying to affirm their humanity.
That is the disorienting irony of life here in this country now.
In fighting for them I now have to fight with them.
I’m so damn tired of that.
But I won’t stop fighting for them.
But I think they’re worth it, too.
John Pavlovitz
John Pavlovitz is a writer, pastor, and activist from Wake Forest, North Carolina. A 25-year veteran in the trenches of local church ministry, John is committed to equality, diversity, and justice—both inside and outside faith communities. When not actively working for a more compassionate planet, John enjoys spending time with his family, exercising, cooking, and having time in nature. He is the author of A Bigger Table, Hope and Other Superpowers, Low, and Stuff That Needs to Be Said.
