Irreducible complexity

Credit: Maine: An Encyclopedia

It's not amusing watching some former students and other people I know struggle to accept that a) what happened was an attempted coup, b), terribly wrong, and c), going to result in legal punishment for those who took part. These are, for the most part, decent people. But they can't mentally get to grips with the problem because of various kinds of implicit bias. Some were outright pro-Trumpers, but most were single-issue conservative voters, especially second-amendment types from the former law enforcement program at Unity College. 

Here's some help: First up, admit you've been in a bubble. You don't read the serious news. You admitted this to me in class. I tried but often couldn't get you to read it, even though I explained that not reading it made you a poor candidate for participation in a democracy. Many of you don't read well at all. Remember when I made you read out loud in class? I'm not trying to demean you. I just want you to understand that a lot of information you need just goes right by you because you don't read the unbiased news, for one or the other reason.

Second up, try to understand that a politician can be for something you like, ie, gun rights, but also for something you don't like, ie, violent insurrection. At the same time. Just because you often only have one thing, whatever it is (Jesus, hunting, guns, abortion, fill-in-the-blank) doesn't mean to say that others don't have many more, some of which you won't like. You have to begin to consider more than one issue and weigh things in the balance more carefully, one thing against the other. Otherwise you'll keep your gun rights, for instance, but lose your free speech rights, or the right to equal treatment under the law. (I would pick those over guns any day.) 

Finally, it is complex. It's called irreducible complexity because you can't reduce it. There are no shortcuts to understanding it. The extremists themselves used a variety of failed mental shortcuts (Q-Anon, Trump worship, racism) so they wouldn't have to deal with the complexity. This hurts. It truly hurts to not understand what is going on, I know. But you going to have to learn to either live with this feeling or try harder to understand. Finally, remember when I showed you that the KKK came to Maine to organize against Franco-American immigrants in the 1920s? Many of you  have those tell-tale French last names. If you think that you are immune from fascists, well, you just don't know or understand that they came for your grandparents or great-grandparents (even though they were white). They tried to come for mine too. The Luftwaffe bombed my town, bombed my six-year old dad out of his house, and forced multiple members of my family into the British armed forces for six years before the war against fascism was finally won. 

Fascists will always come for you eventually. That's what fascists do. It's inherent to their system, which is based on hate. The in-group has to get purer and purer over time to keep up a steady supply of out-groupers to hate. You have to stop fascists before they they come for you. Because they will. But it has to start with you. You have to stop hating too.