We’re Tired of Being The “Reasonable” Ones
Ignorance is holding us hostage.
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My father-in-law got thrown out of a restaurant.
His crime?
He asked the staff to wear their masks properly, i.e. not hanging down under their noses and tucked under their chins. The manager came out and ordered him to leave. “You don’t tell my employees what to do.”
The next day, a guy walked up to him and told him to take off his mask. “You don’t need that if you have faith.”
My dad-in-law lost his cool. “That’s just stupid,” he said.
Then he walked off.
You might think that sounds unreasonable, maybe even close-minded. Hear me out. My in-laws have lost 12 friends to Covid. They both caught it last December. Luck spared them. They got vaccinated the minute they could. Only a few of our other relatives have.
This happens a lot in the south, but it’s not limited to one region. You can’t ask anyone to show concern for someone else anymore. Apparently it makes you a condescending snowflake.
My father-in-law is a lifelong republican.
He’s had enough.
The high road doesn’t work.
There’s this idea that if you’re a smart, enlightened person then you’re not allowed to express outrage, or even sarcasm. You have to tolerate everyone and their dumb ass opinions. You have to do all the work to see where they’re coming from. You have to find ways to convince them to do the right thing, even if they make zero effort to meet you halfway.
It’s exhausting, and it’s bullshit.
We’ve been told to take the high road our entire lives. Teachers like me have tried for more than a decade. We don’t get angry and tell off our students when they make sexist comments or praise Hitler. We don’t call them stupid when they write papers against vaccines full of invalid sources, almost all of which have been debunked and discredited.
We’re don’t try to cancel them.
We don’t want to.
We try to reason with them, and it doesn’t usually go that well. They usually ignore us, or get angry. They complain. They wind…
