I keep thinking about being attacked by my mother’s boyfriend when I was visiting my mom (I was newly 18). Him saying there wasn’t room enough in my mother’s life for both of us. Me fleeing, hiding in the bushes in my underwear, since he’d appeared when I was getting ready for bed. The landlord making him leave.
The next night, he came over. He said, “I’m sorry I yelled at you, but you are a bitch.” My mother tried to force me to sit down and watch tv with them.
I was penniless, carless.
I called my aunt, who told my mother to let me read in my old room, not to force me to have happy family tv time.
I’m thinking about his, of course, because we were all attacked on Wednesday.
And now the Republicans are calling for unity.
They aren’t even faking an apology.
They aren’t sorry.
They’re still calling the terrorists heroes and patriots
Or they’re saying it was the liberals who answered Trump’s call.
They’re still saying we rigged the election.
They’re still saying we’re evil, we’re socialists, we’re anti-American.
Their idea of unity is to keep lying about us, to keep riling up their lunatic base, to keep eroding democracy, to keep praising the people who fly Nazi flags in their name.
They don’t want unity.
All they want is for us to not blame them, to not hold them accountable, to not enforce the laws, to allow them to keep dividing us more with every breath.
