Those words spoken by my mother over fifty years ago have been echoing in my mind since the attempted over-throw of our democracy on January 6th.
They echo with every demand for “unity” from those who at best enabled the violent attack on our Capitol.
They echo with every call to let the impeachment of Donald J Trump go. To move on.
They echo every time I have to face the fact that people I love either voted for that man or want me to excuse those who did.
The words from so long ago echo in my mind now because at the heart of then and now are betrayal, love, and grief.
The words echo because just like then, those I love are at risk, their lives endangered.
Now, just like then, we are being asked to “be nice.”
Now, like then, the request is to accept and excuse the inexcusable.
"Won't you please be nice? It makes it so much easier."
After begging my mother to get out, to take my younger brothers and sisters and get out, after standing up to my step-father’s last attack that had left me bloodied and bruised, by threatening to call the police — I had become the one they walked on egg shells around.
"Won't you please be nice to him? It makes it so much easier."
My mother asked me to be nice to her violent husband, the man who had terrorized us for years. The one I had tried to protect them from for years.
And something in me broke.
It was the final betrayal and hope died.
I moved out shortly after that.
But I never stopped loving my mother, sisters, and brothers, never stopped being terrified for them.
Now, like then, those I love are at risk. They have been put at risk by a man who should never have been given the power to do so. We have all been put at risk.
The pandemic is mutating, raging, our hospitals and front line health care providers pushed to breaking.
My son is one of those health care providers — a critical care ICU RN.
His hospital is seeing its largest number of COVID patients since the pandemic began.
We haven’t see him in months.
We’re all being advised to double mask, to stay vigilant, as the new versions of COVID are more infectious.
And yet the mask and science deniers still claim “freedom” from responsibility as our people continue to die and families are broken.
“Won’t you be nice? It makes it so much easier.”
We’re learning day by day how everything we love has been put at risk by the previous administration.
Just like everything else with the pandemic, there was no plan for distributing the vaccine.
However there was a plan to overthrow a legitimate election.
The attempted coup of January 6th was not some “no one could have seen it coming” spontaneous event.
It was encouraged by those who knew better.
We came within minutes of having our duly elected government overthrown and having to watch Vice President Pence, Speaker Pelosi, and others, taken hostage — at best.
Now, not even three weeks later, Republican Senators and House members demand unity without accountability. They play the victim, paint us as the unreasonable ones.
Now, just like then, we’re being asked to pretend, to be “nice.”
“Won’t you be nice? It makes it so much easier.”
Now, not even three weeks after our democracy almost fell, much cared for friends continue to make excuses for those who still support Trump.
They are blaming me for saying that’s unacceptable. And if I begin to walk away, I’m supposedly punishing them. Or angry. Or hateful, unwilling to be accepting.
I’m supposed to be accepting, understanding of those who helped put everything I love at risk.
No.
What I am is resigned, sad at the inevitability of it all.
I do understand why they do what they do. That doesn’t mean I have to be ok with it.
“Won’t you be nice? It makes it so much easier.”
I haven’t heard from my ICU RN son in three weeks. His hospital is swamped with COVID patients.
I’m worried about my other children and grand children. About all of us.
About our country.
We won’t survive any of this by pretending.
We won’t prevent even worse from happening in the future by enabling those who got us here now.
We’ve paid too high a price to ever make nice again.
I just can’t do it.
I can not tolerate being asked yet again to be “nice” to those who have caused so much pain.
Trump and his Senate and Congressional enablers are the symptoms, not the cause.
None of them would have been able to do so much harm without the American people who supported them.
"Won't you please be nice to him? It makes it so much easier."
Those words have been echoing because there are too many similarities between then and now to be ignored.
I don’t wish anyone harm.
That doesn’t mean I’m going to excuse or enable the harm done to me and mine - to all of us.
Asking me to is a profound betrayal.
No one should ask that of any of us.
I’m going to love and miss the people I have to leave behind for the rest of my life.
That’s not new.
Neither is all the grief that comes with it. But it is bearable.
Setting limits is more than allowed, it’s necessary.
The survival of our democracy depends upon it.
Our lives depend upon it.
Our freedom to be all we can be depends upon it.
No one has the right to ask us to accept being harmed.
No one.
To paraphrase a biblical quote, Matthew 10:14, that also keeps coming to mind these days —
it’s time to shake the dust from our feet and move on with people of courage towards better days.
We have work to do.