A Letter to All Human Beings Pt. 2

Dear Human Beings,

There is a scream lodged in the back of my throat. You know that place where tears build up into a ball that blocks your airway until you can no longer breathe without sobbing? That's what's going on with me right now. It's either a scream, or it's tears. Either way, it is born of frustration, emotion, and utter disappointment.

Over the last four days we've watched the events of Charlottesville, VA play out. First with a group of men my age on the campus of University of Virginia, marching with tiki torches alight yelling things like "you will not replace us." On Saturday morning this was followed by a gathering of white supremacists, neo-Nazi's and members of the KKK sporting Nazi and confederate flags. Also in the vicinity were counter-protesters, many of them of the clergy who were trained in non-violent means of protesting. militia's were on the ground in addition to the actual, sanctioned police forces. By the end of the day on Saturday one woman was dead as a result of a hate crime. Two police officers were also dead because their helicopter crashed.

The President of the United States spoke on Saturday evening saying that the fault for the violence was on "many sides." It wasn't.

On Monday he tried to rectify his statement by condemning movements like the KKK, neo-Nazis and white supremacy. but less than 24 hours later, on Tuesday afternoon, he had all but retracted that statement and once again thrown his support behind the white supremacists.

Read all the reporting here, here and here.

And this is why I can hardly breathe for wanting to scream or cry or throw all the emotions out on the table. It is so hard to hold all of this in. In fact, at first I ignored what was going on. Now before you throw me under the bus you have to understand that I exhaust myself all week reading the news and feeling empathy and sympathy for all the terrible things going on in the world. On the weekends it is sometimes nice to forget that there is a world outside of my parent's lawn mowing business. That's a luxury I know a lot of people cannot afford, and obviously I can no longer afford this luxury either.

The one thing that I think has been made abundantly clear through the surprising election and emotionally exhausting presidency of Donald Trump is that White America thought it was a post-racist society, and in that supposition we were as racist as we could possibly be.

It is hard as a white woman to tread the waters of racial accuracy. I say this not to be all "woe is me" but to express that I do not know how to help change something that I see as fundamentally wrong. I hate the fact that there is racial discrimination. There is no place or time in which it should be acceptable for someone of another race or gender, or gender orientation to be discriminated against in any way. But as I find myself among the race that is often doing the discriminating I don't know what to do. This weekend it has become quite clear that people like me cannot sit back and assume that someone else is going to do something about discrimination and intolerance.

I must stand up and reach out. So must everyone else around me who has been given the genes or the proclivities that are deemed "normal." White supremacy is fundamentally wrong. Any race thinking that it is above another is fundamentally wrong. How can we argue that we deserve more than anyone else? We don't. You deserve what you work for. People don't work to be subservient, they work to escape it. People don't work to be denied admission to college or a job, they work to achieve admission or hiring. To be denied something on the basis of race, gender, religion, or gender orientation is just wrong.

We've been here before. We have been here so many times. Someone decides that Christianity is wrong, so they are forced to fight lions and gladiators. Someone else decided that Judaism was wrong, so they were herded into gas chambers and killed by the thousands in one of the largest genocides in recent memory. People have decided that same sex attraction is wrong and so those who feel that way were tortured or killed. Someone decided that Islam is wrong and so we fight a war against a peaceful religion.

We've been here before. We've been here where someone decides one group is superior to another and it always ends badly. Remember the genocide in Rwanda? The Hutu's turned on the Tutsi's and slaughtered many. The international community didn't step in because they figured it wasn't their place. We're faced with a similar situation.

As white or Caucasian people it is our duty in this moment to decide to step in. The groups facing us right now look like us, they talk like us, they pretend to espouse the same beliefs as us, but they don't. And we must stand with the people who may not look, or act like us. But if we are doing things the right way then they will believe in the same things as us.

They will believe that every person deserves an equal chance despite the color of their skin, the orientation of their attraction, their gender or their religious beliefs. They will believe that hatred is wrong and intolerance of other people should not be tolerated. They will believe that it is our duty to stand up and reach out and they will help those of us who do no yet know the best way to do so.

You may have to stand up to friends and family members who are saying things that are wrong. You may have to reach out to people you wouldn't normally associate with. You may have to do things you've never done before.

But we have to. We must. It is our duty.

As Dumbledore said: "It takes a great deal of courage to stand up to your enemies, but a great deal more to stand up to your friends."

White people must stand up. We must be firm in our convictions and we must speak up against those who will not listen to anyone else.

Hatred and bigotry should not belong in this world. Yet here they are and we must fight them with love and acceptance.

So this years' letter to humanity has the same message as last years'. Please, for the love of everything that is good in the world, accept that sometimes you are wrong, work to make things right. love those who are different from you and seek to change those ideas that are fundamentally wrong.

I write this letter with tears blinding my vision. There are probably spelling errors I will try to catch before I publish. But I ask from the deepest part of my heart if you will stand up with me. Will you reach out to those who are different from you and profess that you do not espouse the same beliefs of those who are acting so abominably in Charlottesville? If you also feel sick at heart, join me in reaching out to those around us, condemning hate speech and standing up for those who are not just like us. And perhaps, you and I, together, can create change.

Brigitte

Updated LDS press release:

Original Letter to all Human Beings

The Late Night Hosts who all said it so much better than I:

All Terrorism is Devastating

Today is the one year anniversary of the Pulse Nightclub shooting where 49 people lost their lives. This attack was, and is, utterly devastating, and what I am about to write is not intended to lessen the impact of that terrible event in any way. My purpose is to point out an inconsistency that I find, frankly, disturbing.

I felt the same way on the one year anniversary of the Paris attacks, when the world lit up in solidarity with London, Brussels and Orlando. I have felt this way every time the western world shows solidarity for the victims of terror attacks on high profile locations in our part of the world. However, I see a startling inconsistency in our reactions to the equally devastating attacks taking place in the Middle East almost daily.

Last week when major landmarks in Tehran, Iran were attacked, the reaction from the rest of the world was markedly different. The Eiffel tower and Empire State building didn't light up in the colors of the Iranian flag, there weren't candle light vigils worldwide, even the U.S. statement was far from a true statement of solidarity, and was, more along the lines of a backhanded reprimand. When one of the safest (purportedly) districts in Afghanistan was attacked last week we in the western world also didn't react in the same way as we would have had that attack taken place in the diplomatic district of, say, Germany.

Terrorist attacks are so rare in the western world that when we suffer from them they feel catastrophic, and we forget to feel empathy for the people who suffer from these attacks on a weekly, if not daily, basis. We forget that others live in constant fear for their lives and the lives of their family members. And do we stand in solidarity with them? The answer is no as long as we continue to slow the flow of refugees, fear those who look or talk differently than us, and forget to trust other people.

The amazing thing about us humans is that we can feel empathy. We can understand and feel what others are going through. We have an amazing capability to trust, to understand, and to love. Terrorism has stolen that from us. We are afraid to trust people who look or act differently than us. We are so conditioned to be suspicious we forget to make friends, to understand and to love our neighbors.

If terrorism succeeds in making us constantly afraid of the people around us, if we no longer reach out a helping hand to our fellow man, if we no longer make idle chit chat with the people on our daily commutes, or who are our neighbors than terrorism wins. It will not matter if ISIS rules territory in the western world or if it is only in its restricted portion of the Middle East. If terrorism succeeds in striking fear into our hearts and turning us against each other then terrorism wins and we have lost.

So tonight I mourn the loss of the 49 lives in Orlando. But I also mourn the loss of life in Afghanistan, Iraq, Iran, Pakistan, Israel, London, Brussels, Paris, Manchester, and so many other cities worldwide.

And I pray for a world in which my neighbor is someone I can love without reservation and without suspicion. But I'm not just praying, I'm working to change myself so that I can love my neighbor without reservation and without suspicion.

"The world is changed by your example, not your opinion" -Paul Coehlo

My Civil War Daymare

I have a recurring daymare, usually as I am walking up the hill to class. I look around me and suddenly I'm seeing in black and white like those old photos from World War II. The houses that surround me are rubble. Torn apart by what I can only assume are bombs. I can imagine people, my friends, hiding in whatever shelter they can find. It's hard for me to picture, but I know they must have guns in hand. I wonder what would be the identifying markers that indicate the sides, or would it be all against all in mass hysteria?

This is the scene in my head that I call my 'Civil War Daymare', and it's a scene that I hope never comes to pass but one I don't think is completely out of the realm of the possible.

As a political science major I am confronted almost daily by the partisan politics that run rampant through our country. I listen to the news. I see the articles. I'm very aware of the climate in which we live. My worry is that we won't be able to bridge the gap and then one day people will snap. Talking will no longer be good enough and only violence will do.

I fear that day probably more than anything else. Because in that day there will be no one to blame but ourselves. We will no longer be able to accurately claim that someone else is the culprit.

To be honest we need to stop the blame game now. Republicans are not solely at fault for this, Democrats are solely not at fault for that. We are at fault for it. We cannot blame others and think that we are innocent. It doesn't work like that. We are as much at fault for the division between us as Russia is.

Yes, Russia may have hacked our election, they may have leaked documents and spread fake news. But who read the fake news? Who didn't fact check? Who believed everything they were told? We did. Us. The American people. If we knew how to responsibly read the news, if we knew how to have a respectfully civil conversation without it escalating into a full blown fight, if we knew how to fact check, then Russia would have had no influence.

The time for blaming is over.
The time for petty fights is past.

The culture where we never take responsibility for our own conduct is hurting us more than we can yet see.

The division between political parties is only a symptom of a larger disease. It's a disease of lack of communication and a proclivity to blame others. And it is a cancer that will continue to spread and infect and kill healthy organs if we don't do anything about it now.

We don't know how to talk to each other anymore and we don't know how to take responsibility for our actions. If we as millennials can learn these two lessons now we can start changing the world.

My civil war daymare envisions a world in which friend fights friend and America is dying. My hope is that this is only a daymare and never a reality.

And that is the future I work towards.

Numbers v. Narrative

I don't think you can explain the world with numbers.

In this day and age of big data emphasis on numbers and size is drowning out the human element. Decisions on a policy level ultimately are not made based on numbers. However numbers may help along the way.

You need a number to explain unemployment. You need numbers to qualify weapons or troops. But numbers don't tell you the resolve of an actor to carry out its aims. Numbers don't necessarily tell you what an actor is interested in pursuing with respects to foreign policy. Numbers won't predict a leaders' substance abuse and the repercussions of that, nor will they predict decisions made under extreme pressure.

Numbers are not the end all be all. Numbers dont tell the whole story. Numbers don't even tell half the story.

But in the same vein qualitative cultural data doesn't tell all of the story either. But it does tell us more of the story. It can examine why leaders and governments make the decisions they make. Numbers can be interpreted many different ways, but then again, so can words.

I think we have a problem in America. We tend to over emphasize numbers, figures and graphs even when we can't understand them. And perhaps because we can't understand them. We trust that those who have developed the numbers are trustworthy. But that's where we fail. Numbers aren't always trustworthy because the researchers or research methods aren't always trustworthy.

We need to augment numbers with narrative. We need to start trusting good qualitative data with the same level of trust we give to numbers.

Numbers and narrative go hand in hand. I wish we trusted them equally.

Echo Chamber

Hello-lo-o-o-o
Are you there-ere-ere-ere?
Can you here me-e-e-e?

I can only hear myself. I can only hear the media I want to listen to. I can only hear what I want to hear. I'm in an echo chamber hearing the same words over and over and over again and while the words change, and the stories change the opinions expressed don't. The same worries repeat and suddenly I'm sure in my beliefs that have been reaffirmed by the people who are like me. Over and over and over again.

The word echo chamber has been echoing through my brain for several days now. I sit and listen to my, admittedly, liberal media. Some of media leans more liberal, while others toe the line, but I'm getting fed a lot of the same opinions. The only dissent is found in CNN's round table discussions and even then I find that I'm siding with the liberals at the table and all too willing to label the conservatives as blind or unwilling to listen. I'm sitting in an echo chamber of my own design and I finally tried to be a Socrates and look outside of the cave.

And when I looked I saw millions of people just like me sitting in their own echo chambers. Some crimson red, some navy blue, some baby blue, some rosebud pink. There were even a few purple boxes in there. Curiously there weren't any white, because everyone believes in something these days. But I looked and I didn't see a world where I knew what truth was. I saw a world where I thought something was truth, but I had to find at least three other sources to back up that truth because fake news is a real epidemic.

I saw my fellow box sitters staring at their version of reality inside their echo chambers and I felt a sense of helplessness. How can you help someone out into the real world, out of their box or cave and see what really is out there? How can you have a conversation with someone in a navy blue box from your crimson box or vice versa? How can you politely discuss the changes that are happening in the world right now if you insist on believing that your reality inside your box is the only way to adequately view the world? How can you only listen to Fox News and Brietbart and call yourself educated? How can you only watch CNN, MSNBC, and Foreign Policy and pretend that you know the opinions of everyone sitting in their own boxes?

Short answer: you can't.

The problem in America right now isn't that we aren't trying to be informed. A good portion of the public is trying to be informed, but we tend to be selective. No one likes to have their ideas and values challenged. Everyone prefers to be validated. and sometimes that's just simply not possible. We can't ever agree on something across partisan lines if we're not even willing to entertain the ideas that the other party has to offer.

Anger is a secondary emotion that usually veils a more important root emotion we try to protect. My anger often stems from a fear that what the other side is saying is correct that that will challenge everything I hold dear. My anger towards some of the political decisions right now is harbored in fear that the international arena could be blown to smithereens by a tweet and an incompetent signature.

But that anger will get us nowhere. We have to be willing to listen. We have to be willing to entertain thoughts that discomfit us. We have to be willing to stop, slow down and decide where we are right now. Are we inside our comfy little box we built all by ourselves and filled with our favorite things?
Or did Socrates the philosopher drag us outside into the abrasive sunshine so that our unaccustomed fingers could feel the truth, that dirt is rough and dusty, that mud is clingy and gooey? Did he show us that the sun shines brightly and the moon smiles softly? Did he wait with us for a rainstorm so we could feel that rain can pelt a person as well as caress them? Did we see that snow can be cold and dreary, or it can be warm and playful? Did he show us the flowers so we could learn that red flowers sometimes smell just as sweet as the blue and that purple flowers may just smell the best of all?

We have to climb out of our echo chambers, we have to stop listening to the sounds of our own voices. We have to stop yelling louder and louder trying to outdo the person of the opposite color sitting next to us.

Peace begins with a smile.
Peace begins with earnest listening.
Peace begins with compromise.

We cannot afford to sit inside our echo chambers anymore. In fact we never could afford to sit inside them. We especially do not have that luxury now.

Step outside, see a sunset, smell the distinctive smog smell, feel your boot squish in the mud. Then get to work, because the smog isn't going away by itself, and the mud is gonna stay muddy unless you plant the grass.

Get going. Listen up. Be better.
Smash your echo chamber and go outside.

Glimpsing the Unconscious

I think that you learn the most about yourself when you don't have much to think about and your brain just wanders. In these moments when you find it wandering to things you've never found yourself thinking about before, those are important moments.

I think you learn a lot about yourself in the split second it takes to retweet or like something. you find you really do believe in something before you have the chance to talk yourself out of it. It's in the little inconsequential moments of decision that we can find out a lot about ourselves if we are paying attention.

There used to be things I sincerely cared about and thought about all the time. Today I realized I haven't thought about those things in quite awhile. I mourned, for a few seconds, that old Brigitte and then moved on because I like this new Brigitte oh so much better.

This new Brigitte isn't ambivalent about the rights of people. She actually cares if everyone has the same right sand will probably say something about it. This new Brigitte cares an awful lot about women's rights, LGBT rights and Ethnic rights. She cares even more about the people being treated well and respectfully regardless of their gender, ethnicity or sexual orientation. she cares about morals a whole lot more. She cares about equal opportunities.

This new Brigitte cares less what people think. She's not afraid to speak or tweet her mind, even if someone may disagree with her. This new Brigitte is more assertive.

This new Brigitte has moved on from boys who are noncommittal. She will not wait around for anyone. She is no longer pursuing any relationships with anyone she does not unequivocally enjoy being with. she's not afraid to spend time by herself because being alone isn't scary or lonely, it's empowering.

So while I mourn the loss of a Brigitte from years past, I'm not sorry to see her go. I feel as though I've matured and grown into a person I'm proud to be. Shy isn't really my personal anymore. Selective is.

We catch glimpses of who we really are in our most unguarded moments when we think not even the conscious part of our brain is paying attention to the unconscious part. But those moments we glimpse can be revealing if we pursue them.

Everything Changed Today

At exactly 10 AM Mountain Standard Time Donald John Trump was sworn in as President of the United States. I sat in front of my desk at work with my coworkers watching by my side and things felt slightly wrong. The bottom dropped out of my stomach and I legitimately put my hands over my mouth to stop . . . well to be quite frank I don't actually know what I was trying to stop.

I think for me the transition has been a surreal experience. I've watched domestic politics in a way I've never watched them before. Meaning, I actually kept up on them. Trump was naming his team and it didn't actually feel like any of them would ever take those places.

And then today it actually happened. Trump and Pence were sworn in, later Mattis and Kelly were confirmed and sworn in. So it's real folks, they're here for at least four years. And I've been thinking a lot about that in recent days. several years ago I got upset at a debate student I judged who simply made fun of the President pretty much the whole speech. At that moment in time I presented the argument that even if you do not like the action of the President, or approve of his ideology, that the office of the President deserves your respect.

So I've been facing some cognitive dissonance. I have a lot of trouble respecting the man who now holds the highest office of my land. I don't approve of his choices in rhetoric, I don't enjoy his policy ideas. I do not like him Sam I am. I do not like him here or there, I do not like him anywhere. But I do believe in respecting the office.

So I will not say "Not my President." Because he is my president. I still live in the United States of America and therefore he is the president for the next four years. And I have determined to respect the office, even if I cannot respect the man.

So everything changed today, but that change just means that regular citizens will have to work harder to let their representatives know what they do and don't like. We will have to work harder to make our voices heard. Civic involvement in the Political process has always been a crucial part of our democracy. Right now it is even more important.

In many ways I believe that President Trump's campaign, nomination, presidential win and now inauguration have shown us the stark divisions that are in our country. We knew that they were there, we just didn't quite know how deep they ran. His campaign revealed that we were not a 'post-racist' nation. The campaign revealed to us that societal discrimination was still leveled at women. His campaign revealed many distasteful things about our country that it is now our duty to fix.

He may not be your president, but he is my president and that just means I have to work harder. I have to be better. Hopefully, by the time my working harder pays off I will be able to say with pride, I serve the President of the United States. That may not be till after Grad School (so 2-4 years) but someday I will be able to say that.

Everything changed today. I hope that change will eventually be for the better.