brendan halpin

Dear [names redacted],

Hi. I have some questions for you. I’m too chicken to start a big conflict at a family get together, and of course the dynamic of white people gatherings (or maybe everyone’s, I don’t know) is that if I object to your politics in a public place, I’m being unreasonable and rude.

So I want to ask you here. Why do you hate me?

I mean, you’ve always been nice and even kind to me, and I’m sure you’d say you don’t hate me even though you vote for politicians who promise to make people like me suffer. I guess I wonder how you square this in your mind. Is there a special carveout for me and my family? Or do you believe that suffering will be purifying for us?

Here’s another thing I don’t get. It seems to me from the outside that you have a pretty good life. And yet there’s an undeniable anger behind your politics. Anger at queer and trans people, anger at immigrants, anger at Black people…you get the idea. I know none of us in this family are untouched by the generational trauma of alcoholism. I’m angry too, though I’m angry at different things than you are.

And it’s facile to say it’s just the specter of alcoholism that’s driven you to embrace the politics of cruelty. But I guess I’d just like to say maybe you should do some introspection or therapy and figure out what’s making you so angry and whether your anger is directed at the right target.

I’d also like to ask you this: what level of suffering will be enough to sate your anger? If a million immigrants get deported, sent back to the country where they face danger and hopelessness, perhaps being separated from their families, will that be enough? (also—good thing they didn’t do that to our starving Irish ancestors, amirite?)  If a million trans kids kill themselves because they don’t want to live in a world that despises them, will that be enough? I’m not asking this rhetorically. I’m really asking. What is the outcome that will sate your anger and allow you to feel happy and content?

I know from personal experience (I tried to delete my entire Twitter history when I left, but it may still be there as evidence) that anger is addictive, that there is a buzz we get from righteous indignation that becomes its own reward. And so we end up on social media like rats pressing the reward bar, living from fix to fix.

One thing I’ve had to come to terms with is that this addiction to anger was bleeding into my personal life. And there’s this—when I would meet someone and they’d say they had seen me on Twitter, my first response was “I’m sorry.” Because the angry guy who was my Twitter persona wasn’t the way I wanted people to perceive me.

Maybe you feel the same way.

Or maybe not! I don’t know.

I want to ask you about how you reconcile your embrace of Christianity, which, as I understand it, is a religion about forgiveness, justice, and welcoming the stranger, with the policies you vote for. Hell, for the people you vote for, for that matter. I realize that’s a big question, and my experience is that most Christians will bend scripture to suit their beliefs (look at all the scriptural defenses of chattel slavery, for example), so it’s tempting to just throw up my hands and say, well, I fundamentally don’t understand religious people.

But I know you, and I am genuinely interested in your answer. Who do you think Jesus meant when he urged us to be kind to “the stranger”? Where in his teachings did Jesus endorse cruelty (ok, except maybe to fig trees)? I guess I really just don’t understand why domination rather than compassion seems to be at the forefront of your religious beliefs. Can you explain it to me? I mean actually. This isn’t one of those gotcha non-questions. Clearly this makes sense to you in a way it doesn’t to me, and I am legitimately curious about how you fit these things that seem incompatible to me together in your mind.

I want to end with one request for a favor. I won’t know if you’ve done it or not, but that’s okay. The next time you are supporting policies or people that want to cause suffering, I want you to not exempt me from the people you want to see suffer. I am a Northeast leftist with queer kids who lives in a diverse city, who doesn’t go to church and who believes that what women do with their bodies is none of my business. I don’t think police or mass incarceration stop crime, and I believe that people who are wealthy have a moral obligation to share that wealth. I think trans people should be allowed to unapologetically be themselves anywhere they want. I think children should learn about how their bodies work. I don’t think consensual sex without marriage is bad. Indeed, I think waiting until you’re married to see if you’re sexually compatible with someone is an absolutely horrible idea.

I could go on, but you get the idea. Everything you hate? That’s me.

I want you to know that what you hate isn’t some faceless, anonymous villain. It’s me. Please don’t tell yourself that somehow I’m different. I’m not.

I really want you to sit with that. To understand that the cruelty you want to see enacted will be visited on me and my family and people I care about. I guess my final question is just this: what did I do to you to make you wish this on me?

No, actually my final question is my first question: Why do you hate me?