Brutkey

𝐿𝒶𝓃𝒶 "not yet begun to fight"
@Lana@beige.party

"How can you call yourself a progressive when you refuse to even sit down and have a conversation with the modern conservative?"

This is a talking point I'm seeing more and more on social media. "Modern conservatives", by which they mean MAGA, upset that their children no longer want to have anything to do with them and are going no contact. And, without being facetious or hyperbolic in any way, let me give you the exact answer to that question.

The answer is, for the same reason that a firefighter has no interest in sitting down and hanging out for a friendly chat with an arsonist.

Progressives believe in progress. Social progress, political progress, economic progress, technological progress and progress in the arts and media. It is a philosophy that argues the human condition can be improved by safeguarding human rights and placing reasonable checks and balances on corporate monopolies and unregulated capitalism.

The arsonist, sorry, the MAGA, not only doesn't believe in any of that. They don't believe in the underlying premise of the existence of basic, universal human rights. Again, I don't say this hyperbolically or for a laugh. This isn't funny. This is actually what they believe. In the MAGA worldview, certain types of people simply do not have rights; at the top of that list are groups of people such as immigrants, women, trans people, and brown and black folks.

This is because a core tenet of MAGA ideology stems from the christofascist notion of moral hierarchies. Under this system, evil acts aren't evil because of some morally repugnant aspect inherent to them. They're evil because the person at the top of the hierarchy has decreed that it is evil. Crimes like kidnapping, slavery, and murder aren't wrong because human life is inherently sacred. Kidnapping/slavery/murder is wrong because God said it's wrong. This is why they can simultaneously believe that God is morally good and cannot do wrong things, and also that God has appointed one person - in this case Donald Trump - to kidnap, enslave, and murder their political opponents. It's not hypocrisy. It's hierarchies.

Sitting down to a friendly chat with that sort of morally delusional person is exactly like asking a firefighter, a person who has dedicated their life to putting out fires, to sit down to a friendly little conversation over tea with a dedicated arsonist, a person who not only does not believe that putting out fires is a good and moral thing, but also that water doesn't put out fires, that gasoline does put out fires, and who refuses to view your home as anything other than a pile of kindling that deserves to be reduced to ash and rubble.

You aren't debating the effectiveness of the fire department. You very quickly end up debating whether fires exist or not, and whether your home personally should be the next one lit on fire.