The short version: To my “conservative” and Republican friends: your silence over the past week is saying quite a lot.

The longer version: I have a fair number of friends with whom I disagree on political matters. Some of them, vehemently so. I have learned which ones are actually open to respectful discussion and which are just looking to “own the libs” or otherwise act like smug know-it-alls. I’ve done some pruning of my Facebook friends list, mostly using the “unfollow” and “snooze for 30 days” features to keep my timeline within reasonable bounds. I am not looking for an echo chamber, but I also don’t need vitriol and idiocy clogging up my headspace.

Over the past five days, I have been looking around for some of these folks to speak up. For me, the President has crossed hundreds of lines since January 2017; he crossed dozens (at least) before that. I get it that some people just aren’t bothered by these things. I don’t really understand how they aren’t, but … whatever.

Anyway, on Monday the President had the police forcibly remove almost entirely-peaceful protesters from Lafayette Park. There are multiple accounts—including video—of the fact that this was, indeed, a peaceful demonstration. Seemingly out of the blue, these protesters were met with tear gas and pepper balls, at the request of the US Attorney General.1

The President’s move on Monday should have every “conservative” very upset. The President shut down a peaceful assembly of people using the freedom guaranteed in the First Amendment. Conservatives know the Constitution well; for some, it is a sacred text. Yet, the President very obviously violated the first thing on the “things-the-government-can’t-do” list. This isn’t a difference of opinion. There is no other way to interpret what happened on Monday. There were peaceful protesters in DC; at the White House’s order, the DC police had them removed.

The President followed this with an awkward photo-op. Did the President really shoot at demonstrators in order to clear the way for a really bad photo?

So, I am here to ask my conservative and Republican friends: I have been checking in on your Facebook pages over the past week. I have been hoping to see something about what happened. I was instantly very upset by what happened on Monday, but I decided to give you all some time to catch up on the news and process what has been going on. Unfortunately, I have seen exactly zero (ZERO!) conservative/Republicans I know say anything about this. Supposedly, the First Amendment is really important to y’all. When various state governments said we couldn’t go to church out of caution around coronavirus, many of you said this was anathema to the US Constitution; this was taking away both the freedom of religion and the right to assemble, you said. Now, the President himself has taken violent action against people in the streets, and none (NONE!) of you have anything to say.

C’mon, guys. You can do better than this. I promise I won’t pull out the “I told you so” stuff. Please, just show me you actually care about right and wrong and the US Constitution as much as you claim to.

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The White House wants the press to rescind its claims that the police used “tear gas.” They don’t deny using a military-grade chemical irritant … just not “tear gas.” ↩︎