When the axe falls

The above quote is usually associated with a fable. There’s a Turkish version and a Macedonian version. Aesop penned one.  Sometimes it’s called the Woodsman and the Trees, sometimes it’s called The Trees and the Axe.

The basic premise is that when we sacrifice any of our human community at the altar of comfort or false security or pride or fear, when we deem ANY of our sisters or brothers to be less than or different, when we decide someone is other, we are complicit in our own destruction.  We hand our enemies the very tools they will use to harm us.

These are frightening times to be different.  These are frightening times to live at the margins.  Frankly, these are frightening times to be anything other than a straight, white, cis-gendered, Christian, well-to-do, American male.

It calls to mind that famous poem by Martin Niemöller:

You can’t find a way to make yourself okay with the water crisis in Flint and not be harmed.  You cannot turn a blind eye to racism and not be harmed.  You can’t justify immigrant families being turned away and torn apart and not be harmed.  You can’t degrade women and not be harmed.  You can’t justify laws that villainize trans people and not be harmed.

When you are an agent of harm, you are harmed.  There is a cost.  When you willingly other someone else, offer them up to be the handle, you enable the axe.  Once you’ve made your peace with the axe, you make it more likely that the axe will come for you.  Because you’ve already said that’s okay.  That some people don’t count.  That some kids matter less.  That some lives inherently count more.  None of that happens in a vacuum.

I heard a line once- maybe tv, maybe a movie.  Maybe Oprah.  It was said to a mistress about the man who left his wife for her.  It was a cautionary tale sort of a thing. “If he did it with you, he’ll do it TO you.”

I believe that.

And even if you never get cast as other, even if you ride the wave of privilege to the bitter end, it. will. cost. you.

This uneasiness, this fear?  This lack of peace we feel?  Well, Mama T was right.  It is because we have forgotten that we belong to each other.  You need only turn on the evening news to know that’s true.

We did this.  ALL OF US, to some degree.  ALL OF US. Whether by prejudice or by privilege, by apathy or by animus, by fear or by frustration- we all own a piece of it.  We are all connected.  We forget that, though.

With every bully unchallenged, we offered up a sapling.  With every voice of misogyny not shouted down, we sharpened the knife.  With every racist joke we ignored, we made the first cut.  With every dismissive comment about the poor, with every “Prayers for Paris” but not “Prayers for Pakistan,” with every bathroom law, every wedding cake denied, every rape survivor blamed, every gay child cast out, every “build that wall,” every time we made someone’s faith a litmus test of their worthiness, of their very humanity – with every act of othering, every single one, we whittled the handle of the axe now being used to hack away at what actually makes America great.  We polished the grip of that which would destroy what is the very best in us.

And when you deny people fleeing for their lives safe harbor, when you decide that some lives, some families, some children are simply not worth saving, you become the blade. And the blade does not get to go on tv and cry fake tears about the violence it has wrought.  The blade doesn’t get to say, “No, you cannot bring your babies here to safety,” and then bemoan and retaliate because those babies suffocated in the street.

NO.

We can pretend we’re solitary trees, but the truth is we are not.  I wrote this a while back for another piece:

 **********************************************************