On Cake
My parents used to wield an old saying when I was a kid: you can’t have your cake and eat it, too. Maybe your parents used it, too. I vaguely understood it meant that you can’t have it both ways. If I had cake—a slice, a cupcake, or an entire cake—I’d eat it. The cake would have fulfilled its purpose and mine. And that would be the end of that.
But I didn’t fully understand the meaning of the cake saying until I was in my mid-twenties when a friend, a fervent gay rights proponent, derided “queens” for effeminate mannerisms. I looked at him askance, and before I knew what had happened, the words fell out of my mouth like hot grits, “George! What are you talking about? How can you be all about gay rights and at the same time put down the very people you say you support? You can’t have your cake and eat it, too!”
In that instant, my brain connected the dots, and the literal meaning of the cake maxim blossomed into my consciousness, icing and all. You cannot “have” a cake (slice or whole) and expect it to remain as such after you’ve “eaten” it.
The real-world application is simple: We cannot hold two outcomes simultaneously that are opposites. It’s one way or the other. As a man of a certain age, I’ve learned life is not a simple black-and-white dichotomy. A lot of gray areas exist that require nuance to discern their meaning. But even so, way too many people are shamelessly attempting to have it both ways and at other people’s expense. Why? Blame it on narcissism, greed, or sheer willfulness.
We’ll come back to this a little later.
On Hot Takes
When you consider forerunners like SixDegrees.com, America Online (AOL), and assorted independent bulletin board systems, social media has been with us in one form or another for about thirty years.
Just think about these numbers. Facebook launched in February 2004; by the end of that year, it had 1 million active users. By August 2008, the platform boasted 100 million active users; by September 2012, a whopping 1.01 billion users; and by December 2016, 1.86 billion monthly active users. In 2008, Facebook served as a means to 1) reconnect with friends from bygone years and 2) share photos of food and pets. By 2016, Facebook morphed into the online arena for flexing one’s social media muscles, especially concerning politics. Everyone had an opinion about the 2016 presidential candidates, and few were shy about sharing those opinions.
Social media became the Wild West for numerous reasons, including too little platform moderation and a well-documented flood of targeted ads from Cambridge Analytica designed to gin up conflict among users. Political discussions routinely descended into digital barroom brawls as veneers of civility melted away to reveal folks’ worst version of themselves. The collateral damage included broken relationships between decades-old friends and splintered families. Anyone could become a Facebook cautionary tale of unfriending for voicing their political opinions with too much verve and too little restraint.
I’m reasonable, and I hope others hold me in the same regard. I try to conduct my online interactions as I do in person, with respect and care. My priority is to give everyone the benefit of the doubt that they’re reasonable until they’ve demonstrated there is no doubt they’re anything but reasonable.
. . . we value the inherent humanity in everyone and see differences as something we are to embrace and celebrate, not fear and demonize.
Ninety percent of my Facebook friends are people I’ve known in real lift for years. The friendship provides a context so we both know what to expect in an online relationship. I say that to mean if I know someone’s a clown in real life, the chances of me interacting with them online are slim to nil. The other ten percent are people from Twitter (pre-Elon Musk) I’ve never met, but thanks to live tweets, online chats, and shared interests, we see eye to eye on several weighty issues.
One thing for sure anyone can say about my friends—in real life and online—is that they’re varied. They come from diverse walks of life. We don’t look the same, live the same lifestyle, or worship the same way. We’re of different ethnicities, genders, and sexual orientations, and we live all over the world. Discovering who they are and how they came to be those people fascinates me.
Even though we aren’t a homogenous lot demographically, we’re very much of the same mind in that we value the inherent humanity in everyone and see differences as something we are to embrace and celebrate, not fear and demonize.
Or so I thought.
During the 2016 election cycle, I had to cut bait with a handful of Facebook “friends.” They came at me much too hard with several uninvited attempts to hijack my page as a bully pulpit for their candidate’s views. This rogues’ gallery included:
- A priest (yes, a priest who shall go unnamed)
- A couple of characters from my Entertainment days at Disney
- Someone I considered a stand-up Christian
I’m not implying that I’m a choirboy. That’s hardly the case. Number one, I don’t sing. And number two, my childhood days are long behind me.
After three strikes, including private requests for them to stop bringing the heat to me, and warnings of the consequences, I unfriended them. They would have been better off trying a mouthful of sriracha than trying my patience.
On Candidates
In less than two months, Americans will head to the polls to elect a new president. Wait–what am I saying? In some states, early voting has already begun. As usual, the pundits and politicians call this “the most important election of our time.”
The nation’s two-party system has given Americans a choice between two presidential candidates with almost polar opposite worldviews. Our collective decisions will determine who will lead the country and which laws will be passed or repealed over the next four years, to say nothing of specific liberties.
Since 2016, despite becoming more entrenched in our political leanings, people have become much more savvy in managing Facebook. Few people want to become Facebook roadkill or be ostracized by family, friends, or coworkers. It’s too much of a hassle with a lot at stake. Numerous people post their views only on their own page and comment on posts where their remarks will be welcomed. Call them echo chambers or silos, but you get the idea.
On the other hand, X, formerly known as Twitter, is a whole ’nother situation that deserves a dedicated series of articles, so I’ll just save that for another day.
One more trend I’ve seen more of this year is a passive-aggressive approach that attempts to shame and silence opposing views of marginalized people. It involves decrying discomfort when their candidate’s bigotry and dishonesty are called out. They then flip the script to present themselves as the victims of hate speech.
Sound familiar?
I see this mainly among a select number of my straight, white, cis-gender, non-disabled friends who this country has denied nothing. This is not to say these folks haven’t endured challenges and even tragedies. Who in this life hasn’t? These people have received unbridled support in their times of need. But they never have and never will be penalized for the color of their skin, their ethnicity, their faith (or lack thereof), or who they love because they benefit from a system in which whiteness reigns supreme and is rewarded.
For marginalized people, choosing a presidential candidate is not a game.
What baffles me is that these are the same people who, years ago, supported their marginalized friends, put them up when they had no place else to go, attended Pride events and their friends’ same-sex marriages, made anonymous financial contributions to benefit friends in need, and more. And now they fail to see the clear and present danger their candidate poses to their friends, family, and the rest of the world?
These folks will swear upon their mother’s eyes that they don’t have a bigoted bone in their body and support marginalized people. But bigotry doesn’t reside in bones. It inhabits the mind.
Quick question: Which is the lie, your past support to curry favor or your current bigotry to gain power?
Another approach is straight from the condescension playbook and it sets forth that both candidates are so wretched, so awful, that they are virtually indistinguishable thus making both candidates so unfit for office that neither should be elected. This approach conveniently lifts the naysayer above the fray of mere mortals.
For people with this mindset, the election results won’t upend their lives. Sure, they may have to pay a little more at the grocery store and the pump, or their stock investments may decrease a smidgen. And there’s the disappointment of choosing a losing candidate, but they won’t suffer any meaningful consequence . . . because of, you know . . . the system that rewards whiteness. And that, my friends, is peak privilege.
For marginalized people, choosing a presidential candidate is not a game. It is an actual existential proposition that demands we be strategic with our votes. Translation: it is a matter of life and death. We understand all too well what’s at stake. It is not hyperbole when marginalized people speak out against the candidate whose well-documented white-hot contempt for American citizens who are not white, straight, Christian males. We speak from our lived experience. The very history he and others would erase from the face of the earth documents it.
On Abject Hate
The issue here is an inability to identify with the suffering of others. If reading people’s objections to your candidate’s propaganda, deranged lies, and hate speech are too much to be seen, the option to mute, block, or unfriend us are always available. Better yet, why bother to hide behind feigned discomfort? Using phrases like “Democrat party” are a huge tell. Why not throw away the mask and own their bigotry?
See, here’s the thing. No one can lay claim to being my friend if they support someone whose stock in trade is white supremacy and oppression. I’ve read of people who say they don’t support everything the Republican party’s standard bearer represents. But never, ever, have I read the following attributed to one of his supporters:
“I don’t support his racism.”
“I don’t support his misogyny.”
“I don’t support his homophobia.”
“I don’t support his transphobia.”
“I don’t support his lying.”
“I don’t support his mockery of people living with disabilities.”
“I don’t support his anti-Semitism.”
“I don’t support his bigotry.”
And I definitely haven’t heard one of his supporters say …
“I don’t support his xenophobia.”
So, one can reasonably assume that all the assaults on your friends and fellow humans are neither dealbreakers nor hindrances to you supporting his candidacy? How can anyone in their right mind who claims to have love in their heart uphold these positions and expect their friends—who are and will continue to be targets of that guy’s hate—to sit idly by?
My position comes down to this quote by Robert Jones, Jr., “We can disagree and still love each other unless your disagreement is rooted in my oppression and denial of my humanity and right to exist.”
It’s just that simple. Their candidate’s platform consists of abject oppression and a malevolent denial of anyone’s humanity who is not in his desired demographic. Their comfort will not come at my expense.
This brings us back to where we started. You either love his bigotry or you love humanity, but you can’t do both. You cannot have your cake and eat it, too.
I won’t get started on how Evangelicals have sold out their lord and Savior in the most glaringly naked power grab in American history because I’ve already addressed that extensively in a previous article.
You know, instead of complaining about us fighting for our lives, a better solution would be to sit and talk with us and learn about our concerns.
Love one another.
