So Trump was convicted of 34 felonies. This morning I have a distant cousin on Facebook last night complaining about how broken the justice system is. And this morning he’s calling for another Civil War. I’m just not sure how to bridge this reality gap.

First off, as Matt Tebbe so brilliantly put it:

It’s not a miscarriage of justice when
a Black man is choked out in the street
Or a Black woman is killed in her bed
Or a Black man is gunned down running while Black
But it is when a white millionaire is convicted of many felonies.
This is how whiteness works.

That cousin surely didn’t make a lot of noise about the broken justice system after George Floyd was killed, or Breanna Taylor was killed, or Trayvon Martin was killed… I wonder why now?

And secondly, is that cousin really ready to take up his guns and kill people like me because we disagree politically? And because I think maybe the justice system did its job here?

Now I know it’s far easier to grumble on Facebook than it is to do actual work, and I’m willing to bet at this point I’ve been to more political protests in the last 5 years than he has. But I do wonder how we ever bridge the gap here. Are things so irreparably broken that chaos is inevitable? I fear so, but I hope not.