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You Need to Call Out Your Trumper Relatives
A few weeks ago, during that weird lapse of time between the insurrection at the Capitol and Joe Biden’s inauguration, I came across a comment my aunt made on her local paper’s Facebook page. Under a link to an opinion piece blaming Donald Trump with inciting the violent mob that attempted to overthrow democracy, she accused the paper of being biased toward the liberal agenda. Her comment, along with those of other irate, conservative citizens, was republished a few days later in a piece the paper wrote on citizens who were upset with how they reported on what happened at the Capitol.
I took several issues with her comment. First off, an opinion piece is, by design, not meant to be neutral. This wasn’t an article written by a reporter for the paper, but an outside reader. And second, the riot at the Capitol is not a story that can be spun multiple ways; a bunch of Nazis, egged on by their fascist leader, descended on a government building in an attempt to stop the counting of the electoral votes in a free and fair election. There’s nothing patriotic or revolutionary about what they did. So, I called her out on Facebook.
For years, I’ve remained quiet in the face of my family’s bigotry. Bringing up George Floyd’s arrest record in an attempt to defend the cop who murdered him. Counseling a family member not to adopt a Black baby because “it…
