“Ignorance” Is A Lie: An Open Letter to Dante
A couple months ago, as we all festered in the brutal unknowing and disbelief (AGAIN?!) of the November 2020 election, my brilliant friend Lindsay wrote an open letter to her young son, Dante, and shared it on Facebook. I’ve asked her if I could share it here, and she said yes.
Lindsay is raising this wonderful son by herself. She herself is young, and is constantly shifting everything to keep herself and her son happy and healthy. Her life can be challenging, but she’s a bright and generous and joyful human. She grew up in a rural, Conservative part of California, faced grave loss early on and continuously. Again and again she has faced an increasingly hateful, bloody world and translated it into grace and learning for her son.
Here’s what Lindsay wanted Dante to remember about the state of the world on November 4, 2020:
I think it’s important as a person, before claiming ignorance or saying “I didn’t know,” to ask ourselves and each other the following questions:
Should you have known?
Could you have known?
Did you have the information, or ways to get the information?
If you are a person with reasoning faculties that would permit you to use critical thinking skills in order to learn the information and the answer to any of those questions are yes, then it isn’t ignorance you should claim. The choices you make are your own and the responsibility and consequences of those decisions fall fully on you.
These are lessons I try to bestow on you and as we are having conversations about this election and about why people would use their voices and their votes to hurt others by trying to keep this monstrosity of a president in office, we must remind ourselves to refrain from allowing each other the “pass” of ignorance.
They know. They know they are choosing self-interest or hate over unity. They know who Trump is as a man — without honor, integrity, intelligence or country loyalty — and they made the choice anyways. All the information was available, and through his own words and actions. Whether or not they like the other candidate, they knew they were choosing a person who cares about nobody, who lies like it’s a national sport and who decided long ago that it was okay to be the worst version of himself at all times. A person who mocks veterans and the elderly. Who thinks it’s okay to assault women, cage children and kill people based on the color of their skin. Who hates and hates and hates. They chose money and privilege over people. They chose a single issue over democracy. They chose a hateful and violent fascist over all of us, over their own best interests, over our world and future. They failed the test of humanity. It was a choice.
It isn’t ignorance, my darling boy. It was a choice, made with the information they chose to know. I’m sorry we couldn’t all be better and rise to a higher standard. I’m sorry that not everybody cares about other people. I hope I do my job well enough so that you never hurt somebody and feel okay doing so because “you didn’t know.”
Always ask yourself:
