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Title : The Barn Test
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The Barn Test
The morning after the 2016 election, I remember having this thought distinctly: Who is going to shelter my family in a barn, and who's going to just turn their back on us and loot our house when I get hauled off to a concentration camp in a few years?I knew I was being ridiculous and hyperbolic and hysterical. But that's honestly what I thought. And I cried, because I knew when I went into work that morning that there were people IN MY OFFICE who had voted for Trump and who had therefore failed, to my mind, the Barn Test. They walk among us, I thought and wrote that day.
The woman that raised me, a Romanian Jew, lived the first five years of her life with her mother and two older sisters in a concentration camp in Eastern Europe. All of her stuff was gone when they finally returned home (their neighbors had taken it). My husband's grandmother fled the Nazis and hid in a barn in Poland at age 17. I, on the other hand, had the good fortune to be born and raised in the United States with white skin during a period of relative peace and prosperity, and I was told my whole life that it couldn't last forever.
FAIL: A lot of people on the internet, especially community Facebook pages and comment boards. The girl who lived in my dorm at an Ivy League college and asked my freshman roommate if Jews had horns and questioned her decision to date a Jewish boy because their children would be devil children. People who proudly display confederate flags on their vehicles and wear MAGA hats in public.
Of course, not everyone who voted for Trump viewed their vote through the same lens of white supremacy that I did.
White women voted for him in droves because his misogyny could be excused and ignored in light of his elevation of White Power. Some people thought he'd make us all rich. Others hated Hillary. But for me, it was very black and white, and it felt like a betrayal. A vote for Trump, it felt to me at the time, was a vote to sign my death warrant and that of so many other marginalized people. The presence of two Court Jews in Trump's family didn't make me feel any better. Not one bit.
After awhile, I abandoned my resentment of "Trump Voters.™ I realized that they had been conned and that resenting my fellow citizens, arguing with them on the internet, allowing hate to infiltrate my heart was both a waste of time, a stain on my soul, and the dirty work of fascism. I set it aside and practiced using my time and voice in affirmatively positive ways.
I now genuinely harbor zero ill will towards people who voted for this mess because it's a waste of my time and energy and it doesn't change anything.
After yesterday's synagogue shooting--really just one more and particularly heinous affront in two years of newly-bold affronts against women, immigrants, LGBTQ people, people of color, and indigenous people--I came back to the Barn Test.
Fortunately, it's pretty easy to know who passes and fails the Barn Test.
FAIL: A lot of people on the internet, especially community Facebook pages and comment boards. The girl who lived in my dorm at an Ivy League college and asked my freshman roommate if Jews had horns and questioned her decision to date a Jewish boy because their children would be devil children. People who proudly display confederate flags on their vehicles and wear MAGA hats in public.
PASS: People who come out and stand for hours in the rain to defend immigrant families staying together. Strangers who engage with people on my social media pages about these things because they know I lack the capacity to do it. The women from Alaska who I met in DC lobbying Senator Murkowski on Kavanaugh. My friends who show up for me in ways big and small in my everyday life.
There are a lot of depressing things about 2018 America, but because Trump has given everyone the permission to "speak their minds," at least now I know where people stand. I know who I can count on, and who I should just shrug my shoulders and give up on.
There is serious value in the Barn Test.
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