A CLICK AWAY FROM MORALITY

In the wake of Donald Trump’s election, some have taken to wearing safety pins to show that they do not stand for and support the hatred Trump and his campaign stood for.

In these trying times, when it seems as though the world is on the brink of revisiting horrors we had thought long banished, we pause to reflect on the important questions. Who am I? What is my place in this scary new world? And, perhaps most importantly: what is the actual least I could do to seem like I am helping? Standing on the precipice of a kleptocratic fascism that has consolidated power through stoking xenophobic, misogynistic and racist divisions in a populace happy to delude itself with childish fantasy and openly fraudulent information, our first instinct is, obviously, tweeting more. But, like, with those fancy tweets, the ones that start with numbers and you have to click on to expand. Or maybe even that kind of tweet where you quote someone else’s tweet and add like a hand-clapping emoji or maybe a “This is so important right now.”

But then you remember that plenty of people were doing that before the election, too. Tweeting would just be contributing to all this horrible “normalization” you have been seeing other people tweet about. No, now is the time for a truly drastic, barely discernible, self-comforting illusion of doing something. Now is the time to put a safety pin on your lapel.

To think: just a few weeks ago wearing a solitary safety pin would have made you seem like an aged-out punk trying to pretend listening to Minor Threat albums on the weapons-grade instrument of consumerist capitalism and state surveillance you keep in your left pants pocket 16 hours a day was a meaningful act of rebellion. Now, though, as you clasp that one-cent piece of spring steel to your chest, its subtle, satisfying click will echo through the ages, affirming your place on the highest of our moral mountains, somewhere between Oskar Schindler and Gandhi.

Sure, it may be a tiny and inconsequential gesture, but the symbolism of it rings louder than bombs. It says,“I’m pretty sure that this is the absolute least I could do.” And really, when you get right down to it, what could possibly be more important than making sure people know that you have thought about how to do the right thing?

NO HATRED!