America's Plague of Silence & Intolerance
Why do so many Americans spend hours "talking at" complete or near strangers on social media every day? It's easier and less scary than talking to the people closest to us. Let's change this.
Saturday, March 8th, 2025
Yesterday, I offered a “critique” of a letter that was sent to me by a reader of my island’s BEST and ONLY locally-owned newspaper, The Vashon Loop.
Today, I’m sharing the actual letter I’ll be popping into the mail on Monday. This one is more personal. More intimate. I will also be including a handwritten invitation to meet, over coffee or tea, to discuss in person, if he’s interested.
I offer it as a model for responding to people with differing views, but I’m not fooling myself. Writing to a near stranger, when losing that relationship will not impact my life, is incredibly easy — compared to reaching out to a close friend or family member.
It is my personal mission to walk my talk re: “tolerance” for diversity, because the alternative is harmful to the health, peace, and cohesion of American Society. If I can lead hundreds, thousands or millions of Americans to do the same? I will!
I truly believe a pluralistic society both deserves and demands nothing less.
In my own life, I have a great number of friends who are all over the human spectrum of beliefs; political, humanistic and religious. It’s one of the great treasures and joys of being an American, to be surrounded by the new, the interesting, the surprising, the startling, and never forget — the delicious!
Curiosity is the great equalizer. Everyone knows something we don’t know, and by asking questions and listening, we can learn so much! For a person — not grounded in fear or a need to be right at the cost of another person — this is a great way to live the life we’ve been blessed with.
As I have said time and time again throughout my life: “It is a GREAT day, when I learn something of sufficient value to change my opinion on a topic.”
And so, here is my letter to this man. You’ll notice I’m honest, sincere, and I do not sugarcoat anything. At the same time, I try to entice, invite, and inspire him to consider returning to the “old ways” of our island culture, back before the heavy boot of soft-totalitarianism & endless propaganda came down on our necks.
Note: I don’t go into the fast moving crawl of totalitarianism (ushered in by the WEF, the Biden Administration Puppet Masters, Governor Jay Inslee, and the dangerously power-grabbing Democratic Party of WA State, among others) in my letter, but it’s what I believe is happening, and with great intentionality.
Dear R.S.,
Thank you for your letter regarding my article in the February issue of The Vashon Loop: Let’s Save Our Democracy, Together. I sincerely appreciate you taking the time to reach out and share your thoughts.
I shared your letter, and my response, on my Substack which is titled: Our Thoughts Matter. I kept your identity confidential, of course. To read my Substack, go here: https://marchtwisdale.substack.com/
Here is what I want to say to your letter overall:
Today — many people holding similar values believe themselves to be at loggerheads. There is ample evidence to suggest this is intentional. Many people are being led astray by various “Pied Pipers,” and the effect on our nation is catastrophic. A nation of diverse people cannot stand united if they lose their capacity for tolerance.
This fundamentally un-American attitude is offered up in your own letter when you say: “Anyone who is a friend of those people, by for instance voting for Trump, is not just unwelcome in my home, but unwelcome in my life.”
Here’s the thing. We do have “Trump Voters” in our life every single day, because we live in a complex world where everything we touch, eat, drink, and utilize has come to us through dozens or thousands of hands. We cannot escape “Trump Voters” or the benefits they bring into our daily lives.
You can “virtue signal” and “practice discrimination” and “kick tolerance to the curb” by directly ostracizing the people closest to you, from neighbors to friends to family to employees.
But, as an American, should you?
Will you go out and ask the man who delivers your mail to share his private voting decisions with you, and then tell him to skip your mailbox going forward, if he gives the wrong answer? How about the PSE employees who trim the trees and restore power after a windstorm? Do you have a “Democrats Only” phone list for plumbers, electricians, painters, roofers, and gardeners/landscapers?
If you did — would that be good for America? No! That would simply be a new form of discrimination.
Vashon Island’s culture of respect, appreciation and tolerance for diversity is what brought me here in 2004, and I’m not willing to just let that go. It is too valuable to be sacrificed or lost casually.
In my family, I’m the one who finds everything. Why? Because long after my family members give up in frustration, I’m still out there, in the dark, with a flashlight, searching. By nature, I am persistent, and I don’t stop looking until the lost thing is found.
Today, I am searching for the Vashon Community I joined in 2004.
I’m not upset or angry with the woman who fired me and my legal immigrant co-worker who is from the Philippines. I feel sadness for that woman’s state of mind. What must it feel like to be so angry/scared/upset/anxious/outraged/virtuous/superior/choose your feeling — that you’ll fire a person you complimented, appreciated, smiled at and liked for the past four months? Simply because you learned how they voted on Nov. 5th?
I am an American, by intention and effort, not entitlement. I think a lot of people have forgotten (or never knew) what it means to BE an American. One thing it means is to respect a person’s right to vote as they wish without pressure or the threat of coercion.
Informed Consent is a hard fought for protection rooted in the tragedies of the WWII Concentration Camps and the U.S. Health Department’s Syphilis Experiments on uninformed black men in Tuskegee, Alabama.
Our Human Right to Informed Consent requires a person to be both fully informed AND 100% protected from any form of coercion. In fact, coercion renders a person “legally incapable” of giving consent.
And yet, we humans often fall to the temptation of “expediency.” We think:
“If I break with American tradition and tell everyone I know that they must vote as I do, or I will end my relationship with them (or fire them, as you openly advocate for in your letter), then Democracy will be saved!”
But — how can we “save” Democracy by “breaking” with the traditions that keep our pluralistic Representational Democracy alive? How does intolerance become a virtue, somehow expected to increase our capacity for diversity? It doesn’t.
Two things can be true at once. A person you love, trust, admire, and can depend upon in an emergency, can also be a Trump Voter.
Imagine if you could go back to simply saying, “Let’s keep Vashon weird.” No caveat required?
Sincerely,
March Twisdale