"It's just a vocal minority online most people aren't like that you don't have to worry"
It's my rideshare driver from my doctor's appointment ranting about Jews to me from the front seat because he hasn't seen my magen david yet. I limp home.
It's the (white) person doing lunch service with a keffiyah lanyard and red hand pins at the hospital. I no longer feel safe receiving my kosher meal from him.
It's a doctor I work with. It's a doctor when I was a patient.
It's all but one of the professors in the department I minored in and roughly a third of the professors in the department I majored in. I have been taken out of class and yelled at by fellow grown adults in academia for apolitically acknowledging Jewish history in passing. Given failing grades with no explanation, accused of plagiarism I did not commit - only by these people.
It was the entire student government at my university. The cooperative silent treatment would have been impressive if it wasn't comical. At least I have a great story now.
It's the people I lived with, who swore they knew nothing of the conflict and became homicidal within 24 hours of a new housemate moving in. I still don't know what she told them. I fled for my life. I miss my chefs knife.
It's my leadership when I was in the Army, the people we were helping when activated for disaster response.
It's the teachers in my local school district.
The tech doing my EKG to his captive audience. The chaperone doesn't comment.
The artists in my painting group.
These people are identifiable of the far right and the far left. Their commonality is they desire someone to hate, a group they deep down know is not powerful to project their problems onto instead of facing the true giant of systemic failures and purposeful oppression backed by actually and nearly insurmountably powerful individuals. They engage in magical thinking, conspiracy theories, and extreme cognitive dissonance. They allow these beliefs and feeling to impact their behavior towards strangers, and during their professional work. They make their patients unsafe, attempt physical harm, commit ethical violations and target students, abandon the truth and justice they have committed their careers to, break oaths, commit perjury. Nobody I mentioned here was a protestor. Nobody I mentioned here was a random person accosting me on the street, or this list would go on forever. None of these people were coworkers or only classmates, or this list would go on forever. None of these people were those I had power over in a professional environment. But all of these people were someone I had some form of relationship with, however temporary. All of these were people I had placed an amount of trust in, to be responsible, to keep me safe, to not act this way.
It is funny to me that the Jews are framed as the scary, dangerous ones. None of these people feared me. I was the only party with potential to be harmed in this situation.
