C. wrote about putting this notice up on his office door, thinking about the hard question “How many of us have become too worried about relationships that we sacrifice truth and ethics?”
TO MY CUSTOMERS:
“After living as a proud and patriotic American for 70 years, I find myself living in a time of danger to our nation far beyond any I have experienced before. Political disagreements have always been a part of our history; but now the differences are so great that they threaten to approach the destructive level that resulted in the Civil War. The tone of political discourse has fallen to shameful levels of offensiveness and ignorance; the workings of our political system have degraded to the level of a criminal enterprise.
“Any objective examination of the beliefs and actions of the opposing political systems as they exist today, whether you label them Republican/Democrat, conservative/liberal, or libertarian/progressive, must lead to the fact that there no longer exists any equivalence of principles between those sides. That examination must also conclude that there is no present use in trying to bridge the gap with compromise or mutual respect. The distance separating us is not between points on a spectrum, but between entirely different value systems.
“It is also pointless to argue any political issue with reference to the viewpoint of Republicans “on the merits” since the Republican view no longer has defensible merits on any significant issue I can think of. Republicans are supporting candidates and politicians in office who march in service to the worldview of libertarian, authoritarian billionaires who have spent decades and fortunes funding propagandizing media, faux-professional “think tanks,” and lobbyists, all whom have significantly weakened and marginalized science, environmental concerns, civil rights, and social welfare. The effect of those decades of effort is a country at the brink of authoritarian fascism, extreme inequality, and chaos. The election of Donald Trump is the culminating event of the trend, and a political reality so worrying and repellant as to produce physical sickness
“Those who voted for Trump may not personally be racist, greedy, corrupt, or misogynist. However, they voted for him after having ample opportunity to consider that they were knowingly voting for a racist, greedy, lying, mysogynistic, abusive, and bullying traitor to the US, a person completely inimical to all its best values.
“I still strive to serve every customer who comes here as I always have, with every bit of integrity, professionalism, and skill that I can muster. In 45 years of business, I have made it a point of pride to also serve my customers with a sense of their needs and resources, and consider that those customers have real advantages and benefits in doing business here. I prefer to serve only those who generally share my progressive and democratic sensibilities. Trump supporters and Republicans as presently constituted should know that my viewpoint is not at a bridgeable distance from theirs; that we inhabit worlds completely separate in moral and human values. I can no longer imagine any productive exchange with such persons.
“Sincerely,”
