Terry Zink has spent 57 years building a life in Montana’s backcountry. The 57-year-old third-generation houndsman from Marion—a remote town nestled deep within the Flathead National Forest—runs a small archery target business serving outdoor recreation workers and guides who, until recently, had steady employment managing America’s public lands. Contents
Those workers are disappearing. Their jobs are gone. And Zink, who voted for Trump in 2024, is watching his customer base—and his livelihood—vanish before his eyes.
“You won’t meet anyone more conservative than me, and I didn’t vote for this,” Zink told Politico reporters as he surveyed the damage. “You cannot fire our firefighters. You cannot fire our trail crews. You have to have selective logging, water restoration, and healthy forests” (1).
By recognizing that they are flawed people who grew up in an environment who taught them it was normal and good, and rewarded them for behaving that way. They are just humans, like us. We would have been the same as them if we were in their place. Only by recognizing that, and seeing them as humans, can you stand any chance of actually defeating fascism. If we just follow in their footsteps, answer violence with violence, dehumanize them in the same way they dehumanize us, we just lay the seeds for them to rise again.
This is not the case, because I was able to estrange my conservative upbringing by educating myself and being kind to others. I was able to recognize the harms I made, and went through deconstruction to be able to help others too.
Fascists do NOT want to recognize they are flawed. They do not want to recognize they are wrong. They want to be wrong, and make others fall in their misery.
They are humans that fail to recognize their humanity. And need to be retaught, from the bottom what that entails.
Reread carefully, again. Maybe three times.
They refollowed those steps. They reanswered in violence. They re-dehumanize us, again. They reseeded fascism, and want a third reseed.
Compassion-focused therapy only works on those that are capable communicating in other languages than violence; that fascists rechoose to recommunicate with.
Well, keep going through it, because you’re not quite there yet.
I am.
I don’t see how getting shot on the face is “compassionate work.” But praxis what you know.
It didn’t work the first election. What makes you think a third will be different?