I spent years doubting the science of climate change and spending time with people who didn’t believe in the science either.
When I realised I was wrong, I felt really embarrassed.
To move away from those people meant leaving behind an entire community at a time when I didn’t have many friends.
I went through a really difficult time. But the truth matters.
I’m the granddaughter of coal miners in Pennsylvania and my family moved to Florida when I was young.
We have a Polish Catholic background and we attended church regularly, but at the same time we were very connected to science because my mum was a nurse and my dad sold microscopes and other scientific equipment.
I agree, but I don’t think we have to be jerks to them to make them understand that saying sorry and trying to change isn’t enough to counteract what they’ve already done, and they owe society a lot more than that. That’s not being jerks, that’s being real.
If they can’t handle that measured critique, it’s because they refuse to take any kind of self-responsibility, which speaks to them still being on the wrong side of history.
Who gets to decide what’s enough? You? Me? Never mind the fact that the article says what she’s done.
How about we let those people who turn their beliefs around decide what’s enough instead.
The important thing has to be the fact that they’ve realised their mistake. The rest of it is just fluff.
Precisely put, thank you. She cannot change the past, she cannot get the years of her own misplaced belief back, and for all the betrayal we feel in this minute reading about her actions, the betrayal she feels daily about the actions of her close friends and family (and Rush fucking Limbaugh!) is magnitudes greater.
She saw the light, she changed her ways, and she’s helping others change theirs.
In reality, that’s the very best we can expect.
Anything more – like changing the past, or holding her personally accountable for the beliefs of tens of millions of deluded American pseudo-christians – is just as much fantasy on our part as denial of climate change once was on her own part.
We need to stop expecting more morality from a stranger than we would ever expect of ourselves.
EDITED for clarity
What do you want from her, exactly? For her to live the rest of her life in shame? Kill herself? Feel bad about it until she gets tired of feeling that way and looks for some way to lash out at those insisting she needs to feel bad forever?
Don’t make picking the right choice another bad option.