Be not afraid
The owners of Penzeys Spices found themselves in a media spotlight over the weekend after Vice President Kamala Harris stopped by a Pittsburgh store for some cooking supplies. Harris hugged and reassured a tearful woman that everything would be all right: “We’re all in this together,” Harris said.
There was backlash, of course. Especially after Penzeys posted to its website Bill Pezney’s view of what’s become of the Republican Party “over the last half century, and the steep decline/bottom falling out over the last decade.” He writes:
The truth of our time is we’ve arrived at the point where there’s no way to respect the nonsense the Republican Party is promoting and have any hope of overcoming the problems we as a nation and we as a planet face. Given the choice between saving America and planet Earth or saving the feelings of Republican voters, we are choosing to side with saving our country and our world. I’m sorry it’s come to this.
[…]
Going forward we would still be glad to have you as customers, but we’re done pretending the Republican Party’s embrace of cruelty, racism, Covid lies, climate change denial, and threats to democracy are anything other than the risks they legitimately are. If you need us to pretend you are not creating the hurt you are creating in order for you to continue to be our customer, I’m sad to say you might be happier elsewhere.
It’s not the first time Penzey has spoken publicly and bluntly about his politics.
It’s not as if the people Penzey is talking about are shy about sharing their opinions (above). They just get especially riled up at being called out for their hateful views. It hurts their feelings. How dare we!
Also over the weekend on one of my listservs, a user made a rather pithy observation about people on the extreme right who see their entire world view being threatened. I’ve written multiple times about status anxiety and “last place aversion” being a driver of the hostility from the far right. Lyndon Johnson once explained their anger in plainer but cruder terms. But this observation about why many on the extremist right are “panicked and desperate” is much more lyrical. Not surprising, given the borrowed source.
The right is outraged “to find themselves being judged on the content of their character when the color of their skin used to be all they needed.”