“When they go low, we go high.”
Former FLOTUS Michelle Obama first offered that advice at the 2016 Democratic National Convention. It’s a lofty ideal: To counter cruelty with gentleness; to meet hard heads with soft hearts.
If only there were time for planting seeds of patience and grace, and watching them bloom.
These days, when conservatives go low, lives are on the line, metaphorically and literally. This point was driven home Monday during the first night of the 2024 Democratic National Convention. There, three women – Amanda Zurawski, Kaitlyn Joshua and Hadley Duvall – took to the stage of Chicago’s United Center and laid their souls and struggles bare.
The goal? Seeing federal-level abortion rights reinstated by way of electing current VP Kamala Harris as the next president, as she has consistently spoken out and acted in favor of reproductive freedom over the years. (Republican presidential candidate and former President Donald Trump, by contrast, once stated that those who get abortions should receive “some form of punishment.”)
Zurawski first made headlines for suing the state of Texas in 2023, a landmark case filed over her near-death experience after being denied abortive care. At the convention, she noted that “today, because of Donald Trump, more than one in three women of reproductive age in America lives under an abortion ban,” placing many in danger of the hardship she suffered. Zurawski added, “A second Trump term would rip away even more of our rights.”
It’s all true. When Roe v. Wade was overturned in June 2022, three of the five Supreme Court justices who voted in favor of the motion – Neil Gorsuch, Brett Kavanaugh and Amy Coney Barrett – were Trump appointees. And in our post-Roe society, women are suffering, and dying – as are children – without safe, legal abortion access. If re-elected, Trump is likely to enact much of Project 2025, a chilling suite of policies crafted by the Heritage Foundation – a think tank largely staffed by alumni of his administration – which calls for the U.S. government to “institutionalize the post-Dobbs environment.”
On the convention stage, Duvall further personalized the problem by speaking about her pregnancy at age 12, a result of rape by her stepfather. She was able to get an abortion at the time, and remains grateful for the chance. But, she noted, Trump refers to the uneven patchwork of restrictive abortion limits and bans now enacted throughout the U.S. as “a beautiful thing.” Duvall continued: “What is so beautiful about a child having to carry her parent’s child?”
That moment has replayed in my mind numerous times since – along with another moment, one that took place before the festivities began. Alt-right correspondent and activist Jack Posobiec showed up to the DNC and asked attendees waiting to enter the center how many abortions they’d had in their lives – a baldly bad-faith inquiry, designed purely to provoke.
One person simply fired back: “I’m being paid by [billionaire] George Soros to have an abortion on stage.”
This is the sort of energy that’s called for in the fight to protect human rights like abortion access in 2024 – concise, targeted responses to provocation that clearly communicate an unwillingness, going forward, to offer deference and respect when none has been earned.
And none has been earned.
The Emperor’s Exposure
Perhaps that sounds harsh.
But, allow me to share an example of modern-day conservative activism: Over the weekend, Trump supporters brought jars of fake semen to campaign rallies bearing the likeness of Republican vice presidential candidate JD Vance – with the sole purpose of mocking Democratic vice presidential candidate Tim Walz and his wife, Gwen, as well as families like them, who have relied upon in vitro fertilization or intrauterine insemination to conceive their children.
It’s a particularly vile fear response. The political right has been focused on Walz following an interview on MSNBC’s “Morning Joe” during which he referred to Republicans as “weird.” With one word, Walz emboldened fellow Democrats to glom onto the term as a shorthand way of calling out bad actors and behaviors.
In response, conservatives have accused progressives of bullying – with some even likening the “weird” rhetoric to the propaganda disseminated by Nazis against Jewish people during the Holocaust. Major news organizations like New York Magazine and NBC News have jumped to the defense of the Trump/Vance ticket as well, creating a false equivalence between jokes made at Vance’s expense, and the tens of thousands of lies told by Trump during his first term in office.
It’s just one example of how “when they go low, we go high” has been weaponized to squash opposition. But we must ask ourselves: What does “going high” actually mean? Is it truly an inherently soft concept? Isn’t it good to fight for our rights, for others’ rights?
Those who would see the status quo maintained, to serve their own interests, regularly critique the ways in which people speak out, when they cannot break down the message itself. So-called respectability politics have been used repeatedly to diminish or dismiss merited indignation. Women, especially, are silenced in this way.
But when one reflects that energy back, conservative would-be tyrants can be robbed of their power. The label of weirdness hurts because it concisely reveals these political tormentors to be emperors sans apparel. One plain look exposes the fact that the emperor also has no thick skin, no spine, no moral compass. The emperor is a paper doll that crumbles under drops of the toxic waters he himself has unleashed.
The emperor cares only for control – and the emperor will get weird about it.
When conservatives choose to go low, those who seek justice for the harm inflicted by draconian policies and hateful speech must call them out, on stages of all sizes. And, they must consider climbing down, too – to hold up a mirror that reflects the power grabs and ill will back.
It seems Harris agrees. In a recent CNN article, it was revealed that her advisors urged her and Walz to drop the “weird” talk, despite its popularity. Harris declined that advice.
And Obama herself appears to now be on board as well. On Tuesday at the DNC, she spoke once more. And she did “go high” – right for the jugular. Amid a fiery address that condemned Trump outright for his con jobs and “ugly, misogynistic, racist lies,” she also took a pointed dig at his debate-stage gaffe implying that lower-paying jobs are solely for Black people (while falsely arguing that immigrants are stealing those jobs away, in what I like to refer to as an onion of racism, due to its numerous layers of offense).
“Who’s gonna tell him,” Obama quipped, “that the job he’s currently seeking might just be one of those ‘Black jobs?’”
Good. ◼️
