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*Editor’s Note: Elephant Journal articles represent the personal views of the authors, and can not possibly reflect Elephant Journal as a whole. Disagree with an Op-Ed or opinion? We’re happy to share your experience here.
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There is a particular kind of disorientation that settles over me when cruelty is explained away calmly. When an innocent man is killed in public and people rush to justify it. When children are harmed and adults intellectualize it. When systems built to protect instead destroy, and the response is a shrug, a loophole, a talking point, or a distraction.
The violence itself is horrifying, and what comes after can be just as destabilizing. The normalization, minimization, and insistence that we are overreacting. That this is “just how things are.” That empathy is naive and outrage is unhinged.
This is how gaslighting works at a societal level: it asks us to doubt our own humanity.
I keep thinking about how dangerous it is when people confuse legality with morality. When they hide behind policy or party or procedure to avoid naming what is right in front of them. A human being dead in the street. Children raped by adults.
These are not abstract debates. They are innocent lives. Families and futures that do not get to continue.
There is something profoundly broken when the response to suffering is excuses instead of accountability.
I am not interested in investing energy arguing politics with people if they cannot at least name harm when they see it. I am interested in truth, dignity, and living in a society where we do not need to preface our grief and compassion with disclaimers.
We are being asked, over and over, to accept less humanity in the name of order. We are expected to tolerate violence if it comes from the right authority and look away if the victim is inconvenient. We are even threatened at times to silence our instincts in favor of compliance.
Our bodies and nervous systems know when something is wrong: it registers instinctively long before our minds catch up. If you feel sick watching current events unfold, that is your healthy conscience.
There is a lie circulating right now that caring deeply makes you irrational, naming cruelty makes you divisive, and calling out harm makes you extreme. This lie benefits those in power, not us, the people.
There is nothing radical about saying an innocent person should not be killed without accountability. There is nothing controversial about saying children deserve protection and pedophiles should be imprisoned. There is nothing unreasonable about refusing to normalize brutality.
What is extreme is the ease with which some people explain these harms away.
Gaslighting thrives on confusion. It wants you to doubt what you saw, soften your language, and qualify your outrage. It wants to break you down by arguing details instead of calmly and firmly standing in truth.
Clarity is quiet. It does not need to shout or persuade. It simply names what is real: This is violence. This is harm. This is wrong.
You are allowed to say that and stop talking. You get to disengage from people who require you to abandon your humanity in order to keep the peace. You are allowed to choose relationships, communities, and conversations that do not ask you to betray your own perception.
This is why chosen family is vital right now—not just emotionally, but ethically. We need people who see what we see and are willing and able to tell the truth even when it is uncomfortable. People who do not minimize suffering to protect their worldview. People who understand that compassion is not weakness and accountability is not cruelty.
Chosen family is about shared reality, not agreement on everything. This family dynamic grounds itself in the refusal to distort what is happening in order to stay comfortable.
I am no longer interested in explaining why harm is harmful or in debating the humanity of other people. I am no longer willing to remain in conversations that ask me to flatten my values so others do not feel challenged. This is about sanity and alignment, rather than right versus wrong.
It’s not about cutting people out who disagree with us or storming away when challenged. It’s about declining to give up our values or temper our opinions to keep the peace.
There is a quiet strength in saying, “I trust my perception. I know what I am witnessing. I do not need consensus to remain human.”
If that makes us “difficult,” so be it.
History does not look kindly on those who stayed neutral in the face of cruelty. It does not celebrate those who were polite while others were harmed. It remembers those who spoke plainly, even when it cost them comfort or “close” relationships.
We are living in a moment that is asking us who we are when the stakes are real.
Not hypothetically, but with our voices and choices.
This is not about screaming or performing outrage while wasting precious energy trying to convince anyone who is committed to misunderstanding you.
This is about refusing to lie to yourself.
Truth does not require permission. Choosing to retain our humanity is not a choice that needs defending. And silence, in moments like this, is not neutrality but rather alignment with whatever is loudest. Choosing dignity while calling out injustice and stepping away from distortion is the path many of us are choosing right now.
This is how change begins…and sticks.
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