The Conversation They Don’t Want

They told us when we were kids that everybody puts their pants on one leg at a time. It was supposed to be the great equalizer–a tidy parental sermon wrapped in cotton and elastic–nobody’s better than you, nobody’s worse, and for heaven’s sake, don’t act like a peacock in a tailor shop.

Trouble is, pants don’t stop bullets. Manners don’t mend skulls.

And sometimes that tidy little lesson gets dragged out into a field it wasn’t supposed to walk. I learned that again the hard way.

I posted a simple, cold truth: “No, we don’t need to ‘have a conversation.’ You killed the one guy willing to do that.”

One person said there are others having conversations in the open. But, they did not bring the receipts.

That’s because no one else has been doing this. No one.

I expected fireworks, maybe a few hot takes, the usual online thunderstorm. Instead, people scrolled away as the shooter had already taken the last bus out of town–potshots and all, then vanishing profiles.

One friend sent, “Gonna remove myself from your posts, Tom. You’re reacting exactly the way the shooter hoped.”

He tried to soften it with balance and charity. And while I appreciate his thought, no thank you.

I didn’t appreciate the premise that I should clap for my own erasure because somebody wanted the room quiet. I told this acquaintance to do whatever he wanted.

I added, “I didn’t know you knew the shooter’s intent.”

He unfriended me.

Conversation used to be a bridge. I was the guy who’d sit until the janitor switched off the lights — debating, listening, losing arguments with a grin.

But bridges are now choke points. When disagreement starts to come with a price tag of teeth, or worse, the bridge feels less like a crossing and more like a trap.

I’ve had my camera smashed while documenting a mostly peaceful Black Lives/Antifa protest burning down city hall; attacked while leaving work simply for wearing a red Marine Corps hat that someone decided meant MAGA; and viciously punched while sitting in my truck at a stop light by a man angry at my skin color.

These aren’t trophies, they’re receipts. As the ledger adds up, it explains why I stopped buying “both sides” as an automatic good.

That doesn’t mean I cheer for violence. If anything, I hate it harder.

Violence is the lazy answer of people who can’t be bothered with words. I want debates settled by wit, not wounds. But sympathy has a shelf life, as does courage.

You can only hand someone the benefit of the doubt until the doubt starts bleeding you. So no, I don’t owe polite conversation to people who’d rather see me dead than convinced.

Civility isn’t a one-way street where you hand over your ribs to prove a point. It’s a mutual lane — blinkers, signals, agreed-upon rules. When the other driver aims for you and not the median, you stop.

I know some will call this cowardice, claiming that stepping back is letting evil win. But sometimes stepping back keeps you from stepping on a landmine.

It’s practical, it’s preservation. You heal, you learn, you build barricades that aren’t of bodies.

If conversation is still a bridge, then fine, I’ll keep the approach clear. But I’m not going to stand tethered to a leash of performative “both-siderism” while my head gets handed to me as an exhibit.

I want a country where disagreement doesn’t cost a life, let alone a molar. And I will not trade my life for the optics of balance.

If you want to talk, great. Show me you can listen without reaching for a metaphorical or literal weapon.

Show me you’ll stand against someone celebrating death, not just when it’s convenient for “your side.” Until then, spare me the lectures about “giving the shooter what he wanted.”

I’m giving myself something better–a chance to live long enough to build a society where kids learn that pants are for getting dressed in–not for hiding behind.

You can unfriend me, block me, share this, or burn it like yesterday’s paper, but I won’t beg for your permission to be cautious. I’ll keep my life, and when the time comes, I’ll sit down and have a conversation with the kind of people who remember that listening is the first act of courage.

But if violence comes my way again, I will not hesitate to act, as that time for conversation has passed me by, four knuckles and a beating ago.