Moments after a single shot rang out at Utah Valley University, taking the life of Charlie Kirk, dozens of shots pierced the air at Evergreen High School, critically injuring two kids and forever altering the lives of a thousand students, faculty, staff, and their families.

Same time zone. Same weapon used. Different ages and ideologies (from what we know) of the perpetrators.

The next day, September 11, we mourned the anniversary of 9-11, when 2,976 people were killed by al Qaeda terrorists.

Today, we remember the September 15, 1963 bombing of the 16th Street Baptist Church which took the lives of four young girls.

Different years, different weapons, different ages, different ideologies.

Rwanda. Cambodia. The Holocaust. The Armenian Genocide. October 7, 2023. Most of the days since October 7, 2023. The Rohingya genocide.

Slavery. Lynchings. Segregation.

Sandy Hook and Virginia Tech, Christchurch and Columbine and…the list goes on.

All different, but all have one unifying trait: dehumanization. That subtle, powerful, coercive and corrosive tendency to reduce a person or a group from human to…something else, something lesser, something unworthy of, well, humanity.

It’s not a new tool, it’s been used for centuries, written in scriptures and holy books, brought forth to win battles and kill millions, invade nations and enslave people, kill pundits and shoot up schools. It’s not new, but it is perhaps granted new powers and prowess as so many of us - myself included - sit behind digital walls, reading about our group and the other group from afar, insulated from their humanness, able to define them not simply as human, but as some subtype thereof, maybe a bit less because of their difference in viewpoint.

Fascist. Trans. Commie. CIS.

Left-wing lunatic. Right-wing nutjob.

Snowflake. Trumper. Redneck. Libtard. And a million more.

It’s no secret that labeling the “other” group as something lesser has been the secret weapon of so many horrors. Al Qaeda called Americans infidels. Nazis dubbed Jews vermin. Hutus insisted Tutsis were cockroaches, Khmer Rouge victims were worms, American slaveholders had chattel - property - not people, in chains.

But, I think we all - left, right, and center - find it too easy to slip into the seductive of (perhaps) less-violent dehumanization in our every day discourse. All Republicans are fascists or bigots or compassionless ignoramuses, all Democrats are lunatics or pussies or even the enemy. Just today, I was labeled “vile and repugnant” for the nominally-liberal views I hold.

And, we do it to ourselves with over-identification, making the R or D a defining feature rather than a simple descriptor of policy preference. We tend to hyper-identify - especially on the left - separating ourselves through qualifiers when the initial intent was often to humanize. We end up allowing these descriptors - black, white, left, right, gay, straight - to supersede and overtake the most fundamental one of all: human. And, I believe, by doing so we inadvertently elevate our descriptor above the others, inevitably leading to a lessering of, dehumanizing of, the other - whatever that may be.

“But I can do it,” you might tell yourself (as I have done), “I’m just angry. But I’m not going to act, not going to hurt someone, kill someone.”

But someone else might. Someone else will. Someone else already did.

And I can’t help but believe in my core - know in my core - that the Evergreen High School shooter and Kirk’s assassin were emboldened, egged on, enabled by the commonality of dehumanizing rhetoric in our society - from the left and the right and the center. We name and vilify the other enough, sweep a whole group into a bin where but a rotten few belong, normalize violent rhetoric and turn a blind eye to fundamental humanity - and we end up with death, war, mass killings, genocide.

To be honest, there’s a lot of things I’m - to be blunt - pissed off about right now. A lot of things that make me angry and scared, make me cry and worry for my kids and friends and the future of our country. There’s a part of me that wants, desires, to lash out, to verbally crucify the other.

And I’m sure a lot of you feel that way, too.

And then I talk to people. Neighbors and friends and family with whom I don’t see eye to eye, with whom I may vehemently disagree, who are in that other category, lesser than, dangerously close to dehumanized - not by me, but by my potential rhetoric, by a system that preys upon and amplifies our human tendency to throw others out of the club - and empower someone else to take it a step further.

And then I remind myself of the fundamental truth: we are human. We can have different beliefs. We can see the road from A to B totally differently. We can worship different gods, see different worldviews, have different politics, speak different languages, etc., but we must, at the end of the day, see one another as we are: human. People who have vastly more in common than in difference, and by othering one another we will go nowhere but down.

So, talk to your neighbor, friend, uncle, the dude at the store. Connect on your shared humanness rather than perceived otherness. Let's all work to break down dehumanization in our speech, our society, and rehumanize all of us. We are all in this together.

Here’s what I believe:
1. If you are offended or hurt when you hear Hillary Clinton or Maxine Waters called bitch, whore or the c-word, you should be equally offended and hurt when you hear those same words used to describe Ivanka Trump, Kellyanne Conway or Theresa May.

2. If you felt belittled when Hillary Clinton called Trump supporters “a basket of deplorables” then you should have felt equally concerned when Eric Trump said “Democrats aren’t even human.”

3. When the president of the United States calls women dogs or talks about grabbing pussy, we should get chills down our spine and resistance flowing through our veins. When people call the president of the United States a pig, we should reject that language regardless of our politics and demand discourse that doesn’t make people subhuman.

4. When we hear people referred to as animals or aliens, we should immediately wonder “is this an attempt to reduce someone’s humanity so we can get away with hurting them or denying them basic human rights?”

5. If you’re offended by a meme of Trump Photo-shopped to look like Hitler, then you shouldn’t have Obama Photo-shopped to look like the Joker on your Facebook feed.

There is a line. It’s etched from dignity. And raging fearful people from the right and left are crossing it in unprecedented rates every single day. We must never tolerate dehumanization – the primary instrument of violence that has been used in every genocide recorded through history. When we engage in dehumanizing rhetoric or promote dehumanizing images, we diminish our humanity in the process…

Challenging ourselves to live by higher standards requires constant diligence and awareness.
- Brené Brown, Braving the Wilderness