Patricia A. Nugent: The Opposite of Love

“You are abnormally nervy,” he texted. Since it didn’t exactly read like a compliment, his words caused me to reflect on how my activism may be perceived.

In my red county (you can thank us for Elise Stefanik), I am very vocal and visible in opposing this regime. I’m a regular at rallies and conduct sessions on resisting tyranny. I openly encourage financial contributions to organizations filing lawsuits to stop the lawlessness. I debate strangers online, fully realizing bigotry can’t be reasoned away. Friends backchannel information to me that they’re too afraid to post themselves on social media. (I’ll hold your coat; you fight.)

I’ve severed ties with certain friends and relatives, unable to pretend our values are still aligned, and have made new friends based solely on our shared opposition to fascism. And, of course, I publish essays like this, thanks to editors committed to free speech. 

I’m intentionally nervy because I want to embolden others to speak up, to find the courage to be unpopular among certain cohorts. To not care about offending people they care about. To not bite their tongues at family gatherings while immigrant families are being torn apart and children go hungry. 

It’s not necessarily rabid Trump supporters who frustrate me the most. Yes, deplorables comes to mind, and I consider them willfully ignorant of facts, due to Orwellian doublespeak. But they are paying (some) attention, have chosen a side, and are acting in accord with their (misguided) beliefs. 

What I struggle with most is apathy, manifested by those who remain silent although uncomfortable with what’s happening, and by those who seem blissfully unaware that something IS happening. Those who message me to “Be careful” when I embark on an act of resistance, but do not stand beside me. 

I’m reminded of Melania’s jacket when visiting a migrant children’s detention center in 2017: I really don’t care, do you? was scrawled across the back. I have to believe that those who are silent during this crucial race to save democracy really do not care. Worse yet, their silence makes them complicit. And complicity is killing our country. 

I can’t shut up because I now view everything through the threat of totalitarianism. Publicly opposing this administration is considered nervy, and I’m mindful of possible retaliation. Some teachers who criticized the beatification of Charlie Kirk soon reaped the consequences. But…if every teacher in those schools had raised their voices to denounce racist and misogynistic hate speech, resistance would be normalized. It takes a critical mass.  

I recently heard from a longtime friend – a Jewish progressive with a Ph.D. from Johns Hopkins whose partner is an immigrant working in health care. When I reported on my resistance activities, he responded, “Good for you. I’m not getting involved because this is part of the natural cycle of world events. It’ll work itself out.” He admitted that this enrages his son who reminds him that his parents escaped the German Holocaust.

I don’t know how to reconcile indifference. A young resister reminded me that life went on for most people in Nazi Germany as Jews were being slaughtered. People still went to the theater and concerts. They still took vacations and celebrated holidays. It was easy to ignore what was happening to others. It’s easy to ignore it here, too. We still watch football and trick-or-treat. 

Auschwitz survivor and Nobel laureate Elie Wiesel wrote in 1986, “The opposite of love is not hate; it’s indifference.” Hate at least demonstrates an emotional capacity, while indifference is the absence of any emotion or concern. Indifferent people fail to act in the face of suffering or injustice. They don’t care. 

The mindsets of indifference are outlined by historian Timothy Snyder in his book On Tyranny. The “Politics of Inevitability” allows subscribers to glide through crises as “contented sleepwalkers’ because they believe progress is guaranteed, and the future will inevitably get better so there’s no need to intervene. What we might do doesn’t matter because we’re already on a path. Such complacency dulls a sense of responsibility because individual actions are superfluous to the outcome.

Then there are those who believe there’s nothing we can do about our current descent into fascism. This “Politics of Eternity” mindset believes things will always be as bad or worse as they are. It’s futile; there is no future, no matter what. Policy or party changes don’t matter, so what’s the use? Snyder describes them as “angry sleepwalkers,” largely comprised of Gens X, Y, and Z who feel betrayed by career politicians. 

According to the author, both these political mindsets eventually crack, leaving subscribers feeling lost and vulnerable. He posits that reading and understanding history is the antidote to indifference. (He is an historian, after all.) Because the good and bad news is that our nation has teetered on fascism before.

I’ve witnessed the benefits of an historical perspective by participating in my local League of Women Voters series studying past resistance movements. Suffrage, Red Scare, Civil Rights, and Pride movements offer effective resistance strategies against oppressive government. I’ve seen 100 people arrive at a session looking downtrodden and exhausted, and leave 90 minutes later with a renewed commitment to fight back because it’s worked before. 

There’s a reason this regime is removing historical documents from the archives: Information is power. 

If the opposite of love is indifference, the opposite of indifference is action. As Wiesel said, “We must always take a side.” I invite you to become “abnormally nervy.”

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Copyright 2025 Patricia Nugent

Patricia A. Nugent is the author of the memoirs They Live On: Saying Goodbye to Mom and Dad, and Healing with Dolly Lama: Finding God in Dog, as well as editor of Before They Were Our Mothers: Voices of Women Born Before Rosie Started Riveting.