It is dehumanizing to pedestal people in this way, for a number of reasons. It erases the wholeness of their being, papering over the truth of their life, work, and beliefs with fantasy and adulation. It also sets people up to be dismissed or widely condemned when they are inevitably wrong about something, because those moments will always come, for all of us. No one’s politics are infallible, and we all have terrible days where we say or do the wrong thing, even if we believe the right things. We all cause harm and experience harm, and doing righteous work in one arena does not purify our
...more
