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“The critical moment is on us. Now is the time to deal with it.”: We Cannot be Moderate
As I was scrolling through social media a couple of weeks ago, a meme popped up that really caught my attention, and I have been thinking about it ever since. The meme shows Devarjaye “D.J.” Daniel, a 13-year-old from Texas who received a brain cancer diagnosis in 2018. Doctors gave him five months to live, and he has lived for seven years since that diagnosis. D.J. attended Trump’s Joint Address to Congress as the president’s guest, and Trump acknowledged D.J. during his speech, pointing out that D.J. always wanted to enter law enforcement and instructing Secret Service director Sean Curran to make D.J. an agent of the United States Secret Service. Curran then gives D.J. his Secret Service Agent credentials.
The meme shows D.J., at the address, holding out the credential to the crowd. The text, framing his image, reads, “When you can’t stand and cheer for a courageous boy who’s fought cancer for 6 years, you have lost your soul.” What stood out to me about this meme was the last phrase claiming if someone did not stand and clap at this moment then that person had lost whatever sense of decency they may have had and ultimately lost their soul, damning them for all eternity. I try to refrain, for the most part, from posting to things like this because I know how quickly the discussion devolves into vitriol, but I did respond to this one. I responded with the following:
While I did not see that moment (flipped over to Daredevil), I would push back on this assertion because, as with any speech, it is optics. The issue is not that DJ has survived cancer and that he wants to be a law enforcement officer. The issue comes down to having DJ there while simultaneously slashing cancer research funding from NIH and other places. A judge has, yesterday, blocked these cuts, but if you look there are other countries, like France, offering posts for research such as this that has been cut or attempted to be cut.
It is great that he survived. It is great that he is alive. No one, on either side, argues that because it is inhumane to do so. But, the assertion that individuals have “lost their soul” because they did not stand at one moment is disingenuous. They did not stand for anything, out of protest as others heckled them throughout.
