Love Them, Too: the Hitler Conundrum

Last weekend at a festival we had the chance to reconnect with some fans in Florida that we saw back in January-- a relatively quick turnaround for this traveling duo. Outside of our hometown region of New England, most places are just a once-a-year treat. By the time we come around again, we typically have a new record to sing (fact: we've put out an EP or LP every single year we've been a band for the last 13 years, excepting one), some weird new merch to try and normalize (spatula? nose flute? anyone?), and the same outfits we've been wearing for 10 years (or more). It's pretty clockwork. This year, we're touring Hymns For My Atheist Sister & Her Friends to Sing Along To-- a record about loving your neighbor, appreciating what you have, and doing your very best to the world and people around you (which is everyone).

So when we ran into Karen for the second time, three months later in St. Augustine, everything was still the same-- same camper, same dogs, obviously same outfits, and even the same new record. This time, everything else had changed.

"When I saw you back in January and you sang 'Love Them, Too,' I really felt it. But this time... not so much." Wait, wait, wait, we thought-- were we not singing it with the same intensity? Were we not singing it with even more fervency, more gut, more urgency than in January? And then Karen said, "I don't want to love the people who are taking my neighbor's rights away."

Oof. Yeah. Karen, we feel that.

And frankly, we had a different vision for this song, too. When we wrote it in July 2024, we thought the election was going to end up differently. We thought we'd be preaching to the choir and encouraging the fringes. Our local Community of Kind Souls who helped us make the music video for it were ready to write Bernie and have him give us an in to play the Inauguration. "We Are the World"-- watch out!

But that's not what happened. Not only did our candidate not win, but our country is in economic turmoil over impending tariffs, our friends are having their rights stripped, and Karen's neighbors and our neighbors and your neighbors too are being kidnapped in broad daylight and disappeared.

Love them, too?

There is always the outlier in these scenarios. For years, it's been-- "love everyone, unconditionally." And then someone with a smug look on their face says, "Even Hitler?" And the room either tries to break it down or dismiss it as an improbability or even just rolls their eyes. But now... well, the similarities are getting eerily close, and history seems to be rewriting itself even as we excuse it. The Hitler Conundrum is not an outlier. We have actual, branded Neo-Nazis in the streets of downtown Nashville. We have Proud Boys getting prouder. People are getting tased at Town Hall meetings for expressing dissent. People are getting fired for the color of their skin.

Love them, too??

Dammit, Karen. Maybe you're right. Maybe we can't.

But then, what if we're looking at this wrong? I'm not talking about a loophole. Maybe just an example to gain some perspective. We know and love a lot of people who identify as Christian-- some of them our best friends. But, neither of us in The Rough & Tumble identify as Christian, anymore, but we do often reference the text that we were raised on, especially as we both grappled with it extensively from birth til now. Since releasing this record of spiritual-and-humanist hymns, we've been invited to more churches, have quoted more of the Bible, have thought and expressed the words of Jesus more than we ever thought we would when leaving the church (or in some cases, getting kicked out of the church). The example of Jesus is used because it is the religion we knew, and also because when it comes down to it, Jesus was a fantastic example in so many ways. And culturally, the USA is leaning into the ideology (however misused) than ever before, demanding the 10 Commandments in schools and courthouses, etc. So, this is the source material in the effort of speaking a now-common cultural language.

If we follow Jesus through the accounts we are given, we see him up against people who vary from disagreeing with him-- like the dude who was like "Hey, Jesus! How do I get into Heaven!" and Jesus was all like, "Sell everything you own and give it to the poor!" and the guy was like, "Nah," and walked away. That's the common response we have when we claim to want a "Christian Nation" (something our forefathers did NOT want, as a refresher) but walk away at the mention of Universal Healthcare or school lunch programs. Then there's the Pharisees-- these guys are hilariously villainous, real conniving, like watching Jesus really closely and when he does something cool like heal a man with a withered hand or a woman who is unable to walk on the Sabbath, they call out a big "Boo-yeah! Caught you not resting on the Sabbath!" to which I imagine Jesus looks at them kind of deadpan and replies, "Wait, isn't the Sabbath for doing good? And rest? And healing? Is this that?" And then the Pharisees inevitably feel silly and everyone boos them off stage. Think, maybe, like a group of people demanding that prayer remain in school, but also get really mad when someone-- say, a Muslim or a Wiccan-- wants to also pray during this appointed time. Or when a group of people wants to welcome in immigrants, but only if they're white and rich like them. Eek. That's embarrassing.

It's a matter of who's in and who's out, and who is in power gets to decide it. Right now, the people in power are deciding that it is my friends, my fans, my neighbors who are out. And you know-- they're your friends, fans, and neighbors, too. We can ship people who are perceived to be "dangerous gang members" without proof or due process to a concentration camp because they aren't like us. But then, who else isn't like us? Where does that line end? Because there's some serious talk from the top of weeding out people who, by every stretch of the imagination, are exactly like us.

Love them, too???

There's one last thing about Jesus, then I'll remove myself from this pulpit. But it's the one about the money changers in the temple. This is a really fun one because we finally see Jesus lose his shit. He walks into a holy place-- a place to worship, a place he has been accused of defiling by helping people-- and sees that there are a bunch of merchants set up. Nope, no, nuh-uh. Jesus goes nuts and starts flipping the father-lucking tables, ranting and raving about the craziness of setting up an Etsy shop in a house of worship. People scatter, take their wares and get the hizzle out of there because this guy was not messing around.

But-- wait. Was Jesus not loving these people?

Here's where is gets pretty particular. Jesus is mad as hell. And what did he do? Did he come at these people with a knife? Did he threaten them with AR-15s? Did he say he hopes they and their families are killed in their sleep? Did he rally his disciples and start a parade down the street, breaking windows of innocent peoples' homes and telling them to get out of HIS HOUSE? Yeah, no. He turned the system that was in place that enabled these people to place money-over-people/god. He flipped their tables, not their asses. He didn't fight them, he fought the problem. Maybe these people did feel afraid, but I get the sense that in this act, they knew what they were doing, and they knew that this guy with his son-of-god vibes wasn't going to @ them-- he was just telling them to do better.

Anger is a clarifying emotion. It gives us direction. It shows us the next thing to do. It can sometimes illuminate the right path. Sometimes that right path is flipping tables. But when anger turns to hate, that's a different animal. That's when we start wishing ill on others. That's when we dehumanize them. And when we dehumanize someone, we're not really hurting them-- we're hurting ourselves. Loving our neighbor in the context of the Hitler Conundrum doesn't give us liberation to wish their death. Violence begets violence. We can be absolutely furious-- we can look at our Senator who is decidedly not representing us or our people and scream at the TV and write angry notes and look for the tables to flip. But we can also still abstain from lighting their house on fire with the possibility of them and their family inside. Because love sometimes looks like guarding the bathroom door so our trans friend can use the right restroom for them. Sometimes it looks like volunteering at the local food bank. Sometimes, in the face of absolute wrong, it can look like taking to the streets. Love can be all of those things, and it will keep us and our communities in tact, even as the money changers try and take over the temple to make a profit on our backs. We can keep our dignity. We can keep body-and-soul together. And we can love our neighbors even as we flip the damn tables.

Love them, too. No, not tell them what they're doing is okay. Not standing aside and letting them bully us out of rights. Love demands we do better. By loving them, we demand it of ourselves, and of them, too.

Love them, too.