Compassion Isn’t Weakness

I know my posts won’t resonate with everyone, and that’s okay. I don’t share them to win arguments — I share them because I care. What I write is shaped by what I’ve read, studied, and sought to understand, but the reason behind it is that people matter. Especially those most at risk. My feelings come in only when it’s about our shared humanity — and I believe that’s always worth speaking up for.

There was a time when more of us could call out what was broken—not to prove a point, not to win an argument, but because we knew something wasn’t right.

We saw kids shuffled through the foster system like they were a burden.

We watched families fall apart under the weight of addiction, poverty, and systems built to fail them.

We saw prisons used like dumping grounds for pain.

And we didn’t need the same politics, religion, or background to recognize it.

We just needed a shred of shared humanity.

A belief that compassion wasn’t weakness—it was the only thing holding the whole damn thing together.

We thought maybe if we gave the next generation more than what we had, things could shift. But something changed.

According to the Fourth Turning theory, we are deep in “winter” now. The Crisis Era—and we have a little less than a decade left of this hell. A period when institutions collapse, trust erodes, and chaos replaces cohesion. It’s not just a political moment—it’s a historical cycle playing out in real time. And like every Fourth Turning before this one, we’re being asked to choose:

Do we let fear and power consolidate into tyranny?

Or do we build something better—through sacrifice, courage, and moral clarity?

Some of the same people I used to stand beside have gone in a different direction. Not out of hate, but out of fear. Out of exhaustion. Out of a desperate need for certainty in a world that keeps falling apart.

And that fear got weaponized.

It showed up in headlines turning people into threats.

In churches twisting scripture into exclusion.

In politicians calling empathy dangerous—and control salvation.

We’ve got kids sleeping on concrete floors while adults argue over who’s to blame. We criminalize poverty. We defend cages. We treat pain like a threat and softness like a sin.

I don’t think it started with cruelty.

I think it started with heartbreak—

with too many people feeling powerless, too many disappointments, too many years of holding it all together while the system cracked underneath them.

I understand it. I also can’t excuse it.

Because when fear starts deciding who deserves dignity…

When we trade care for control…

When we stop seeing people as people…

We lose something we don’t get back easily.

We lose each other.

We lose ourselves.

This isn’t about superiority.

It’s not about “my side vs. yours.”

It’s not about feelings.

It’s about facts.

It’s about reality.

And the reality is:

We were sold a lie.

Trump campaigned on “America First,” on protecting the working class, restoring law and order, and upholding Christian values.

He said he’d drain the swamp—but filled it with loyalists and billionaires.

He said he cared about families—but separated thousands of them at the border, many of whom were never reunited.

He said he’d bring back jobs—but handed tax cuts to corporations and watched wages stagnate.

He claimed to be pro-life—but defunded healthcare, ignored gun violence, and oversaw the deaths of hundreds of thousands during a mismanaged pandemic.

He said he valued faith—but used it like a shield while spreading cruelty and vengeance.

And that was just his first term.

It’s performative. It’s dangerous. It’s projection in its purest form.

Everything he has accused others of—weaponizing the government, eroding democracy, silencing dissent, even victimizing children—he is doing and has done in plain sight.

And this isn’t just about one man. It never was.

The Fourth Turning theory teaches us that in every Crisis era, authoritarianism reemerges in familiar costumes: nationalism, religion, “law and order.” These people in power are two sides of the same corrupt coin.

They sell fear and call it patriotism.

They protect wealth and call it freedom.

They punch down and call it strength.

Meanwhile, the rest of us are left choking on the cost of it all. And if pointing that out makes people uncomfortable, so be it. Because this should be uncomfortable.

I’m not here to argue. Or to convince anyone who’s already decided what “side” they’re on. But I’m also not going to stay quiet while cruelty gets normalized. Because I still believe what I always have:

That people are more than their worst moments.

That addiction isn’t a character flaw.

That poverty isn’t a crime.

That crossing a border to protect your kid doesn’t make you a threat.

That prisons don’t heal—they just hide the hurt.

That love without action isn’t love at all.

That kids deserve joy—not just survival.

Every time we choose punishment over possibility, Every time we excuse cruelty as “just how the world works,” Every time we forget that we belong to each other—we hand over something sacred.

If you’ve felt that loss— If the world feels sharper than it used to— If you’ve felt yourself hardening just to survive— It’s not too late to come back.

Not to the past.

Not to perfection.

Certainly not to me.

But to the part of you that still believes in people first.

The part that aches when you see injustice.

The part that’s still holding onto the hope that something better is possible.

Because this isn’t about sides. It’s about the soul of a generation.

And in every Fourth Turning, the people who show up with courage and compassion—despite the chaos—are the ones who shape what comes next.

Compassion isn’t weakness. It’s not radical. It’s not naïve. It’s the whole damn point.