Hi. Former Republican here. It may have been ten years ago, but I remember when I had these attitudes.

What changed my mind was finding out that the hateful rhetoric I had been spouting directly applied to me the day I found out I was gay.

To give you a walk through the very rapid shift in my psyche that happened, I went from being the quintessential trad-Christian material that Instagram chuds drool over to… well, me.

I want you to understand one thing, if nothing else; the person I am, the one talking to you right now, was always there. Finding who I was after having it–in some ways literally–beat out of me was a special kind of hell. In fact, from deconversion to decolonization to transitioning, it nearly drove me to kill myself. Because I finally found out how much the world actually hurt when I finally saw the scope of the system I had helped reinforce with the ignorance I had been indoctrinated into. I wouldn’t wish it on my worst enemy. I would, however, wish it on my best friend.

The other person here was right. Dehumanizing them only drives hatred deeper down into ourselves.

Eventually, these assholes will fade away. Some of them might do some soul-searching and make some personal discoveries, like I did. A majority will probably just wrap up their bigotry and hide it on a shelf, and only take it down and pass it around when they’re around other bigoted ghouls. But never forget, the exact same weaknesses in their brain that led to their awful actions exists in your brain too. We like to think we’re immune to that shit. The fear. The anger. The hatred. That because we hate the haters, we’re better than them. That somehow it makes us morally superior, that we want to commit their own atrocities against them as a kind of poetic justice.

All conflict ends, eventually. It ebbs and it flows, the tide goes in, the tide goes out. Tectonic plates press, and then release the tension after the earthquake. The charge builds up in the cloud until the lightning bolt comes down. The human heart is just as incapable of sustaining so much violence over such a long period of time.

I’m not telling you that you’re wrong to be furious. To be vengeful. To be spiteful. After all, these are the kinds of atrocities that fill history books. They’re the kinds of atrocities that fuel divides that span centuries or more, and spawn more conflict after the water settles.

Just remember. Eventually, you will have to put the sword down. Eventually, whether you think you can or can’t, the violence and the fuel that drives it will disappear. The damage, however, will outlive you. And it will outlive me. And it keeps me up at night, knowing that while I never took part in it, I condoned it and promoted it, even though I’d been conditioned to embrace it since I was born. I was lucky to break out.

Speaking from experience here. They are wrong. They have no idea they’re wrong, because they’re feeling the exact same–and I do mean the exact same–emotion you’re feeling right now, using nearly the exact same moral justification. It’s one of the most bitter glitches in our human psyche. By all means, punch Nazis. But once they decide not to be a Nazi anymore, and actually turn over a new leaf, and disown their past, maybe consider treating them kindly again once they rekindle their humanity.