This column originally appeared in Kyle Whitmire’s newsletter, Alabamafication. Sign up here to get it in your inbox for free.

I kinda love Jehovah’s Witnesses but I still keep my distance.

And that’s as close as I’m going to get to a joke, because regardless of what I or anyone thinks or says about those folks, at least they’re looking out for our souls.

The same for those Mormon kids on the bikes.

A lesson I’m trying to center in my life is to question ideas but not judge people’s intentions too harshly, at least when it comes to regular folks. If someone on a downtown street corner wants to keep me, a stranger, from burning forever in hell, that’s more than I’ll get from most. Certainly, from anyone in politics. There’s no shortage of political people inviting me to go there at the soonest opportunity.

Proselytizing has become a bad word. Evangelizing now is code language for mixing politics and religion.

And persuasion?

At some point, we seem to have given up.

The fact that there are t-shirts sold at political rallies that say “F–k your feelings!” is testament by itself that we’re tired of testifying. But even some who would never dream of donning one have slipped into some not dissimilar thinking.

Last month, New York Times columnist Ezra Klein interviewed Rep. Sarah McBride about how the trans rights movement has gone into the ditch. McBride is the first and only openly trans lawmaker in Congress, and the two of them bemoaned a common line of thought from the last decade or so. Klein said:

“It reminds me of a line that I hear less now, but I used to see it a lot, which is: It’s not my job to educate you.

“I always thought about that line because on one level, I understood it. It’s probably not your job to educate anyone.

“But if you’re in politics, if what you’re trying to do is political change, I always found that line to be almost antipolitical.

“That if what you want to do is change a law, change a society, change a heart, and you’re the one who wants to do it — well then, whose job is it? And who are you expecting to do it?”

While McBride was sensitive to people who are tired of giving their testimony, she too recognized the importance of trying to change hearts and minds:

“One of the problems we’ve had is that we’ve gone from: It’s not my job as an individual person who’s just trying to make it through the day to educate everyone — to: No one from that community should educate, and frankly, we should just stop having this conversation because the fact that we are having this conversation at all is hurtful and oppressive.

“Maybe it is hurtful, but you can’t foster social change if you don’t have a conversation.”

It’s an obvious idea that many have given up on: If you want to change the world, first you’ll have to change some minds. It’s exhausting work (and admittedly a lot easier for a smart-aleck Southern white boy to say). But for me, it is still a matter of faith: Persuasion matters.

The alternatives are acceptance and force, and both are unacceptable.

You can’t do it by court order, nor by calling in the National Guard. Force, in all its forms, is a shortcut. It’s easy but self-defeating.

Persuasion is hard but lasting. At its best, it’s everlasting.

And that involves talking to people rather than keeping our distance.

Excuse me. I think I hear a knock at my door.

First: Tell me how I did.

Then: Subscribe to ‘Alabamafication.’ It’s free.

THIS WILL BE ON THE TEST

🛑 Not everybody gets a second chance. After Leigh Gwathney joined the Alabama Board of Pardons and Paroles, the state’s parole rate dropped so low that it once denied release to a dead man. Really. Rather than re-upping Gwathney for another term, this week, Gov. Kay Ivey left her … ahem … denied.

Gov. Kay Ivey replaces Alabama’s controversial parole board chair

[AL.com]

😮 Roy Wood Jr has the Blues. Country music is crowded with patriotic anthems, but why not R&B? Now that the July 4 fireworks are litter in the neighbor’s yard, Birmingham’s comedian laureate has a message Americans need to hear.

[Roy Wood Jr/X]

🫠 Found it! On one hand: Another national media outlet has discovered Unclaimed Baggage, the Scottsboro, Ala., outlet where lost luggage goes to be pilfered by savvy shoppers who know how to get to Scottsboro, Ala. On the other hand: Another national media outlet has discovered Unclaimed Baggage!

Your lost suitcase is probably in Alabama

[New York Magazine]

Kyle Whitmire is the Washington watchdog columnist for AL.com and winner of the 2023 Pulitzer Prize. ,