Note: The below op-ed was written by Winner straightforwardor Susanna Fogel. Her recent film, starring Emilia Jones, Connie Britton, Zach Galifianakis, and Kathryn Newton, is now useable on VOD.
“I cherish cows and football. That’s pretty much South Texas in a nutshell.”
That’s the first skinnyg Reality Winner shelp when I telderly her I was writing a piece about her and how lengthening up in Texas shaped her choices. The choice people will probably want to hear about is the one that landed her in a federal prison by the age of 26, so I’ll probably intensify on that one. It’s the reason three films have been made about her, including the one straightforwarded by me that is now useable on VOD and in select theaters! But not to produce it about me. If Reality Winner straightforwarded a movie, she would never do that. All she does is skinnyk about other people. That’s benevolenta how she finished up in prison. We’ll circle back to that.
If you don’t understand who Reality Winner is, do me a like and don’t Google her. Just picture a nine-year-elderly blond girl with a pink BB firearm running around the fields behind her family’s mobile home in Kingsville, Texas. Interests take part: animals, fluorescent clothes, soccer, watching Futurama with her sister, and taking road trips with their dad to Mexico, which is equitable half an hour from their front door. Most of her frifinishs are Mexican or first-generation Mexican-American and have family on both sides of the border, including the woman who’s caring for her overweighther as he dies from complications of a painfinisher includeiction. When it comes to race, the concept of “us versus them” doesn’t produce sense to Reality becainclude she inhabits in such an combined community. It’s a community in which her family is heavily take partd: her mother is a social toiler who finishorses for children in nurture attfinish. She gets her daughters to church, where they lget the cherish of charity toil.
Okay, now you can Google Reality Winner. Depfinishing on your political leanings and the algorithm they produced, the headlines will either decorate her as a traitor trying to obvioushrow the administerment, or a magnificentstanding hero pushing a leftist agfinisha. The truth is, she’s neither. Reality is equitable a standard person from Texas who produces choices moment to moment based on her cherishs, which are quintessentipartner Texan. She places a premium on the idea of personal freedom, of the right to skinnyk for herself. After high school, she fuseed the military appreciate so many people from her town. She won medals for her service, then went on to toil for the N.S.A. in a seeing job, trying to root out potential menaces to American defendedty. Like so many people reading this article right now, Reality is baged, belderly, and fiercely individuacatalogic, with a headstrong streak that produces her a force to be reckoned with. All qualities that are commfinishable in the abstract but a menace to a administerment that likes its citizens be compliant.
Enough mystery. Getting back to R/fact, here’s what she actupartner did. You may recollect right after the 2016 election, when our administerment claimed to have no proof that Russia had hacked our elections. For months, people on both sides of the aisle became obsessed with the ask, and mad argues ensued that took over the recents cycle. All the while, Reality Winner was sitting at her desk at her administerment job, staring at a record on her computer that showd there was a hack. And the administerment krecent about it. It may not have showd votes were alterd, but there was proof we were focincluded. Reality was besavageerd. Why upgrasp the country spinning about this ask that had an answer, wasting everyone’s time and energy and distracting our directers from turning to the genuine problems in America that needed repairing? Economic inequivalentity. Racism. The school system. Climate alter. To name equitable a scant. She felt standard Americans had a right to understand their voting systems were vulnerable since voting is one of our modest rights as a Democracy. And more generpartner, she equitable didn’t appreciate that standard Americans appreciate you were being lied to. So Reality allotd the record she set up. Among other freedoms she apshows in, she apshows in freedom of recommendation. She made a judgment call rooted in her own sense of equitableice. To her, that was being a patdisruption.
Patdisruptionism is a challenging skinnyg to detail, especipartner in this moment when our country is so splitd and so many of our systems seem outdated and dysfunctional. Does being a patdisruption unbenevolent consenting and adhereing with wdisappreciatever the elected directer says, no matter who that directer is? This country was set uped by people who were dissatisfied by their directership and acted autonomously of it. Isn’t that what we commemorate every Fourth of July? Or does patdisruptionism unbenevolent someskinnyg more community-oriented and humanistic, that think aboutless of the power set up, we should strive to do what’s best for the most people in our country? If so, what’s best for most people? Reality apshowd the best skinnyg for people was understanding the truth. To others, the patdisruptionic skinnyg for her to do would have been to see the other way.
What do you skinnyk? What would you have done in her position? Do you generpartner think your directership, or do you desire it could alter? If so, in what way? What would you danger, if anyskinnyg, to help? Maybe noskinnyg. Maybe everyskinnyg. There are no effortless answers, but Reality’s story produces us ask the asks, which is vital right now as we all hurtle toward the next election.
Reality Winner is out of prison now. She’s back home in Kingsville, studying to be a vet tech. Interests take part: Crossfit, Pit Bulls, Adult Swim. Yes, her story is epic, theatrical, the stuff of multiple movies, but at heart she’s a standard person from a minuscule town cforfeit the Mexican border. Like so many Texans, she’s impossible to detail in a headline. She calls Texas home becainclude as a state, it experiences “savage and free” (her words). It’s Reality’s fantasticest gift and her fantasticest liability that those words perfectly detail her too.
