It's been four weeks since the election and, like you, I've struggled to come up with the right words to express the grief I'm experiencing. To be honest, I had a bad feeling that night. The exit polling was looking very ominous and the early returns were not particularly encouraging for Kamala Harris. By 9:00 PM, I knew it was pretty much over.
But before I get to her, I wanted to take a few minutes to talk about Joe Biden and his decision to pardon his son, Hunter. Please spare me all the false equivalences about how this will somehow give Trump a permission slip to pardon the January 6 insurrectionists. As if this man really needed a permission slip. Give me a fucking break. The most transparent politician in American history all but guaranteed he was going to pardon them months before the election. If you seriously think for a minute that Trump would've done the right thing had Biden allowed his son go to prison, you're as gullible as the 77 million people who voted for him believing he can solve the nation's problems. The only problems Trump cares about are his own.
Now you know why the main-stream media is so despised in this country. They can't discern the difference between someone going five miles over the speed limit and someone going sixty miles over it. Eight years ago they were obsessed with Hillary's emails. Yes, like Biden, she was wrong. But her frailties paled in comparison to Trump's. Yet, the press gave them equal coverage. John Fuselgang summed it up best: "If you said nothing when Donald Trump pardoned donors, cronies, extended family members, and war criminals, then sit the fuck down and shut the fuck up about Joe Biden pardoning his own son. Just put a fucking sock in it."
Somewhere, Edward R Murrow is turning over in his grave at what has happened to this once vaunted profession. Thankfully, people are starting to wake up. Ratings at CNN and even MSNBC are down significantly since the election and The Washington Post is rapidly losing subscribers as a result of its refusal to endorse a candidate in the election. There comes a breaking point for everyone, and if the fourth estate won't do its job, then it will suffer the consequences. Maybe when Trump's Justice Department comes after them for hurting his feelings - and you know they will - these pseudo journalists will finally have an epiphany. Of course by that time it'll be too late, as it often is with democracies that die, be it in darkness or the full light of day.
Indeed, if Biden was guilty of anything, it was not getting out of the race sooner. By waiting until July, he basically screwed his own party and tied the hands of his vice president. 100 days isn't enough time to mount a campaign to win the nomination, much less win a general election. Biden should've known that. His ego, denial, what ever you want to call it, was the primary culprit here. Any reasonably objective observer could see that he was failing before our very eyes. His debate performance in June was simply the cherry on top of the moldy sundae. In the end, the man who freed us from the clutches of Trump was principally responsible for delivering us right back into his hands. Shame on him for being that selfish.
Which brings me back to Harris. Given what she had to work with, I thought she did a fairly credible job. No, she was not a great candidate, but let's face it: there weren't a whole lot of alternatives available. An open convention would've been a shit show; think Chicago 1968, only worse.
Picking Josh Shapiro instead of Tim Walz wouldn't have made any difference. Harris lost all seven swing states, including Nevada, which even Hillary managed to win in 2016. As I wrote back in August, the last time a running mate delivered a state for their ticket was Lyndon Johnson in 1960. That's pretty much it. Besides, if running mates were that important, no way in hell George H.W. Bush would've won in 1988 with an idiot like Dan Quayle as his wing man.
It wasn't the transgender ads that did her in, nor was it her refusal to go on Joe Rogan's podcast, as David Axelrod claimed on CNN. While the border problem undoubtedly hurt her in places like Arizona and Nevada, it was not the decisive factor in the all-important Rust Belt states.
Basically, this election came down to one thing. Objectively speaking, the U.S. economy is the strongest it's been in years. Inflation is down to 2.4 percent, unemployment is at an all-time low, the stock market continues to soar and 401k accounts are growing by leaps and bounds. Yet, beginning in April 2021, inflation began to tick up. It peaked at 9.1 percent in June of 2022 before finally ebbing in the Spring of 2023. By that point, though, the damage had been done.
The problem with inflation is that it's cumulative; that is it adds up over time. An item that cost $100 in 2021, now costs more than $120. Arguing that the rate at which something goes up in price is lower now than it was two years ago is the political equivalent of pissing on your leg to keep warm. Millions of people were angry at the higher prices they were paying for gas, eggs and just about everything else, and they took their frustrations out on the current administration. Ostensibly, the American electorate fired Joe Biden, and by extension, Kamala Harris.
So now that it's over, where do we go from here? Sadly, my worst fears are going to be realized. Last time around Trump was a novice who surrounded himself with people who acted as guardrails against his worst impulses. This time around, there will be no such guardrails. Just based on what we've seen so far, he fully intends to fill his administration with loyal sycophants who will carry out his every whim. He will use the FBI and the Department of Justice to target his political enemies. And with a 6-3 conservative majority on the Supreme Court, there will literally be no checks on his power.
Foreign policy wise, the country will enter an isolationist period unlike any since the 1930s. Russia will almost certainly take Ukraine. And while Trump can't unilaterally pull the United States out of NATO, he doesn't have to honor Article Five, meaning Europe will be on its own should Putin decide to invade the Baltic states. If you're a history buff, there are parallels here that should frighten the shit out of you.
Regarding the economy, Trump's plan to impose tariffs on foreign imports will ironically bring back the very inflation that was responsible for him getting elected in the first place. It will also trigger a trade war which will cripple the U.S. economy for years to come. Many of the same people who voted for Trump will be rudely awakened when they find out just how little he actually knows about economics. But then what else would you expect from someone who filed for bankruptcy six times? Take away his bravado and Trump is nothing more than a two-bit huckster who twice in the last eight years managed to hoodwink enough Americans into thinking he was a stable genius when in fact he is neither stable nor a genius. Turns out you really can fool some of the people all of the time.
For myself, I'm more disappointed than angry. Disappointed that a plurality of people in this country knew full well what kind of man Trump was, what he was threatening to do if he got back into the White House, and yet voted for him anyway. It is an axiom that economies almost always recover; democracies seldom do. 240 plus years of representative democracy now hang in the balance.
But my biggest disappointment, by far, is with my fellow Christians, the majority of whom voted for a presidential candidate who, had he been alive 2,000 years ago, would've been driven from the temple by the very man they claim to worship. I will not mince words here. If you call yourself a Christian, there is no way to justify voting for someone like Trump; you cannot square this circle no matter how hard you try. He is the embodiment of everything Jesus railed against in his three-year ministry on Earth; everything Paul warned us about in his letters.
Over the last few years, I have watched with great trepidation the slow rise of Christian nationalism within the ranks of the Church. I can no longer remain silent in the face of such idolatry. Family members, friends, former associates, that's one thing. Fellow Christians? That's quite another. Let me be crystal clear: To even suggest that there is some inherent blessing bestowed upon Christians born in this country is heresy. It is anathema to everything we are taught to believe in. The truth is there is no pecking order in Heaven. God loves all his children equally regardless of where they come from. In the end, we are just visitors, passing through on our way to our eventual home.
After the assault on the Capitol on January 6, 2021, I wrote the following:
I believe the Church in America has, for the most part, become apostate. It has abandoned its traditional Christian roots and adopted the social norms of the world. There is no other way to explain the popularity of Trump and Trumpism among believers, many of whom hold positions of power in the Church. It does not matter whether individual pastors publicly endorse this false doctrine or not. The failure to call it out and condemn it from the pulpit is the moral equivalent of complicity. If scripture teaches us anything, it's that God does not distinguish between sins of omission and sins of commission. Those who know the truth, yet do nothing for fear of rocking the boat, are no less culpable than the ones who don't. In God's Kingdom they are one and the same.
Well I, for one, have decided enough is enough. I need a break from this. For how long, who knows? What I do know is that to continue throwing good money after bad is an exercise in futility. When the first thing you think about when you walk into a church is how long the service will last, that's a pretty good indicator that perhaps you don't belong there. God knows our hearts and he knows when we are going through the motions, and for the last few months, I've been faking it, hoping against hope that I can get to the other side. But I can't. I'm not sure I'm supposed to.
To those who would say that this is just a crisis of faith I'm going through, I beg to differ. If anything, it is my faith that is screaming out for something better; something more fulfilling. I cannot and will not believe that Jesus died on the cross and rose from the dead so that the vast majority of Christians can wittingly or unwittingly follow the modern-day version of the very people who murdered him. No wonder church attendance is down across the country. It is nothing short of a miracle that anyone with even a meager understanding of the Bible can manage to sit through an entire service these days. Frankly, if I had walked into a church 33 years ago and saw this going on, I would've walked out, never to return. Maybe the problem isn't that enough people haven't heard the message; maybe it's that they have heard it and they said, no thanks.
As a recovering alcoholic with 34 years of sobriety, I have come to understand two things about God: 1. He is in complete control; and 2. He didn't lead me this far just to abandon me. He has a plan for my life, just as he has a plan for all our lives. My job is to trust that he will reveal it to me in his good time.
To those who feel as I do and are grieving right now, please know that God had nothing to do with any of this. I realize it has become fashionable these days to blame him for everything that is wrong with the world - from disasters, to wars, to famine, to poverty, to injustice. I can assure you God is not to blame. And he certainly isn't to blame for Trump. The lone culprit here is our own avarice and ignorance. We sought to be comforted rather than to comfort, so, like the Hebrews who were freed from Egyptian captivity only to erect a golden calf to worship, we elected a man who spent his entire life on a golden throne just so we can congratulate ourselves for being Godly men and women. Imagine being that blind.
In the final analysis, Americans had a choice between an admittedly flawed, but qualified, candidate and a racist sociopath, and we opted for the racist sociopath. And like it says in Galatians 6:7, "we shall reap what we sow."
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