Flipped off by a Trump supporter in Granite City, Illinois, 3 August 2018. Photo by Zachary McGee, Wiki Commons
Flipped off by a Trump supporter in Granite City, Illinois, 3 August 2018. Photo by Zachary McGee, Wiki Commons
This is a golden moment for the vast, sprawling army of good people who believe in the beauty of diversity and in a fully accessible America to speak out and vote.
Republished with permission from John Pavlovitz
For a decade now, we’ve all tried to analyze it, to explain it, to make some kind of sense of it.
We’ve parsed out every voting issue, every contributing societal factor, every possible justifiable explanation.
We’ve microscopically studied the theological, political, and cultural influences.
We’ve tried offering a listening ear, looking for common ground, sharing our stories, providing factual information: all the methods that are supposed to help reach human beings across a divide of disagreement.
We’ve done everything humanly possible to diagnose, identify, and explain why tens of millions of people would tether their identities, affix their adoration, and pledge their votes to someone who, objectively speaking is a putrid, cancerous sociopath with contempt for everything and everyone.
And they have all failed.
And now, the why’s all cease to matter as much as the what—and the what, is that nearly ten years into the darkest, most fractious season in our nation’s two hundred and fifty-year old life, a sizable portion of our country is hopelessly indoctrinated into a hateful death cult, one that for the foreseeable future they will not be mentally or emotionally emancipated from.
They now believe him, not the educated medical professionals.
Him, not the experienced climate experts.
Him, not the distinguished generals.
Him, not the trusted election officials.
Him, not the revered journalists.
Him, not their former Republican heroes.
Him, not quantifiable data, empirical evidence, or objective reality.
Him, not their own eyes.
We cannot appeal to their sense of decency as it no longer exists; to their capacity for compassion because it has evaporated; to their faith in Jesus, as they no longer recognize him; to their love of neighbor, because they have none.
They are impervious to critical thinking, incapable of entertaining alternative thoughts, and defiantly opposed to reason—should any of those thing require a deviation away from the malignant messiah they’ve decided will save them from the very nightmares he has placed around them and in their heads.
If their consciences and compassion and rationality have not been accessed and unearthed by now, those things may never be forthcoming.
And since these people will not be moved from him, the rest of us need to move together from them.
Democrat, Republican, and Independent,
Liberal, Moderate, and Conservative,
City, suburban, and rural dwellers, the deeply devout and the passionately irreligious, people of every pigmentation and persuasion—we all need to move in concert, to put aside our relatively small differences, to affirm our shared regard for one another, and to vote to restore balance in something we all love that is teetering wildly on the edge of the abyss.
This isn’t a battle to change the minds of those who’ve been relentlessly brainwashed in a flood of fear, false stories, and Fox News fiction.
It also isn’t a test to see if we can manufacture the same malice and vitriol for them as they dispense toward us.
We can’t do anything now but join together and outvote them.
This is a golden moment for the vast, sprawling army of good people who believe in the beauty of diversity and in a fully accessible America to speak unequivocally—on our social media profiles, at family gatherings, in our church meetings—and most of all, in the voting booth.
If we can’t rescue people we love, once respected, live around, work alongside, and worship next to, from their irrational passion for a sad and hateful husk of human being, we can rescue this nation from them.
He can have his death cult of delusional sycophants and they can have him.
The rest of us cannot, under any circumstance, let them have America.
John Pavlovitz is a writer, pastor, and activist from Wake Forest, North Carolina. A 25-year veteran in the trenches of local church ministry, John is committed to equality, diversity, and justice—both inside and outside faith communities. When not actively working for a more compassionate planet, John enjoys spending time with his family, exercising, cooking, and having time in nature. He is the author of A Bigger Table, Hope and Other Superpowers, Low, and Stuff That Needs to Be Said.
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