Well, since you asked…
“Roll call. How’s everyone doing this morning?
A group of friends from college has kept a chat thread going since the start of the pandemic. Like many people, as we retreated to our homes, we felt the desire to reconnect with each other. We did a couple of virtual happy hours and have used the chat box to share interesting items, drop a joke or two, revisit some memories. By the the time I woke up (several time zones behind most of the group), responses and reactions, reflecting the tension and ambiguity of the moment, had sputtered out of my friends.
Here’s my (slightly expanded) response.
A. I blame the Bernie Bros of 2016, the folks who just couldn’t bring themselves to vote for Hillary, the folks who put their preferences ahead of my rights. They may not have the metaphorical blood of the last four years on their hands, but it sure is splattered all over them. How does the “take my ball and go home” approach to politics look now?
B. I don’t understand how easy it is to hate people. The rhetoric on the right, and the reactionary aspect of the far left…I just don’t understand it. What’s the question attributed to Dr. Fauci? “I don’t know how to explain to you that you should care for other people?” We can disagree. We can disagree vehemently. We can wrangle for influence and hope that others share our perspectives. But we all suffer when we don’t see each other, first, as people with agency and experiences and skills.
C.1. I blame McConnnell and the neoliberals. They’ve been working to upend the system since before the Reagan era, and three Trump appointments to the Supreme Court of the United States and long-term domination of the federal bench is their reward, whatever the outcome of November 3. I honestly believe that Trump is, at some level, an unwitting puppet of the neoliberal right. He’s been able to channel reality star celebrity into actual-reality power, something the neoliberals were never able to do on their own, but in the process they have stoked divisions, encouraged economic, social, political, and physical violence toward already-marginalized groups. Their legacy will not be a reformed (in their interests) judiciary but a broken and deeply damaged culture. Their legacy will be reflected in the tribes they have formed and the rejection of their norms by the rising generation.
C.2. I can’t believe I have to distinguish “reality” from “actual reality.”
D. Catholics who voted for Trump should be sent to the Principal’s office. I’m not talking about a warm and fuzzy Principal. I mean Sister Aloysius Beauvier (in “Doubt”). And then they should be re-educated on Catholic social teaching, with particular emphasis on the preferential option for the poor, and the primacy of conscience. Leaders in the American Church who looked the other way when Trump’s, his administration’s, and the GOP’s actions, policies, and priorities, both personal and official, clashed with Catholic teaching should be ashamed, but I doubt they will be — they’ve gotten used to looking the other way. You know, as part of their ceremonial regalia, each bishop carries a crozier, a stylized shepherd’s staff, to remind him and the people he serves of his primary responsibility: to lead the local church like the Good Shepherd described in Gospel parables and in the person of Jesus of Nazareth. That shepherd went searching for the one lost sheep, demonstrating his care of the lost, the marginalized, the ones who are forgotten by the herd. Bishops and other leaders of the church who actively engaged the socially divisive rhetoric, campaigning, and communications of the GOP should resign. Through these efforts, they have effectively beaten the lost sheep among us with their croziers. The lost sheep at the border, separated from their parents. The lost sheep at school who don’t feel safe enough to go to the bathroom. The lost sheep on the street who have been denied healthcare, housing, and basic human dignity. The lost sheep who are in pain and suffer very real persecution at the hands of others, sometimes their own family members, just because they were born.
E. I’m genuinely afraid that my civil rights are eroding. And I’m a privileged, cisgendered, White, Christian, educated, and US-born male. For most of my life, I’ve enjoyed the advantages that have come with these identities, but I’m also gay. And married. Very happily. The people who have installed a wanna-be-fascist in the White House have inspired a whole new generation of heterosexism. They don’t want us get the same tax benefits that heterosexual married couples get. They don’t want us to have job security. They don’t want us to raise children. They don’t want us to change — they want us gone. Ask someone who’s ever been spit on by a heterosexist hater sometime. Ask them about the look in the eyes of the one spewing. And eliminating our rights and limiting our ability to engage in public life are among the first goals of the neoliberals who control the bench toward this end. No, toward our end. This is my reality when I wake up in the morning while 45 is in the White House and McConnell is at the helm of the chamber. I can’t fathom what the world looks like each day to someone who is disadvantaged, not cisgendered, not White, not Christian, not educated, or not born here.
F. I’ve learned a lot about the electoral college in recent weeks. Among the things I didn’t learn in 11th grade US History is the fact that the it was born from a compromise to appease slave holders. So, in addition to being mathematically baffling and politically vulnerable, the electoral college is an institution that reminds us every four years — well, it should remind us — that we will never thrive and embody the lasting ideals of our founding principles until we address the social and systematic injustices that proceed from racism. In 2000, 2016, and again today, we have seen the EC used as a tool to install an administration by sidestepping the demonstrated will of the people (you know, as in “We the People…”). Instead of highlighting systemic injustice and marking how far we’ve come as a nation, the EC only serves as a reminder that our national institutions are, in fact, historically, racist.
G. I don’t buy into conspiracy theories, but I’m a sucker for philosophical ridiculousness…er, speculation (that sounds better, right?). Anyone who has had the pleasure of stumbling into one of my impromptu sermons can confirm this (thanks for your ongoing patience and the occasionally feigned interest, friends). Part of me believes that this election and the tribalization and divisiveness that have built recent years is all part of a natural process. Teilhard de Chardin, priest and paleontologist, wrote that “We are impatient of being on the way to something unknown, something new. And yet it is the law of all progress that it is made by passing through some stages of instability — and that it may take a very long time.” Perhaps this is how climate change is manifesting in our species. Perhaps the election is one moment — one heavy and impactful moment — in the longer, deeper, and wider process of human evolution. Perhaps this is a sign of the transition from the modern era to the postmodern era. Perhaps what we characterize as conservatism (which doesn’t seem to be conserving much these days, eh?) is just the manifestation of our very human instinct to cling to familiarity, but we also know that humans thrive when we adapt. Like the rest of creation, diversity and adaptability are hallmarks of growth, development, and evolution. Perhaps when progressives point to the diversity of a community, when we recognize the power of identity, when we seek to understand the intersections of our identities, we’re seeking to adapt, to translate the wisdom of biodiversity inherent in creation, into our ability to know ourselves, to know each other, and to thrive in our world.
H. Fuck Trump.
