Tag: Donald Trump

A Note to Trump Voters

I wrote and posted this on Facebook yesterday morning. It was borne partly of anger and frustration and a night of fitful sleep, but mostly, it was borne of logging into Facebook and seeing the pain, fear, hurt, confusion and grief of those I love and call my friends and family in the wake of the election results. These are feelings that were completely avoidable, and completely brought on willfully by our fellow citizens. It pained me greatly to see my friends feeling the way they feel, and I felt a duty to speak to my fellow white people. Like I said, there is a lot of anger and raw feelings here. I’m not particularly gracious or thoughtful, something I usually shoot for, but this is what I feel the world needs to hear from me right now. There will be plenty of time in the future to build bridges. For now, I rage.

I want to drop a note to all my fellow white people (and we know it was white people; go look at the exit polls) who decided to pull some shit yesterday at the polls and elect a fascist man-child to be the most powerful person on the planet. I want to drop this note because I, too, am a straight white man, and I will deal with your bullshit today so that my LGBT/female/immigrant/Muslim/POC friends don’t have to, so that they can maybe just have a tiny sliver of peace today.

I know you think you voted for Donald Trump because you are “taking your country back,” because you feel like you are getting screwed over by Washington, because you were voting not so much for something, but AGAINST something. Which may have been your intention going into the voting booth, and what you are telling yourself this morning. But let me tell you something: you didn’t vote against anything yesterday. You didn’t vote against any entrenched powers or for any common people. What you voted for is exactly what we have all seen for at least the last 18 months, and really for the last 40 years since Trump first defiled us with his public presence.

What you voted for is a candidate who was endorsed by and enthusiastically supported by avowed racists like the KKK and David Duke. That means something, ok? I know you didn’t vote for him because of race, but by supporting him, you in essence supported blatant, 1960s-level racism. How do you think people of color feel when you say this was about “kicking out all the bums?” You think they give a damn that you didn’t mean to vote racism, you just unintentionally did because you were angry about something else? It doesn’t work that way. This last year, POC have been trying to get you to admit their lives matter. Yesterday, you decided, again, to reject that idea.

What you also voted for is old school, Mad Men-style – no, scratch that: King Henry VIII-level – misogyny. You voted for a candidate who openly bragged about sexually assaulting women, who had 16 -16!!!!- accusers of sexual assault just in the last month, who is scheduled for trial a month from now for raping a 13 year old! You just told women everywhere that they are in fact just pieces of meat, destined to be the objects of lust for mediocre, pasty old white men. You just took the core thing women have worked for in the country for far too long – the right to feel like equal, respected human beings around men – and stomped on it. Congrats: you just elected our first rapist-in-chief.

What you voted for is the enhanced demonization and degradation of an entire religion, and the people who make it up, because of the isolated actions of a solitary few. Islamophobia is at an all time high, and in response to that, our country founded on respect of all and religious freedom decided to elect the Grand Poobah of Islamophobia. Listen people, I have some really really good friends in the Muslim community, here in Tulsa and in Oklahoma City. Let me be very, very clear about this: they are not terrorists, anymore than you are a terrorist or I am. They are some of the hardest working, most patriotic Americans I know, people who work for the community and spread love and peace as far as they can. And with your vote yesterday, you slapped each and every one of them in face, telling them they are a danger and are less American than you. I feel for my Muslim brothers and sisters, so many of whom I see on Facebook this morning expressing fear and worry about what they will be facing as they venture out into the world in Trumpworld Day One. They already had to deal with a lot of shit this year; I hope and pray this election does not further empower the haters out there to go further with they bigoted actions. But if it does, Trump votes, you need to know: you played a role in that. Again, even if your intention wasn’t to vote for that, by voting for Trump, you did actually vote for that.

What you voted for is the continued scapegoating of immigrants, and specifically Hispanic immigrants, who live and work in this country, their country. With your vote, you told millions of human beings, humans who may have been born elsewhere but who want nothing more than to come to the country you keep telling them is the greatest in the world and work and make a difference and contribute to making all of our lives better, that they don’t count. In return for the hard work and sacrifice they have made, you spit in their faces, voting for the man-child who has vowed to round em up and ship em out and then build a giant wall in their faces, as if forcing them out wasn’t enough of a way to say “I f-ing hate you.” How very hospitable, white America. I’m sure Jesus is just so damn proud of the hospitality you continue to show.

What you voted for yesterday is to express- again – your hate and disgust for LGBTQ+ human beings everywhere. I know you say it all the time: “love the sin, hate the sinner.” But screw that. With your continued vote for candidates and a party who reject the equality of their being, who want to take their rights and criminalize their relationships and love, who want to force damaging, scientifically-unsound “Conversion” treatments on them, you keep showing us how you really feel about these people that I and so many others love unconditionally just how they are. With your vote, you continue to put them in active danger, empowering bigots who everyday commit hate crimes and who drive too, too many LGBTQ+ people – and especially LGBTQ+ CHILDREN – to suicide. You tell them they are less than human, and guess what? That shit hurts, and they internalize it, and meanwhile, we, their friends and family and loved ones, have to continue to work of undoing your hate and reminding them that they do matter.

What you voted for yesterday- what you really voted for- wasn’t to “Make American Great Again.” You voted instead to tell all these good people- these human beings, these souls created in the very image of God – that they are worth less than you, that their dignity and humanity is somehow not as great as yours. You didn’t vote to make America great; we aren’t great when we demonize and denigrate our fellow Americans based on who they are. You voted, instead, to make America just as sucky as it as always been when it comes to minority groups. At least in that sense, then, you embraced a truly American heritage. Congrats.

Because you know what? Here’s the thing: you don’t get to disconnect all of that from your candidate just because you are pissed at the Establishment and wanted to “send a message.” All those things listed above? They are tied up inextricably in YOUR vote. You can’t only vote for the things you like about a candidate. When you went to vote for your Trump, you rubber-stamped all that shit by association. Your mediocre intentions don’t wash away the racism and misogyny and bigotry and hate that your vote ushered into office. Your anger and alienation don’t outweigh the fear people all over the country now have to live with for the next four years. You thought this was all about you. And that’s the goddamn problem, again and again. So many of us white folks are concerned about number one only, and we don’t give a single thought to what our actions and votes mean for other people. That, folks, is the textbook definition of white privilege. Congrats, you showed the world again what it looks like in action.

Listen, y’all know me. I’ve been in the politics game a long time. I’ve been very public about my dislike for a lot of candidates on here. But I never felt the way about an opposing candidate as I do about Donald Trump. I get voting for John McCain or Mitt Romney. I may have disagreed with you, but I got it, and while I encouraged people to vote the other way, I went out of my way to never insinuate that either candidate was in any way unfit to lead or illegitimate. I think that happens far too often in politics anymore, and I take pride in holding a commensurate level of respect for all candidates, no matter their party.

But I never could do that with Trump. And that’s because he so goes against everything I love and cherish about democracy and the American presidency. I love presidential history, and I am so ashamed that in the future, when I look through a list of names that includes such greats as Washington, Jefferson, Madison, Lincoln, Roosevelt and Roosevelt, Truman, Eisenhower, Kennedy, Reagan, Obama, and such forgotten leaders as Monroe, Grant, Garfield, McKinley, and Johnson, I now have to see the name “Trump” amended onto the end. What a terrible disgrace to the great leaders who came before, to those who set a standard of class and elegance and seriousness to being a leader. Because I see none of that in Trump. He’s not serious. He’s not attentive. He’s not particularly intelligent or successful. He doesn’t seem to know or understand or even care about the gravity of leading our country, of the level of commitment and humility it takes. He just knows how to bullshit and sell his name and be the ultimate narcissist, and we in our great wisdom have lapped that shit up for a long time. And now we’ve decided that marketing skill is good enough to put him in charge of our country at a crucial point in history, when a new world order is emerging, the Middle East is as fractured as ever, our entitlements and programs are in crisis, the environment in on the brink of no return, and demographic shifts are changing the balance of power around the world.

This was our response. Talk about blowing it.

One last note: I am a Christian. I am in seminary to become a minister. I’ve made my views about the intersection of Trump and Christianity very clear on my blog, and I can share those posts here is anyone wants to read them. But let me just say this: Donald Trump, the movement he leads, and the ideas he promotes and incubates, are the most UN-CHRISTIAN I have ever seen in politics. So don’t tell me you voted your faith. That’s bullshit and you know it and I know it and I’m not about that today. Newsflash: voting as a Christian means a hell of a lot more than voting about abortion. Go read Matthew 25, or the Sermon on the Mount, or really any story where Jesus encounters the least and the lost, and then think about how Donald Trump would handle those situations. Our faith is about love; there isn’t a lot of love in the Trump campaign, that’s for damn sure. Congrats, on placing your politics above your faith in the most blatant way possible. And don’t talk to me ever again about “Christian America.” Because if we didn’t know for sure that it was a myth long ago, last night just really confirmed that for us.

Now excuse me. I have to go start the process of teaching my children that bullying and meanness and a lack of concern for others isn’t the way to be a good person, despite what so many of their fellow citizens are trying to tell them otherwise.

Vote For The Losers

Elections are about winning.

That’s an obvious thing to say. Of course they are. Candidates, for the most part, are running to win. And while they may see the writing on the wall, or they may know they are a long shot, or even they may understand that in the end they won’t, in fact, win, they are all out there every day trying to convince their fellow citizens that they need to win, for very real reasons.

This Election season, in particular, we have heard a lot about winning. One of our major party presidential candidates has made the idea of winning – at all costs, no matter who or what gets left behind, destroyed or dehumanized in the process – the center of his campaign. We have heard that the only real Americans are the winners; that those who are different, who are having a hard time, who speak a different religion or encounter God in a different way or hold different ideas about how to make America great, are the losers. 

And you don’t want to be a loser, do you?

Losers aren’t what make America great again. Losers are worthy of our scorn, our hate. They are the scapegoats. They only want to take, not make. Losers deserve nothing, not a vote or a voice, or the means to live a minimally-comfortable life, or even a place in OUR country. Losers should self-deport, should be cordoned off behind a wall. Losers aren’t real Americans.

This how the world works, right? Winners win. Losers lose. Be a winner. Give a little to Salvation Army bell ringers for the losers, but don’t worry too much about it. They probably got just desserts anyways.

This is not the message of God.

God is the God of the losers. The God we see experienced in the man Jesus was not a God that came to reward to winners and punish the losers.

Instead, in Jesus, we see God experienced again and again the losers of society. We see God found in lepers, in immigrants and foreigners, in unclean women, in enemies, in those society forgot and left behind.

God was experienced not in a victorious army riding into Jerusalem, destroying the Romans and the corrupt Temple priests, and establishing a conquering kingdom that never fell.

God was experienced in death and defeat. Jesus lived the Way of the Divine by failing, by being captured, tortured, humiliated, and executed.

Rob Bell writes of this in What We Talk About When We Talk About God:

…there’s a moment when Jesus first tells his followers that he’s going to be killed. They don’t get it: they push back, they resist his prediction, because they assume that he’s come to win, not lose. To prevail, not surrender. To conquer, not hang on a cross.

They say no because they’ve come to believe that he is in some way God-among-them, and what kind of God fails?

It’s all upside down,

backward,

and not how it was supposed to be.

And that, we learn, is the point.

God wins not by conquering, by getting the most votes. God wins by showing us the futility of our earthly conceptions of victory. Victory is not found in honor and glory that builds us up individually. Victory is found in self-sacrifice. Victory is found in concern for others before self, even unto death. Victory- real, God victory – is found in understanding that we win by loving others- loving radically and irrationally and against our own interests, even when that means getting poorer or ridiculed or killed.

It was, basically, just like Jesus said: “The first will be last.”

Like Rob says, that’s point. We go to the polls every two or four years with the intention of making our country, and by extension, the world a better place. And sometimes we do, in small ways. But there is only one way to make the world a truly better place, a way modeled by Jesus two thousand years ago. That way is the way of putting others first, of doing everything we can to spread unconditional love and pulling up the least and the lost so that there is no first or last, but just US.

No matter what happens tonight- no matter who “wins” and who “loses,” we will still have a lot of work to do. America won’t become a “Christian nation” by voting someone to victory. America won’t win because of strength or our military or the perfect public policy initiatives, no matter how important all that is.

America, and the whole world, will “win” when we realize that winning means looking out for one another, making the world better for all people, and especially those who are oppressed and in need of liberation. We win when we feed the hungry and quench the thirsty, when we invite in the immigrant, when we clothe the naked, heal the sick, and free the oppressed.

Go vote. Vote for the person who you think will improve people’s lives the most. Vote not just for president, but for Senate and House and state office and local officials and ballot initiatives.

And then, remember: there is much much more work to be done, work that can’t be done in the ballot box or by elected officials.

And then, go do that work. The self-sacrificial work of love.

Be a loser.

That’s winning.

Why Do I Write So Much About Donald Trump?

trump-howdy
h/t to Wonkette

In case you haven’t noticed, I’ve written a lot about Donald Trump here. And in doing so, I keep getting some push back from folks about it. Usually, it’s something along the lines of “why do you only pick on the Donald? Why not Hillary too, she’s corrupt?” Which then turns into, “well, you must be a Democratic Party operative using religion to get people to vote for your political agenda.” So, I just want to take a moment to address why, exactly, I write so much about Donald Trump, but almost none at all about Hillary Clinton.

First, let me be clear: yes, I used to work for the Democratic Party. Yes, I was a political science major, and have worked multiple campaigns for Democrats in Oklahoma and Kansas. I am very open about this on my bio you can find right here on this website.

So, I know for some, that is a complete disqualification. I am forever stained with the Democratic stink. I will always be a shill for the party, with whatever justification I can find. That’s fine if you want to think that about me. I’ll live.

They key thing to understand about me, however, is that I used to be a Democratic party operative. Used to be. Let me tell my story a little bit. I got interested in politics in 2007, as Barack Obama began his presidential campaign. I was blown away by this guy who spoke so movingly and was addressing these things that resonated with me, like opposition to the war in Iraq and respect and dignity for all people (Even gay and Muslim ones).

Following his election, I decided to pursue a degree in political science. At Oklahoma City University, while earning this degree, I was involved with Young Democrats, with student government, with Oklahoma Intercollegiate Legislature. I worked in the summer between my junior and senior years as full-time staff for Jari Askins, the Democratic nominee for governor.

After graduation, I worked in the Oklahoma House of Representatives, for the House Democratic Caucus. I also, for a short time, ran as a Democrat for a House seat. In 2014, I became the Executive Director of the Sedgwick County (KS) Democratic Party, a post I held all the way through the midterms.

I went into politics for some very specific reasons. I had so many interests growing up, I couldn’t settle on one thing to study. But I knew this: I wanted to do something to help people, and to make the world a better place. I wanted to improve people’s lives and help people achieve their liberation. Democratic Party politics appealed to me, because of it’s concern for the working people, it’s support for policies like universal health care, a strong social safety net, equal rights for gays, minorities, and all religions, and it’s strong embrace of public policy as a positive good. In fact, at OCU, while getting my poli sci degree, I focused on public policy, and specifically, health care policy, which I wrote my senior thesis over. Policy work was what I loved; the political game was fun on the side.

Looking back, I now regard myself politically as an Obama Democrat. I was inspired by Barack Obama to go into politics, to work to make the world a better place. As President Obama’s term has neared it’s end, and other actors have taken center stage in America’s political drama, I have found myself losing interest in politics. It now frustrates me, and infuriates me, and disgusts me. And I don’t just mean conservatives; I have a favorite moniker for those who bug me the most: “MSNBC liberals.” I’ve just gotten to the point where I can’t stand the game. I still follow politics, but much more privately, and in smaller doses.

My waning political interests coincided with the call I felt into ministry. So, that’s the career path I have turned to. But, many of the same motivations that drove me into politics have also spurred me into this arena. I still want to make the world a better place. I want to improve lives, help work for liberation, and cultivate love, respect and dignity for my fellow humans. But now, I feel called to do those things with a theological underpinning.

It’s not a political call masquerading as religion. It is a call to work for God’s kingdom, first and foremost. It just so happens that I see God’s justice encompassing things such as equality, the meeting of basic needs, the lifting up of the poor. Where those goals coincide with any political goal is a happy coincidence; I don’t work any longer for the goal of passing this bill or that bill; I work, in any arena necessary, for the goals of justice, mercy, compassion, love, and liberation.

I’ve gotten to where I see the political party system for what it is: the pursuit of temporal power. Parties are groups of people with shared interests trying to work together to gain control of the levers of worldly power. And they serve an important purpose! They signal to your average voter, who does not have the time or the desire to consume massive amounts of political news and posturing, what a candidate stands for. If you go into a polling booth, and see a “D” next to a candidate’s name, you can be fairly certain of where that person stands on the issues, and vote accordingly. This is a very good thing. The myth of the ultimately informed electorate is a wonderful idea, but it is just that: a myth. Parties serve reality beautifully. Speaking from the political science major in me, I am strongly supportive of the political parties and the important role they play in American politics.

But, again, they are pursuing temporal power. And that is not the duty or the calling of the Church. The Church, we who make it up as committed followers of the Way of Jesus, have a historical duty to stand outside the structures of power, and speak prophetically to it’s wayward ways. We can’t become identified with power, lest we become compromised and lose our moral authority.

We do this because it is what Jesus did. Jesus did not stand with the party factions of his time, whether they be Pharisees or Sadducees or Zealots, against the imperial menace. And he surely paid for that refusal; he must have seemed terribly unpatriotic in his refusal to join in the System! But Jesus understood that temporal power is fleeting and ultimately hollow. Real change, lasting and infused with justice, comes from outside the ways of the world.

Now, don’t take this to mean that, as a Christian, you should completely disengage with the political process. Absolutely not. Be involved. Join a party. Work for candidates and causes you believe in. But, remember, that work happens in a different place than your Christian identity. You values can and should influence that work, but keep it in perspective, that this work is temporal, and be aware that real change comes from another place.

This is what fundamentalist, evangelical Christianity has seemingly forgotten in America. Instead of operating as an outside, prophetic voice, right-wing Christians have decided, over the course of the last thirty years, to marry themselves to a political party and ideological movement. I’m sure their initial goals were pure and well-intentioned. But, the association with and wielding of political power has corrupted this portion of the Church. It has come to believe that the pursuit of power for the sake of power is the calling of the Church. It has come to see Power as the way to impose their view of the world on others. Rather than changing hearts and minds the Jesus way – namely, with love and respect and compassion – they see an easier path in top-down power assertion.

This movement has come to a head this year with the rise of Donald Trump, and the rush of American evangelical leadership to abase themselves at his feet and kiss his ring. And Trump has done everything he can to encourage this, making awkward and obviously unfamiliar attempts to demonstrate his religious bona fides that fall flat when he show shows his obvious unfamiliarity with religious language or thought.

American evangelicals have done this because they see their power waning in an increasingly diverse and secular America. Instead of listening to what Americans in 2016 are saying about religion and Christianity and what they need from the Church, they have decided to double down on the 1980’s era playbook, attaching themselves to Trump in the hope that, if he wins, they can again impose their way on America, and thus grow their ranks artificially, rather than organically.

This is why I write about Trump so much: there is only one candidate, and one party, so intensely enmeshed with American Christianity and faux religious language. There is only one candidate and one party willing to skirt the edges of blasphemy and turning off an entire generation of seekers for the sake of power. There is only one party attempting to justify capitalism and bigotry and violence through the guise of Jesus. There is only one candidate and one party claiming the mantel of Christianity and denying it to those who look, think, or believe differently than them.

Trust me, the minute Hillary and the Democrats begin to appropriate Christianity in the name of anti-Christian initiatives, I will be all over them. But the Democratic Party, for all it’s many faults, has certainly proven itself willing to cultivate true religious freedom, in the form of the ability of people of all or no faiths to practice their beliefs as they choose, as long as that practice doesn’t infringe on the rights of others.

The Republican Party, and their leader Donald J. Trump, on the other hand, are fair game, because they want to be seen as the Party of Christian America. Thus, they open themselves to the full range of criticism and attention from Christian bloggers like myself. It’s not because I am a Democrat or Hillary backer trying to electorally defeat Trump; it’s because I am a Christian who cares about the way that the message of Jesus is portrayed in the world, and as such, I only see one American party besmirching that name and image. So, I write extensively about Donald Trump. And I will continue to do so, as long as he persists on appropriating my faith for this own secular, unjust and hate-filled ends.