---

Life is exhausting these days for lots of us, and I think I’ve figured out why. I think it’s having to sit through the pretending.

You see, it’s bad enough watching over a third of our nation becoming fully indoctrinated into a sycophantic cult of personality of the very worst kind of person, to see once reasonable people abandon any semblance of benevolence toward diverse humanity.

It’s rightly heartbreaking to see those we love so seduced by power, addled by racism, and deluded by tribalism that they’ve declared war on immigrants and, vaccines and gay kids and the electoral process.

And yes, it’s infuriating witnessing tens of millions of Americans having their minds slowly poisoned by Fox News and Franklin Graham to the point they defend a domestic act of terror on our Capitol or take the side of a murderous regime’s genocide or celebrate their neighbors being thrown into concentration camps.

As wearying as all that is, it’s so much worse having them invoke love of God and country in the process.

That’s what makes these days so difficult for so many of us: not merely coming to terms with the beliefs and prejudices and phobias of those we are daily surrounded by here, but having to contend with their constant projection about us and their refusal to simply own who they are. It’s the nonstop, hypocritical, farcical performance art.

Good people are so tired of traitors masquerading as patriots, of the treasonous continually waving the flag, of hateful people peddling a God of love.

They’re tired of human beings with no empathy pretending they care about the sanctity of life, of the loudest prophets of America First having the least regard for so many Americans, of the self-righteous sermonizers defending a predator.

Where are the selflessness, generosity, and hospitality that were supposed to mark the lovers of God and country?

Where are the lives that replicate the embrace of the poor, huddled masses affixed to the foundation of Liberty?

Where are those who emulate the love of disparate neighbors at the heart of the Gospels?

Patriot. Christian. American.

These words have all lost their meaning: words that used to cost something to claim, labels that once came with even a modicum of transformation, and self-identifiers that had previously required a measure of evidence displayed in one’s life.

The flag and the cross that used to hold such meaning to so many of us are now just stolen iconography wielded by the immigrant-hating wall-builders and the violent anti-abortion zealots.

Using these words and wearing these symbols has become more and more difficult for us, as they now align us with the very antithesis of our moral convictions and guiding principles.

People who truly love this country, those who earnestly seek a faith expressed in love, human beings who are burdened to make America worthy of the speeches and anthems—we find ourselves branded heretics and traitors and apostates, forcefully displaced from religion and country by these angry squatters who have taken up residence in them.

True patriots should want all Americans to vote, they should oppose would-be dictators, they should yield to the Constitution, and they should demand a nation that is offered to everyone equally.

Actual followers of Jesus should defend the vulnerable, they should give comfort to the sick, food to the hungry, welcome to the immigrant, and love to the least among us.

And while the masqueraders and pretenders parade around in grand performative acts of love of God and country while willfully betraying both—the rest of us are going to have to fight to hold on to our nation and our religion, and to care for a world that needs desperately authentic people of faith, morality, and conscience who simply live a love that doesn’t need to declare itself loving.

As far as patriotism and faith go, this nation needs the real thing again.

1 comments

---

(Warning: this article contains depictions of sexual violence and may be triggering for survivors of assault)

Donald Trump is a court-adjudicated rapist.

This is not speculation.

It is not conjecture.

It’s not a Left-Wing talking point.

This is documented, established fact.

It was unequivocally declared by a judge.

It has been repeatedly upheld in the courts.

He is a rapist.

And to any decent human being, that would have been a dealbreaker.

It wasn’t for them.

Donald Trump’s name is listed tens of thousands of times in the files documenting one of the most prolific and vile child trafficking rings in history, orchestrated by a man with whom he was a close friend and collaborator, one he traveled with. partied with, and corresponded with.

For people with normal ethical standards, this would be a stark, uncrossable red line.

For them, it proved not to be.

Donald Trump has been accused by dozens of women of rape, sexual abuse, and physical violence, including a woman who testified before the FBI that Trump raped her when she was just 13 years old.

For actual followers of Jesus, this would all be stomach-turning and condemned as the darkest kind of evil.

For them, it hasn’t been.

For tens of millions of our family members, lifelong friends, neighbors, coworkers, and classmates, none of this has mattered. His well-documented brutality has never been a liability.

Despite a vast and reprehensible body of work, filled with proven sexual assault, alleged pedophilia, boasts about forced affection, credible accusations, and vicious public verbal attacks on women, he still receives their undying allegiance.

Instead of joining decent humanity in dragging him and his accomplices into the raking light of legal accountability for their atrocities against the most vulnerable, they obfuscate, they feign ignorance, they move the goalposts, and they slander the victims.

For all their performative sermonizing about protecting girls and young women, Trump’s supporters have shown through their silence, through their refusal to acknowledge reality, and through their steadfast adoration no matter how disgusting the revelations that they simply don’t give a damn.

Unthinkable violence against children, sadistic degradation of women, absolutely monstrous allegations of assault; they’re all trumped by the pathetic cultic affection they have for a man who in any other sphere of life would be a pariah where good people gather.

They have put political wins, Supreme Court Seats, and the cheap high they get off hurting people vicariously through him above the dignity and safety of other human beings. In the face of legal reckoning, he has received the protection of the highest seat of power in this nation, one they’ve helped him retain.

They know what he’s done, and it has not dampened their passion.

And this, perhaps as much as any moral or ethical malpractice they’ve engaged in to support him (and there has been so much), cannot be something we let them off the hook for, no matter what they say after he is no longer in power or no longer walking this earth.

When time and justice catch up to him, when his regime is finally dismantled, and some kind of normalcy and stability return to our nation, their breathless worship of a violent, sadistic sexual deviant will be their legacy.

He is who he is, and his supporters are who they are.

Donald Trump is a rapist.

He will always be a rapist.

His supporters will always have passionately supported a rapist.

They cannot be excused for that.

They cannot be forgiven for that.

 

2 comments

What in the white trash hell is happening here?

How did we get here?

I’m not talking about the perfect storm of corruption, toxic religion, and white nationalism that has resulted in the unthinkable ascension to power of one of the most reprehensible, festering sacks of organic matter to ever leave his putrid slime trails on the planet.

Greater minds can unpack the complex historical and social explanations for the inexplicable sequel given to the greatest single collective electoral error in our history.

What I want to know is how, at the precipice of our two hundred and fiftieth year as a Republic, have we devolved into the disgraceful public urination that took place at our nation’s Capitol.

If you took every stereotype of the ugly American, the most monstrously exaggerated caricatures of we as a people, the absolute worst clichés of this nation at our most base, most ignorant, and most vile, and you fed it into an AI program with the prompt: make something disgusting—this is what you’d have ended up with.

We should be the United States of Embarrassment today. There should be nonpartisan vomiting and facepalming all across this nation after witnessing this wasteful, 60-million-dollar, star-spangled, asinine, white supremacist dudebro circle jerk on the lawn of the People’s House, our house.

Watching this garish Temu Roman Colosseum cosplay filled with grifters, predators, and criminals should infuriate every single American who has a shred of self-respect or love of country left.

In any other iteration of our country, this would not stand. Knowing that their taxes were funding an opulent, violent, phobic birthday party for a cognitively failing serial pedophile would propeled our proud and patriotic forebears into a complete overthrow of those in power.

In a time when people have to choose between paying their rent, or affording routine healthcare, when families can’t afford groceries or to fill their gas tanks, when we’re funding foreign genocides and domestic concentration camps, when we’re told we can’t afford to house or feed or care for the most vulnerable—this should make our blood boil.

More than that, it should wake us all the hell up: conservative, moderate, or liberal; Democrat, Independent, or Republican; straight or queer, well off or struggling, native born or immigrant, to the reality that we are all being played.

The billionaires (and the trillionaire) are mocking us all right now; dismantling the systems and protections designed to care for each of us, ignoring the Constitution, discarding morality, hoarding the wealth that was meant to be shared, devouring our natural resources, turning us against one another—and giving us a sweaty, bloated 60-million-dollar middle finger to us in the process.

November should be a reckoning for these narcissistic vampires once and for all, but we shouldn’t wait that long. Last night should be enough. This should be the final straw for every human being who calls this place home, rousing each of us out of whatever apathy, denial, political tribalism, wishful thinking, or American exceptionalism that has kept us on the sidelines.

The white trash, classless stupidity on the White House lawn last night was a microcosm of the prolific mockery of America that this President and his accomplices have made for ten years now.

These people believe that we’re ignorant, that we’re lazy, that we’re too distracted and soft to give a damn about the fact that they’re fleecing us, that all we need is a the easy high of fireworks and faux patriotism to lull us into inaction.

If we allow them to prevail, we’ll have proven them right.

Who are we going to be, America?

0 comments