I was flying from Singapore to Australia as the results of the election were coming in and, perhaps unfortunately, there was CNN International live on the plane. I switched to a wonderful PBS documentary on the jazz bassist Ron Carter (highly recommended) but kept switching back to check how things were going. All the while I was remembering how I was driving from California to Arizona on January 6, 2021 when the attack on the Capital was taking place, listening live on SirusXM and then with my iPhone perched up on the dashboard, listening and watching in horror.
I certainly don’t want to get into any polemical battles. By now we have all hardened into our positions and it is not the time even to try to change anyone else’s mind. The thing is done. There is little to debate anymore, just wait to see how it unfolds. This is what the majority of American people want. That is how democracy works.
It’s not that I wanted Kamala Harris to win so much as I, along with many conservative Republican Christians, just wanted Donald Trump and MAGA to be defeated so that America could be rid of the poison that Donald Trump has brought to our great country. So we could get back to the great debate about policy differences. I am so so sad that most of my fellow Americans did not want that.
What Jimmy Kimmel said on Wednesday, November 6 during his monologue, spoke for me. He was roundly pilloried for it on social media afterward because he was fighting back tears, which I suppose a real man would never do.
“It was a terrible night for women, for children,” he said,
“for the hundreds of thousands of hard-working immigrants who make this country go,
for health care, for our climate, for science, for journalism, for justice, for free speech.
It was a terrible night for poor people, for the middle class,
for seniors who rely on Social Security,
for our allies in Ukraine, for NATO and democracy and decency.
And it was a terrible night for everyone who voted against him.
And guess what? It was a bad night for everyone who voted for him too.
You just don’t realize it yet.”
I keep thinking three things.
First of all, the Bully won. The bullies won. As bullies usually win, at least in the short term.
And second, how can we ever preach the Beatitudes, the Sermon on the Mount, with a straight face again, let alone call ourselves a Christian nation?
Third, and this is the one that makes me really sad: What do we tell our children?
That Jesus was apparently wrong? If you want to make it in this world, do not follow Jesus! You need to imitate the bullies, imitate the ones who spew hatred, who spread falsehoods, threaten violence, demean those who are weaker than you, and demonize their enemies. You can also align yourself with racists and riot against your country and ignore its judicial system if things don’t go your way. Imitate people who do that. That’s how you win. You can also lie, cheat, abuse women, and break the law. We used to choose our leaders based on character, but character does not matter anymore (at least this side of the grave). That, apparently, is the American way now.
For the rest of us—including we followers of the poor man of Galilee who hung on a cross and preached the power of love and self-surrender, and all people of good will—we had better stick together and protect each other from here on out because the bullies are running things now and make no mistake about it—they are out to humiliate us. They are already doing it. A woman acquaintance of mine recently got these responses to her posts against Donald Trump.
Go f-ck yourself.
Get f-cked.
Your body, my choice.
Get back in the kitchen and spread your legs.
Die libtard.
Trump will f’ing destroy you.
This is why women shouldn’t vote.
Never move your commie ass to NH!
And yes, that is what Donald Trump has unleashed and given permission to because that’s the way he speaks, as he did at the Al Smith dinner last month with the Roman Catholic cardinal (shame on him) laughing at his side. Just as he gave permission to the Proud Boys, and to the white nationalists in Charlottesville in 2017. These are mean people who are armed and dangerous and will not hesitate to harm us if we get in their way. They’ve said so, beginning with their leader.
We just might face persecution. So, let’s take care of each other, protect each other, but let’s not meet violence and hatred with violence and hatred. Look to the freedom fighters on Edmund Pettus Bridge for inspiration. Non-violent resistance in the name of God or however you call the Power-Greater-Than-Yourself who sustains you is what is called for now. Shame them with your love, mock their way of acting with your sincere kindness.
And please don’t let your children admire them so that they grow up to be like them. Let’s quietly build something different.
And please do not give up believing that they are wrong. That love is stronger than hate. That kindness is more enduring than bitterness. That is where our hope is based. And try to convert Mr. Trump’s followers to the actual Gospel of Jesus instead of the anti-gospel of folks who have often twisted Christianity into an aberration of its true spirit and use it as a political, cultural cudgel.
Read the Beatitudes every day. Memorize them. Read Dr King and Dorothy Day, read Cesar Chavez and Gandhi. Read Jim Wallis and John Dear. That may be the kind of heroism that will be called for in the days ahead.
As Vaclav Havel said, “Hope is a dimension of the soul, an orientation of the spirit.” However, he says “it is not the same thing as joy that things are going well,” at least not in the short term, “but rather an ability to work for something because it is good, not just because it stands a chance to succeed. ... Hope is not the conviction that something will turn out well, but the certainty that something makes sense, regardless how it turns out.”
Even though the bullies won, let’s not stop doing the right thing, even if it doesn’t look like it will succeed. Let’s pray for the strength to speak the truth, with love, to power. Because the arc of the moral universe is long—but it bends toward justice, God’s saving justice, who raises the lowly from the dust and casts down the mighty from their thrones.
I say that as a monk and a priest. But I echo this as an troubadour, the words of Toni Morrison:
This is precisely the time when artists go to work. There is no time for despair, no time for self-pity, no need for silence, no room for fear. We speak, we write, we do language. That is how civilizations heal.
Along with Cornell West, I am a prisoner of hope, even if things don’t look too good right now. There is a light that can overcome the darkness. But there is no darkness that can overcome the light.
