For what it’s worth, Carol, I don’t think Donald Trump won by tapping into America’s “racist underbelly,” and I don’t think Hillary lost because she’s a woman. I think a majority of people who voted in this election did so in spite of their many misgivings about the character of both candidates. That’s why it’s very dangerous to argue that Clinton supporters condone lying under oath and obstructing justice. Just as it’s equally dangerous to suggest a Trump supporter condones gross generalizations about foreigners and women.
These two candidates were the choices we gave ourselves, and each came with a heaping helping of vulgarity and impropriety. Yeah, it was dirty job for sure, but the winner was NOT decided by a racist and craven nation – it was decided by millions of disgusted Americans desperate for real change. The people did not want a politician. The people wanted to be seen.Again I return to our leitmotif: One of the issues at play in an age where people believe religion is, at best, a tool for secular political organization and, at worst, a fantasy maintained by fools, racists, homophobes, and misogynists who are also morbidly obese, is that there is no compelling, unifying moral voice in the public square. In other words, we, as a society, believe in nothing other than the transient satisfactions that may be allotted to us by those in secular power. Barack, Donald, Hillary, et al [the Latin abbreviation of "and others"] become our Jesus, perhaps our God. When our God is not promoted, then we must wail, rent our garments, gnash our teeth, and beat up the nearest person who does not look like us. Perhaps we need to go so far as to "unfriend" someone on social media.
This is all symptomatic of nihilism, the belief that nothing has inherent meaning and nothing is of universal truth or value. Once clergy begin to believe this, and many of those in mainstream Protestantism have, nihilism is made complete.
Nietzsche, the philosopher of nihilism, is almost right. God is dead, although God has not been killed. People have made God irrelevant to their lives so fully that, for them, God has never existed nor ever will.
I suppose that this is where I shrug and admit defeat, but instead it gives me hope. Not hope for general society, as it has chosen its path, but hope that, in the midst of all of the superficial spirituality that claims authority in our society, there are still those who wish to experience Christianity in its true and glorious form. Will it be enough to maintain buildings or power a bureaucratic institution? Lord, I hope not.
For those of us who are believers, it will be the opportunity to offer that which is closest to the Christianity of Jesus, a manner in the here and now to find balance, peace, and grace that cannot be marred by the vicissitudes of those who refuse to believe in anything that might liberate them.