Irresistible Force or Immovable Object?

“A foolish man who built his house on sand. The rain fell, and the floods came, and the winds blew and beat against that house, and it fell—and great was its fall!”

Jesus - Matthew 7:26-27

I do not intend to take anything away from Joe Biden and the Democrats, nor to criticize them. However, regardless of what you think of Donald Trump and the movement identified with him, they are on center stage in the US right now. Nor am I interested in any sort of political advocacy. Rather, I want to explore my ponderings about human propensities and vulnerabilities. Historical dynamics are certainly in play. Insights from literature, such as in MacBeth and Richard III, highlight the human universality of our present day that extend well beyond politics.

Since the 2020 election, Donald Trump has certainly consolidated his power and control in the Republican Party. The people in the Trump movement are unswervingly loyal and vocal in their support. Recent changes in electoral policies and practices in several states clearly favor those who will receive Trump support in the 2022 midterm elections and make a successful run for the Presidency by Donald Trump in 2024 seem plausible. 

On the other side of this is the gathering storm of impending crises for Donald Trump and the people and organizations surrounding him. The legal and political efforts to get his tax returns made public still continue. Several legal actions pending against a variety of Trump enterprises and organizations. The rejection of the results of the 2020 election is not relenting. The January 6 storming of the US Capital has brought both criminal and civil proceedings against those who participated. The conflict between Trump and his people with the Congressional committee investigating January 6 keeps these tensions in public view.

I sense we are witnessing something of a collision of the irresistible force and the immovable object. I tend to see Trump et al as the immovable object and the gathering storm as the irresistible force. Others may find reversing that to be more meaningful. Or perhaps it is like a cyclotron accelerating particles to crash them into a target of very heavy atoms splitting their nuclei and releasing a tremendous burst of energy. Or maybe two gargantuan black holes colliding in the deep reaches of space soaking up everything in proximity to their gravity.

I am neither making a prediction nor preferring an outcome for what seems it could define the course of our society for generations to come. Will the Trump movement collapse on itself like colliding cultural black holes? Will it release a burst of energy that reinvents the US and sends it in unanticipated directions? Will there be long term immobility and division as the forces in play strive against each other with neither making any headway? I am not looking for definitive answers to resolve these and a myriad of related questions. Rather I am inviting other thoughtful people to enter into serious discernment of our times.

Your Political Presuppositions May be Dangerous to Your Health

My tongue in cheek speculation for which there is no evidence is that Covid-19 vaccine resistance may be a liberal conspiracy for suppression of Republican voters, extrapolated from these lines from the New York Times (that voice of loser liberals), November 8, 2021.

[The Covid-19 vaccines] proved so powerful, and the partisan attitudes toward them so different, that a gap in Covid’s death toll quickly emerged.

In October, 25 out of every 100,000 residents of heavily Trump counties died from Covid, more than three times higher than the rate in heavily Biden counties (7.8 per 100,000).

The vaccines are remarkably effective at preventing severe Covid, and almost 40 percent of Republican adults remain unvaccinated, compared with about 10 percent of Democratic adults.

 

Two Realities

It's not just politics, but how politics had intentionally sown not just division but undermined trust and truth to achieve its own ends, including coopting "religion" as a weapon of fragmentation and even language so communication becomes impossible. I am not the first one to recognize this, but I have observed for a while (and even wrote about it) that what we are experiencing is not just disagreements on competing philosophies. We are living in such disconnected and discontinuous realities that dialog and debate are no longer possible. From within the construct of each reality, the political stances make sense, but since the realities are so different they leave no way to address what is or is not true. I suspect that this infection has intentionally been foisted on the Church to the point that the Gospel (good new of Jesus) is obscured.

My hypothesis is that the Obama presidency represented a significant segment of the US population who have felt their voices were not heard, and not just Obama himself, but the movement surrounding him articulated that long suppressed voice. That fueled the MAGA movement that also felt their voice had been dismissed for a long time and felt threatened by the likes of Obama (from the 60s: the peace, civil rights, environmental, and women's movements). Trump and others around him spoke for that voice. The MAGA movement harked back to the 1950s as though that was a normative golden age when "America was great," which of course the people whose voices were heard in the Obama years viewed as an era of oppression and darkness. Ordinarily, when the spokesperson for a movement is defeated in an election the movement fades away, but that is clearly not happening. The refusal to acknowledge that lost election is a cue to just how incongruous these two realities are. Those differing realities are not just liberal vs. conservative debates (conservatives such as George Will and David Brooks have pointedly distanced themselves from MAGA). This discontinuity is evident in a variety of ways besides the 2020 election, including response to Covid-19 and climate change.

Not an Essay - Just Venting

 I hope that by writing this out, I can free my mind for other things that I really need to focus on, such as stepping up care for my wife after her father's death.  I don't expect anyone to read this, but I suppose some might if they are browsing in my blog.

My sense is that one does not need to like or agree with Joe Biden and the Democratic Party to recognize that Donald Trump is evil: viciously vindictive; blatantly dishonest or (to put it more charitably) dangerously deluded; a manipulative con-artist at best.

As I observe his responses after the 2020 election, I keep wondering when everything will collapse around him: legally, politically, ethically. Yet, he seems to have a iron grip on the Republican Party, in ways that seem to me to be totally incongruous with historic Republican principles, conservative political values, and most dramatically evangelical Christian convictions. I can't help but wonder what sorts of threats and revenge are keeping them under his control, yet a substantial following is voluntarily not just loyal but enthusiastic. 

PQT – Prior Question of Trust

Perhaps the most valuable course I took for my MA from Wheaton Grad School (early 70s) was Biculturalism with Dr. Marvin Mayers (anthropology/mission). He started us out with what he called PQT – prior question of trust. Mutual trust is essential before people of differing cultures can accomplish anything together, whether the cultural differences seem great or small. This became a reliable compass on the journey of my pastoral career.

To me this makes sense out of the social schisms that I have observed in the US the last dozen or so years. Race, climate change, election integrity, and responses to the Covid-19 pandemic are just the most obvious. Strident voices clamor to claim they should be trusted and those with a differing perspective should not be trusted. The citing of evidence is dismissed by asserting the source is not to be trusted rather than by addressing the evidence.

My observation is that the fragmenting and polarization of our society has plunged the US into cross cultural crises. Without trust, working together for constructive efforts has become impossible. Even communication has become impossible as words and ideas are assigned mutually exclusive meanings and become weapons to attack trust.

I wish I could extract from that class fifty years ago a strategy for answering the PQT for our time. I am reminded of a Peanuts cartoon in which Snoopy is writing a book on theology. When asked the title, he replied, “Have you ever considered that you might be wrong?” I believe that level of humility among those in positions of public influence and responsibility is essential for breaking this impasse of trust.

 

Clearing My Mind About Afghanistan

I have no expertise nor knowledge nor access to information to address the recent events in Afghanistan, only my personal responses to what is publicly available. So I am not writing to enlighten or influence anyone or anything, only to clear my mind so I can move on.

My opinion is that the collapse of the Afghan military and government and the rapid take over by the Taliban was inevitable from the moment the first US military forces arrived in Afghanistan. The only real question was: on whose watch would it come?

After the terror attacks of 9-11-01, the mood of the US public was hungry for revenge. George W. Bush recognized and responded to that, not only in Afghanistan but also in Iraq. Barack Obama followed conventional wisdom of building troop strength in the illusory hope of completing the mission with violent force.

By the time Donald Trump became President, the mood of the US public had changed to wanting to stop sending US young people and resources on a costly, hopeless errand. Accurately perceiving that, the Trump administration negotiated a treaty with the Taliban with the hope of a peaceful, orderly withdrawal. If Donald Trump had won a second term, what we have just witnessed would have come on his watch.

But it came on Joe Biden’s watch, and it will rightfully be an historic hallmark of his administration.

2020 US Presidential Election: A Metaphor for Competing Realities

As I have been pondering the responses to the 2020 US Presidential election and subsequent developments, I have wondered if that has become a metaphor for much larger competing perceptions of reality and even truth. Two mutually exclusive voices have rallied significant adherents who each think the other is deceived. As they angrily vilify each other, another significant contingent shrugs or worries, “I don’t know what to believe anymore.” My observation is that this has infected the Church in the US (seemingly of all ecclesiastical and theological traditions) so that those who are accustomed to forming their understanding of reality and truth through Scripture and faith are marshalling their religious arguments to support one or the other of the competing voices of reality and truth and disparaging those who don’t fall into line. So Scripture and faith have become subservient to the cultural clash of perceptions of reality and truth. I believe this metaphor is relevant to much more than the 2020 election. It is certainly at play in the Covid-19 pandemic, but I think a bit of consideration will bring to mind a host of other issues, well beyond the political realm. Rather than giving my list or proposing a solution, I hope to stimulate vigorous thinking and dialog.