Days Away From Trump's Second Term: Where I Am, Where Are You?

I’ve taken some time since the election to sort out where I stand and what I want to do with this blog, this space.

I’ve contemplated just shutting it down. I haven’t advertised it widely, so no one much has found it, let alone found it useful. I note with gratitude that a few of you have either online here or offline to me personally offered your support.

I’ve thought about moving the blog to another platform such as Substack or Medium where it is apt to get more readers and therefore more participants.

And I’ve thought about just leaving it here and using it as my own therapy, inviting others from time to time to comment and contribute. For now, that’s what I’ll do.

On December 31, 2024, I finished a decade (and a little more) leading Jonathan’s Circle, a non-profit I began for the purpose of offering safe spaces for adult men to integrate whatever they consider to be their spiritual lives and their sexual experiences. In a somewhat oblique way, that experience has taught me much about the intersection of faith and politics. I’ll not unpack that now. I’ll only say that I’m stunned at how loathe many people are to talk about what really concerns them. Specifically, the default position is one of keeping things in silos that are assumed to have nothing to do with each other. Are faith and politics ultimately in different silos that have no commonality?

I don’t think so. I continue to sort through what I’m called to do as a person of faith about the political situation in the United States.

At this juncture, it is arguable that the Union as envisioned by the Constitutional Convention of 1787 and as articulated by President Lincoln in his Gettysburg Address is being damaged and distorted beyond recognition. Some aspects of the Union still operate more or less effectively, such as the federal judiciary, the Supreme Court notwithstanding. Those with a long view of American history are very much aware that the system has been severely tested time and again since 1789. There have been times when it has seemed all but lost. The Civil War is the greatest single example. But there were the assassinations of Lincoln, Garfield, and McKinley. I’m thinking, too, of a sobbing Woodrow Wilson after he signed the Declaration of War with Germany knowing what a hideous failure it had been to keep the United States neutral. There were the Dred Scott and Plessy vs. Ferguson decisions, a half-century apart, but twin pillars of racial inequality. I’m thinking of a virtual declaration of the KKK as normal during the Wilson administration. I’m thinking of the assassinations of John F. Kennedy, Robert F. Kennedy, Martin Luther King. Watergate. Viet Nam. Nixon and Spiro Agnew. The Iran-Contra crisis during the Reagan years. Don’t forget McCarthyism.

Yet in all this we have never had a convicted criminal as the sitting President, as we are about to have. We have never had a pair of oligarchs on a tear to wrest government from the people on the pretext of getting the government out of their pockets. We have never had one of our two political parties overtly standing in many cases against the Constitution, in the thrall of a man who has declared his intention to use government to punish his political enemies and who has publicly led an insurrection against democratic processes set forth in the Constitution.

Am I to sit back in resignation? Am I to say nothing, assuming that the Republic is dead and beyond any repair? Or am I to believe that what I say and do will, indeed must, have a positive effect on changing the course of a nation headed down the road of fascism? Am I to mimic major media outlets like The New York Times and The Washington Post who behave as if the soon-to-be-inaugurated President and his administration are owed respect despite his sworn intentions to dismantle much of the government as we know it? Am I to be a part of “the resistance,” whatever that means? What about withdrawing from the political fray and hunkering down in the context of the Church and similar communities, continuing to make noises on behalf of justice and peace, despite what is likely to happen on a national scale, such as the deportation of immigrants?

I could go on, but you get the picture.

I know one thing at least. I know that I have no desire nor any intention of spending a lot of time stewing about Donald Trump’s every bluster, tweet, outrage, infamy. If I learned nothing else from his first term it was that he feeds on creating chaos and needs conflict and confusion like a fire needs oxygen.

There is a part of me that remembers the second terms of Eisenhower, Johnson, Reagan, Clinton, and George W. Bush, and realizes that we have no idea what is going to happen that might change everything. I take no comfort in that. In fact, if anything, I think it would be a mistake to wait around for some catastrophe or other (e.g., the pandemic) to work its mischief to Trump’s disadvantage. And yet I think that the last thing I want to do is to protect people from the results likely to occur from his re-election. I think we need to see just how awful things can be when rights, liberties, plans are annulled or upended by the policies that need to be exposed in all their sinister effects.

I wrote this far before Christmas, and I’ve been thinking about it more ever since. As I daily scroll through my inboxes deleting about 95% of all that is there, I’m becoming clearer that I need to focus. An element of what has me enervated is the plethora of worthwhile causes that are begging for my support, pleading for my dollars, and sometimes trying to “guilt” me into acceding to their requests. I’ve decided to support a limited number of causes and organizations:

• The fight against White Christian Nationalism, most notably through Faithful America, a 501(c)(4) organization.

• LGBTQ+ Equality, especially through the Woodhull Foundation, and through occasional support of other organizations like HRC (The Human Rights Campaign).

• Men’s Erotic and Spiritual Empowerment, especially through Jonathan’s Circle, Men in Touch, and occasionally through Body Electric.

• Spiritual Deepening through reading, personal involvement and giving my own time writing and reflecting on things like faith and politics, the subject of this blog.

I’ve also let go of a great many politically focused “news” sources. I’ve canceled my subscription to The Washington Post. I seriously limit my use of The New York Times. I continue to read The New Yorker. I read Jess Craven’s daily Substack, “Chop Wood, Carry Water.” I read Heather Cox Richardson’s “Letters from an American” daily. I continue to get NPR and The Guardian online. I sporadically read Jay Kuo, Joyce Vance, and Scott Dworkin on Substack. Now that I list it all, I’m amazed at how much political material I was reading during the past several years.

That’s where I am. What about you? Where are you?