Mornings are strange these days.

The sedative haze of sleep slowly begins to lift, and my conscious mind starts taking inventory and assembling the data and reporting back its initial findings:

I’m in bed… I’m awake… I’m alive… It’s Wednesday…

But most of the time, that’s about as far as I get when I am suddenly assaulted with another, far more sobering realization:

I’m in America…

… shit.

And, in a disorienting few seconds, I’m violently ripped from any sense of peace or rest by the lengthy litany of atrocities from the previous day: the Constitutional crises, the acts of unthinkable brutality, the falling away of systemic safeguards, the metastasizing mass of sycophantic cultists.

A jolt of adrenaline comes flooding in as my barely awakened body senses imminent danger without me needing to do a thing other than remember the lawlessness of our President, the complicity of his party, the bent knees of the billionaires, the genuflecting of the Church, the capitulation of the Press, and the snarling brainwashed rabble of once-reasonable, decent human beings with whom I used to feel at home.

And just like that, mere minutes after returning to the waking world, I want to go back to sleep, already exhausted, already disheartened, already grief-stricken.

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It gives me absolutely no joy to say that on most days now, I hate waking up in this country. I confess to regularly daydreaming about being an expat: of putting new roots into foreign soil and reclaiming somewhere else what it feels like we’ve lost here.

I find myself imagining what it would be like to greet the day in another country, someplace where racism wasn’t celebrated, where empathy wasn’t a character flaw, where corruption wasn’t so prolific, where hatred didn’t find such safe harbor from its leaders and their disciples.

Yet, I know the reality is that some of this is me lamenting the devil I know: that while seeing America with a microscope and the rest of the world with a telescope, my vision is not as clear as it could be.

Yes, there are certainly a myriad of places on this planet where gun violence is not ubiquitous, where predators are not protected, where illness does not bring bankruptcy, where Science is not assailed, where religion is not legislated, where diversity is not reviled, where education is not under siege, and where democracy is not evaporating. But these places have their own dangers and demons, and both time and proximity would surely reveal them.

So, while I do hate waking up in this country and I do dream of waking up in another one, perhaps it isn’t about my geography changing but about me changing the geography I find myself in.

Maybe I don’t want to wake up in another country but in a more just, more beautiful, more compassionate version of this one; an America that embodies the greatest of its aspirations, one that more fully becomes what the songs and anthems promised we could be, one that would be worth someone else inheriting.

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I’m not going to pretend I’m sure that such a place is still possible. It may be that the systemic damage we’ve sustained in the last eighteen months is irreparable. Our collective bloodstream may be so poisoned with tribalism and prejudice that we cannot recover. The unholy marriage of Church and State may indeed be too far along to drive a wedge between.

But I suppose that’s why they call it a dream.

And while I am beginning yet another day here exhausted, disheartened, and grief-stricken, I am going to find a way to step out into it and do all I can with the light and the hours I have before darkness and sleep arrive.

And if millions of us all do the same, maybe one morning in the future (maybe in November), we will find ourselves greeting the dawn not with sadness but with jubilation, not with dread but with hope.

Right now, I hate waking up in this America.

I want to wake up in a better one.

Do you struggle with the reality of the nation you wake up in? Is it difficult to find the resolve to keep going? How are you holding the tension between wanting to leave and wanting to stay and fight? Let me know in the comments.

Well, Trump supporters, I have to admit, you sure won this one.

Your guy really handed our rear ends to us this time.

I can see why you’re pounding your chest and dunking on us liberals on social media about this Lake America business. You all finally put Canada and all of us woke idiots in our places.

I mean, sure, you can barely afford groceries at this point.

And yeah, even if you happen to be able to, there’s a high likelihood that what you eat will kill you, shred your stomach lining, or leave you with explosive diarrhea.

No worries, though; at least you’ll be able to get the absolute bare minimum of healthcare that you’ll need to get a second mortgage on your house to afford, providing you aren’t underwater on the first one.

Hopefully you don’t miss any work, though, because your PTO is basically nonexistent, but hey, you get to taunt all us leftist losers with a big ol’ “Lake America” middle finger.

That’s gotta cushion the blow of the stratospheric bills that you’re going home to (Enjoy filling the gas tank on your F-150, by the way).

The important thing is that you’re winning.

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Yes, our Federal Government has weaponized our armed forces against entire cities, inciting violence, disrupting the local economy, and terrorizing innocent human beings for exercising their freedoms of speech, expression, and assembly.

No matter, those elemental, Constitutionally guaranteed personal liberties and many others are essentially null and void at this point anyway.

And sure, the separation between Church and State has now been rendered nonexistent, with a religion of compulsion now being legislated for tens of millions of people who do not adhere to those teachings.

And yeah, our Government is enabling not one, but two violent, genocidal eradications of entire populations.

Our systems of education, human health, and national security are under the control of unqualified, ill-prepared, and mentally unstable grifters whose allegiances are to a person and not our Constitution.

The President has declared war on half of the population of this nation, using the power of his platform to perpetuate lies, stoke division, sow chaos, and escalate conflict.

We’re also now alienated from nearly all our global allies, and decades of carefully crafted partnerships have been destroyed in a matter of months.

And yes, your kids will be more susceptible to preventable illness, the food you’ll be eating will have fewer safeguards, your wages will continue to decrease, and your personal freedoms will gradually vanish.

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But the bottom line, MAGA friends, is that you’ve won the war over a body of water’s branding (too bad you can’t say the same about the never-ending war in Iran that you’re currently paying out the nose for).

With your party controlling the presidency, Congress, and the Supreme Court, America must now be as great as you’ve been telling us for years that it would be, and so you have no cause to be concerned or reason to be miserable.

You must be happy right now with the economy, your paycheck, your healthcare premiums, food safety, the level of gun violence, the wars of choice you’re funding, and the prospects you have for growth, health, career advancement, and financial opportunities.

So, congratulations, Trump supporters, you’ve renamed a lake—and all it’s cost you is a functioning government, a working democracy, human rights, national peace, economic stability, affordable groceries, affordable healthcare, qualified leaders, and global standing.

Personally, as a card-carrying Lib, I feel fully and completely owned.

I’m sure all those poor Canadians your guy stuck it to this week feel truly defeated, as they retreat to their peaceful nation where they have affordable groceries, excellent healthcare, a living wage, national pride, global respect, and leaders who aren’t felons and rapists.

I hope your Lake America t-shirt makes you feel like the winners you are…

For the love of God and all that’s good and beautiful, haven’t you had enough, America?

Enough book bans,
culture wars,
bathroom bills,
family separations,
poisoned food,
renamed lakes,
unrelenting surveillance,
tax-funded genocides,
and wars of choice?

Haven’t you had enough of terrorized refugees,
billionaire techbros,
hospital room ICE raids,
protected predators,
ignored lynchings,
kleptocratic malpractice,
legislated religion,
and of being helmed by a lecherous, drug-addled, vile, barely literate serial predator and career criminal?

Haven’t you had enough of brutal assaults on the rights of women,
on immigrants,
on transgender teens,
on unarmed black men,
on affordable healthcare,
on free speech,
on our Military?

Have you had enough of relentless attacks on the poor,
on the disabled,
on the environment,
on peaceful protestors,
on the electoral process,
on the US Postal Service,
on objective truth,
on empathy,
on diversity as an idea?

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Haven’t you had enough nonsensical conspiracies,
denials of Science,
mockery of expertise,
ignored climate change,
silencing of doctors,
stoked racism,
polluted courts?

Haven’t you had enough cruelty,
enough bigotry,
enough criminality,
enough divisiveness,
enough malevolence,
enough hatred,
enough ugliness?

Haven’t you had enough needless suffering,
enough unnecessary death,
enough Constitutional crises,
enough curated conflict,
enough manufactured emergencies,
enough presidential tweet tantrums,
enough intentional chaos?

Maybe it’s just me.

Maybe you’re fine with it all; maybe this is good enough for you; maybe you’ve resigned yourself to this dystopian white nationalist fever dream as inevitable. I sure as hell haven’t.

I’ve had enough of this frenetic circus of sociopathy over the past ten years to last a thousand lifetimes. I’m sick to my stomach of the nation we are, and I’m in-the-marrow-of-my-bones tired of being embarrassed of and grieving over the place I call home.

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I want something better.

I want equity pursued.
I want bigotry shouted down.
I want justice escorted in.
I want compassion to trend.
I want kindness to go viral.
I want diversity to be celebrated.
I want the poor, tired, huddled masses to breathe again here.
I want ceremonial American “greatness” to give way to actual common goodness.
I want to stop being at the mercy of sadistic, hateful human beings who have contempt for everything and everyone.

What the hell do you want for this place, and are you willing to do whatever is necessary to get it?

November is coming, and there’s no way to overstate the reality that this is the last stand for all of it, for all of us. What we do over the coming weeks will initiate our rebirth or write our epitaph as a Republic.

You and I have this moment to end what we’ve had enough of and to usher in what we want to see more of; to demand what we cannot live without and to condemn what we will not abide.
We have this moment to create a home for ourselves and our children, and for other people’s children, for everyone who lives here and for all those who dream of living here.
We have this moment to leave something for the vast multitude on the horizon of history who will inherit this place; this moment, between the America that is and the America that could be—and for better or for worse, will be.

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And it is all in our hands.

Regardless of their gerrymandering and suppression and intimidation and lawlessness, We The Pissed-Off People can wield our numbers to defy and defeat them together.

We simply have to decide to put aside our purity tests and our excuses and our infighting and our minor differences and our apathy, and do the damn work together instead of bickering, complaining, and distracting ourselves into fascism.

No politician is likely to move people who are still inexplicably undecided; those still stuck in laziness, hopelessness, or ignorance; those who still aren’t planning to use their voices.

Only you can do that.

Only you can reach people in the trenches of your relationships with them: in your home and your neighborhood and at your school and at work and on your timelines. You can be the difference in the day.

What have you had enough of over the last ten exhausting, disorienting, heartbreaking years?
What do you want to leave for those who will follow us?
What will you do in the coming days in response?

America is not in the hands of a politician or a preacher or an athlete or a celebrity; it’s in our hands. Yes, it’s true, no one is coming to save us. The only question left is, will we save ourselves?

In the weeks ahead, may you leverage your voice, your time, your resources, your circle of influence, your network, and your community, and may you do all you can to transform the America that is into the America that could be.

This will be the dawn or the death of the nation we dream of making.

In November, may we wake up in that hopeful, beautiful, glorious place of possibility again.

I have had enough of this divided, corrosive, violent, failing America.

Have you?

Hey MAGA, a quick word.

I see you out here today, trying to claim Dolly Parton as your own, as if she were one of you, as if you and she were kindred spirits, as if your heart and hers were aligned.

Just stop it.

Dolly was far too kind to tell you this while she was alive, so I will: you and she had little in common. Oh sure, from a distance, it might seem that way, but get a little closer and dig a little deeper and the differences could not be greater…

Dolly loved people, all people.

Unlike you, she loved without qualifiers, catches, caveats, or conditions. Her love did not come with strings or theological hoops or political litmus tests. In Dolly’s no one had to stand outside or prove their worth or earn her decency.

Dolly loved America, real America.

She wasn’t about that flag-waving, Don’t Tread On Me, America First, Christian Nationalism, Send Them Back nonsense you continually peddle as patriotism. Her America was diverse, open-armed, inclusive, and kind; a place where everyone deserved to feel at home.

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Dolly was a Christian, a Jesus Christian.

Her deep and abiding faith did not need to be loudly broadcast or worn as a costume. It did not seek to bend anyone to its will. It was not something she wielded like a hammer in forced compliance. Her faith simply and clearly showed up, in an unrestrained love for neighbor that reflected the open-handed, open-hearted compassion of Christ that you mock as toxic.

Dolly believed in family, every family.

A faithful, passionate supporter of the LGBTQ community, Dolly’s advocacy of family was not confined to some rigid, White Evangelical monument to straightness and whiteness. She understood something in the core of her being you never will: that love cannot be limited and will not be hemmed in.

Dolly Parton was not MAGA in any way; she was its beautiful counterpoint.

She was a vaccine-supporting, nature-preserving, book-loving, trans-defending gay icon, and nearly everything she stood for flies fully in the face of the cruel, sneering, exclusionary narcissism of your vile, bloviating, spray-tanned messiah and his hateful movement, which you so joyfully partner in.

Dolly Parton showed respect to every single human being who ever had the good fortune of being in her orbit, whether at arm’s length or from thousands of miles away.

She left everyone feeling seen and heard and loved and respected, regardless of orientation, pigmentation, nation of origin, or any other qualifier.

She never saw anyone as an enemy to be defeated, never attempted to gatekeep blessings or opportunity, never demanded that someone earn her decency, and never dehumanized a single soul.

Dolly was an American, a Christian, and a human, but using those words alone does not guarantee similarity or affinity. In the specificity of a life lived, that’s where patriotism, faith, and humanity reveal themselves. As they say, God is in the details.

Yes, you should aspire to emulate her and endeavor to replicate the generosity and unconditional love she so easily moved through this life with.

And you’re welcome to show her respect and gratitude; in fact, you should.

But please, don’t try to claim her as yours today, MAGA.

She simply wasn’t.

Note: By the way, Dolly loved you as much as she loved anyone, because that’s who she was. She respected you, believed you should be free to be exactly who you are, to believe that you believe, and to support who you support politically, but that doesn’t change the reality that your support of MAGA Republicans’ platform runs counter to so much of what Dolly stood for, cared about, and gave her money and time to.

This one hurts like hell.

This planet has lost so much with the passing of Dolly Parton that it’s difficult to even find a foothold for the grief, a place to begin to process all that she was and all that she gave us.

In the coming days, there will be countless, well-deserved tributes devoted to her seismic songwriting and singing career, her formidable business acumen, her indefatigable optimism, and her easy, infectious joy.

Dolly will be rightly eulogized for the effortless grace she moved through the world with, for the gentleness she extended to every person in her path, and for the humility she somehow managed to hold onto despite reaching near-sainthood status among fans, admirers, and peers alike.

Her life and career have and will provide an inexhaustible treasure trove of lessons for those of us who remain—and for those on the horizon of history who will not have had the great fortune to live here while she did.

Far more eloquent people than I will find ways to capture in words her ineffable spirit and the limitless wisdom they will glean from her in matters of faith, songcraft, and empire-building.

All I can say is that Dolly Parton knew how to be human better than just about anyone I can think of.

For me, one of the biggest takeaways of Dolly’s passing is the way she reminded us what wealth and influence can do when they are in the hands of someone whose life is oriented outward, someone who remembers what it is to lack, someone who values being human over being a billionaire.

With a staggering personal portfolio of publishing royalties, tour revenue, licensing deals, business ventures, property investments, and the spoils of a lifetime in the highest echelons of the entertainment business, Dolly Parton could have had more with very little effort.

She could have followed the lead of the Musks and the Bezoses and the Zuckerbergs and the Ellisons. She could have hoarded her fortune, growing more narcissistic and tight-fisted. She could have partnered with the legion of malevolent power-holders, motivated only by the insatiable allure of more. She could have exploited the influence she acquired to amass even greater fortune.

Instead, Dolly Parton spent her life giving her wealth away.

She started the nonprofit Dollywood Foundation, marshaling her resources and influence to fight illiteracy in her beloved Tennessee community.

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She created Dolly Parton’s Imagination Library, which to date has donated over 300 million books to children all over the world.

She raised money for the American Red Cross and HIV/AIDS-related charities.

She helped fund cancer centers and hospitals.

She donated a million dollars during the throes of COVID to expedite vaccine development.

She provided wildfire relief following the Great Smoky Mountain Wildfires, financially supported victims of Hurricane Helene, and worked to preserve the American Bald Eagle.

Living in a country music ecosystem often populated by homophobia and racism, she risked losing financial opportunities and fan support by advocating for the LGBTQ community and for people of color.

Over and over again, Dolly Parton reminded us that money and power do not alter character but reveal it. She leaves this planet as an enduring folk hero and a universally beloved national treasure because she never allowed her lofty place in the culture, her legend status as a performer, or her considerable riches to make her forget where she came from or why she was here.

We’ve gotten so used to seeing the wealthiest people on the planet being the least compassionate, the most unapologetically cruel; rejecting their better angels and courting their inner demons. We’ve watched them partner with despots, devour the vulnerable, and pillage the planet to further the gap between themselves and the disparate humanity they end up in contempt of.

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Dolly Parton was the antithesis of this. We could always count on her to get it right, to do the decent thing, to model dignity, to always pass the good human test. That’s why her loss hits so hard, and why we owe it to her to remember what she taught us about the point of being here: to stay human.

Whether we have five bucks to our name or we’ve amassed a small fortune, whether we toil in obscurity or receive the praise of multitudes, Dolly Parton’s life stands as a reminder that we are not our achievements or our accolades or our net worth. We are not our career successes or our social standing or the kudos we merit.

As she so eloquently testified for 80 glorious years, the measure of a life is in what we do with what we are entrusted with, how we treat people around us, and the person we are in both lack and abundance.

Among the countless roles and titles at which Dolly Parton has so excelled, her single greatest performance was as a human being.

That has made her among the richest people to ever grace this planet.

Share your memories and gratitude for Dolly in the comments.

If you loved, respected Dolly and want to celebrate her extraordinary life, please support her Imagination Library.

Some days I wonder if this nation can be saved.

I know what I’m supposed to believe.

I’m supposed to believe that America is still in its infancy, that it is a beautiful but complicated idea, that we simply haven’t become what we can and will become.

I’m supposed to remember that history is cyclical, that all barbaric regimes are temporary, and that every evil empire invariably falls.

I’m supposed to hold fast to the dream that we will emerge from this scalding present crucible, transformed and made better by the conflict.

I know that I’m supposed to believe that we have still not seen our best days yet, and that when we eventually do, it will be worth all the struggle we’ve endured to claim the nation our forebears dreamed of.

In the past, I’ve often believed that. I’ve written it. I’ve preached it.

Now, I’m not so sure.

250 years into our collective lifespan, we are as afflicted with systemic racism as we’ve ever been, white nationalism has completely infected the entirety of one of our political parties, and we are teetering perilously close to extremist minority rule that will in effect, permanently silence the voices and votes of the vast majority.

With every bit of the planet’s accumulated information now literally in the palms of our hands, too many of our people are still believing easily disprovable falsehoods, still falling victim to nonsensical conspiracies, still vulnerable to baseless lies about their neighbors.

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Even with the benefits of hindsight of our shameful and bloody history, a toxic cocktail of overt racism, neanderthal theology, intellectual ignorance, and self-preservation has rendered a large swath of America hostile to Science, terrified of diversity, and irrationally violent toward vulnerable people.

And perhaps worst of all, a substantial portion of this nation remains emotionally tethered to one of the single most reprehensible human beings on the planet, despite a decade of prolific lawlessness and unrepentant moral filth. His ineptitude, narcissism, predation, and criminality have not proven to be dealbreakers but selling points.

How are decent, reasonable people supposed to work with this?
How do we find common ground with those who insist on dehumanization of those who are different?
How can we engage in constructive conversation or honest dialogue with people whose reality is so arbitrary, whose truth is so malleable, whose moral goalposts are forever shifting?
How can we forge a new and more equitable America, while so many Americans live perpetually backwards, pining for a bygone day when fewer people had a voice or a vote?
How can we coexist with those who would rewind this nation to a time when women, people of color, and LGBTQ human beings had their value determined, their options dictated, and their futures defined by straight, white men?

If our families and friendships and workplaces and churches and political systems are all still this saturated with supremacy, can an interdependent community of disparate humanity with equitable access to life, liberty, and happiness ever be a reality here?

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Romanticism and misplaced optimism aside, is America as we envision it still possible, with MAGA’s poison having infected its bloodstream?

It may of course still be possible, yet with every year I think it becomes less and less probable. The longer we live as a nation with these untreated collective cancers of heart and mind, the greater opportunity they have to metastasize exponentially and the less chance we have of eradicating them for good.

History reminds us that the more we abide brutality and tolerate discrimination, the more normal they become, the more difficult they are to excise. Our present normal is not sustainable if we’re ever going to grow into something truly beautiful.

I want this nation to become what the songs and the anthems declare we can be, but I’m not sure we all share that desire. I think many of us want the ugliest atrocities of our past to be our future, and that may be a disease too invasive to be healed of for the rest of us.

There’s an old saying: when the horse is dead, dismount.

The ride may be over for America.

Maybe this horse is beyond saving.

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Yes, I’ll show up again today, leveraging my time, my resources, and my voice in the cause of equality and empathy; to do all I can let freedom ring and let justice roll down like a river, though I admit, it feels like a fool’s errand.

Still, I want to know I left this life doing everything I could to help us get well, and that’s what will propel me back out into the fray once again.

I’m waking up in this America that is, and will be fighting like hell to craft the America that could be, as futile as that sometimes seems.

For ten interminable, exhausting years, MAGA has been an invasive, insidious national cancer.

I wonder if we can survive it.

What about you? How do you view the damage of the last decade? Do you see our demise as a foregone conclusion, or do you feel hopeful that transformation can and will come? Let me know in the comments.

Friends, these days will kill you if you’re not careful.

As we find ourselves fully engulfed in the Category 5 shit storm that is a second Trump term, two things are irrefutably clear: it’s much worse than we thought it would be, and it’s gonna get much worse before it gets better.

At this point, even the most pessimistic post-2024 election predictions have woefully underestimated the scope and velocity of the carnage to our systems of protection, our long-established structural institutions, and the elemental freedoms we’ve counted as givens.

The emotional whiplash of a relentless stream of diabolical Executive Orders, unrestrained sociopathy, stratospheric economic malpractice, and pathological attacks on vulnerable people is enough to level even the most measured and otherwise imperturbable among us.

In other words, our nervous systems weren’t built for this very special kind of homegrown hell.

What that means, in rubber-meets-the-road practicality, is that all the normal tried-and-true avenues of self-care may likely prove insufficient.

Even if you are somehow able in this disorienting, perpetual state of national emergencies and existential crises to actually keep a strict regimen of sleep, good nutrition, hydration, exercise, meditation, prayer, time in nature, relational connection, artistic pursuits, therapy, and limited media exposure—you might still feel like you’re about a millisecond from completely losing it in any given moment. (I know that I am.)

Now, you definitely don’t want to abandon the above practices, as they’ll surely help tether you to health and sanity, but I want to suggest that you might want to philosophically make other alterations in light of the gravity of these days; some new daily commitments you can make to yourself to navigate the nightmare. Consider these:

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Burn bridges to toxic people. It’s a noble thing to want to reach across lines of tribalism and to try and stay connected with those whose opinions differ from ours, but there’s a limit to what is healthy, or called for, or even hunamly possible. Recently, our friends, family members, neighbors, and co-workers have revealed with great clarity who they are, what is stored up in their hearts. At this point, it’s perfectly fine to determine that some people, even people we know well and love, are morally incompatible with us.

Have the damn dessert. Yeah, we all know that as a rule, emotional eating is a bad idea and that intentionally overindulging won’t be good long-term, but given the number of historic implosions happening right now and the uncertainty of so many things, it’s a good idea to treat yourself to some comfort food or a libation or some small sensory pleasure, to remind yourself of the beauty found in simplicity. (Now, what wine pairs well with the fall of a Republic?)

Stop procrastinating away happiness. If you’ve been postponing a dream trip, holding off on writing your novel, or putting off a new project, cut that crap out, now. It isn’t trivial to attend to such things when disaster hits, but essential. One of the greatest forms of resistance is to live fully, joyfully, and creatively. Yes, it may all be hitting the fan right now, but you can put on a poncho and press on. Don’t wait for permission to really live, because fascists will not provide it.

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Ask anything and say everything. One of the blessings of destabilizing, consequential moments like the ones that we’re in is that they help us clarify who we are and precisely what is worth living for; the causes and people that matter to us. Over the last two years you’ve likely learned a great deal about yourself, or you’ve been reminded of stuff that you forgot. And if things are all going sideways anyway, it’s a great time to be exactly who you are without apology or editing.

Stop giving a damn what people think. Repeat after me: someone else’s opinion of me is none of my business. Unbelievably, there are still people who are so addled by some toxic cocktail of denial, wishful thinking, ignorance, and American exceptionalism that they insist on tone policing those of us who are sounding the alarm and announcing the sky’s plummeting toward us. Those people do not deserve your time or emotional bandwidth. Refuse to be burdened by their expectations or bound by their sensibilities; you have a nation to save.

Please understand that I’m not minimizing what we’re going through collectively and what you’re enduring individually or what’s ahead for all of us. These are sobering, harrowing, dangerous times, and we will be pressed up against threats and worries many of us have never faced before. That’s all the more reason to live the hell out of single every day.

So yes, friends, please take good care of your physical, spiritual, mental, emotional, and relational health by adopting practices and patterns that can provide a buffer between you and the terrifying hellscapes on your timeline, outside your window, and in your head.

But beyond that, in what feels like (and may indeed be) the worst-case scenario, make it a priority to radically care for yourself by refusing to compromise or deny yourself simple pleasures or postpone your dreams or silence your own voice.

The world may indeed be falling apart, but we don’t have to.

What are some self-care rules you’ve adopted recently that you’d add to my list? Please share in the comments.

The Christian Right has been right.

For decades they tried to tell us that the sky was falling, that devils and demons were walking among us, that the end of all we love was so very nigh.

For decades they lamented our imminent moral devastation, trying to prepare us (as good prophets do) for the quickly encroaching enemy coming to enslave decent people to their sadistic religious perversions.

They pounded their pulpits with ferocity and thumped their Bibles with abandon, forecasting this country’s certain doom at the hands of violent, self-righteous extremists, and we refused to listen.

We rolled our eyes and dismissed them as conspiratorial cultists whose hold on reality was tenuous, at best. And yet, they had it right all along.

It turns out that every single one of their raw-throated, brimstone-breathing prophecies was true:

The wolves would come to devour the innocent in the name of their God.
There would be a twisting of religious texts to justify vile evil of every kind.
Women, LGBTQ people, and immigrants would be terrorized by a radical minority claiming divine authority.
Marginalized, oppressed, and vulnerable human beings would be discarded, hounded, and brutalized.
Good people in America would be preyed upon by opportunistic monsters wielding scripture like a hammer.

These sage Evangelical prognosticators had everything about the approaching disaster correct—except its source. Conservative Christians neglected to predict the actual genesis of this great decimation, and all they had to do was look in the mirror.

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You see, it isn’t and will not be some supposed Islamic horde running amok through our nation with a violent, theocratic religion of coercion meant to enslave people to their draconian moral code. Radical Muslims are not an existential threat to our nation, bringing some punitive pestilence upon this nation. They are not here waging an unrelenting holy war on those in America who do not share their beliefs.

The real religious extremists have already breached the border.

The thick, black shadow of theocracy is already upon us.

White Christian Nationalists are here right now.

Evangelicals are the greatest existential threat to this diverse nation, and it isn’t even close.

For years the Christian Right has been warning us about Godless hordes coming to destroy America, and it turns out this was true; it’s just that the words were autobiographical.

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As a longtime pastor and lifelong Christian, I’ve had a sick sense of déjà vu watching politicians professing to be followers of Jesus dismantling every program designed to care for the vulnerable and the hurting, seeing the way the corrupt are being awarded greater power, watching empathy vanishing and hatred skyrocketing, witnessing people legislating their antiquated theology upon everyone else.

I’ve heard this story a million times before; proclaimed from pulpits on Sunday mornings, unleashed in religious social media rants, and shouted through bullhorns on street corners—with one notable twist.

I knew this was coming, or at least I should have. We all should have. These harbingers of doom were absolutely right to warn us, and ironically they were the approaching pestilence. In the sickest kind of self-fulfilling prophecy, they were the plague of these days that they have long said would come.

It would be the Christian preachers and the evangelists abandoning the compassionate heart of their faith tradition, perverting the words of their scriptures for their agenda, and selling their souls for a high place overlooking the world.

They would be the very false prophets they told us that we should like hell run from. These supposed disciples of Jesus would be the ones to betray him with a kiss and send him to a bloody, undignified end.

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We are approaching an election, and the monsters need a distraction. They need to press into the irrational fear of those who are not awake and alert enough to see clearly, and Islamophobia is on the menu.

Don’t be fooled by White Evangelicals who are spending every waking moment dehumanizing and demonizing our Muslim brothers and sisters.

Pay attention to where America is right now, to what is happening here in this moment in the name of God, to the oppressive marriage of Church and State currently being consummated, to the unthinkable harm being done this very day by professed righteous soldiers in the army of the Lord.

Yes, the Christian Right was right; evil was going to viciously assail America, terrorize the lives of good people, and make a mockery of God.

It was just going to be an inside job.

Ignorance is not a compelling argument at this point.

We’ve all heard the theories for the last ten years: people still supporting Donald Trump are unwitting victims of the partisan media and Evangelical alternate reality that they’ve been raised in and are still captives of. We’re told that they’re continually surrounded by bad theology, fake news, and endless conspiracy, and so they aren’t bad people; they just aren’t seeing what we are seeing, and we need all to be more understanding.

We’re a decade into this madness. This just isn’t acceptable anymore.

There isn’t a sufficient excuse for being an adult so sheltered from facts and so truth-deprived that you can’t see Trump’s complete sociopathy and you can’t discern the existential threat he and his party are to this nation.

His supporters aren’t being asked to dig beneath some complex, brilliantly crafted ruse perpetrated by Conservative media and religious conglomerates working in concert. If you can read Trump’s own social media feed or listen to the bile he spews in front of the cameras at female reporters and political opponents, and not be fully disgusted to the point of vomiting, you aren’t a reasonable human being. Either that, or you are willingly choosing to engage in wild intellectual and theological gymnastics to avoid a reality that makes you uncomfortable, intentionally avoiding some really vile stuff that he and his collaborators aren’t even attempting to conceal anymore.

I’m fully convinced that nearly everyone still supporting Donald Trump knows he is a reprehensible human being; guilty of high crimes against this nation, atrocities against women, and war crimes around the globe. But they can’t admit to themselves or anyone else they made a mistake, and so, in an act of self-preservation, they are doubling down again and again.

They’re not stupid; they’re just willing to let America die on the altar of their pride, which may be far worse.

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Being an adult means being responsible for ferreting out what is real and what isn’t, and for making good decisions with the available information. This is what we demand from our children, isn’t it? We only let their ignorance be an excuse for so long, and then we remove that option because we expect them to be smarter than that at some point. And if we realize that they are smart enough to know better, then it becomes an indictment of their character.

If grown men and women aren’t willing or able to sift information and choose wisely because of their media choices or their circle of friends or their mental effort, the
net result is the same: they are enabling and protecting reprehensible behavior that places people in great danger.

If Fox News creates your reality, you’re going to be hateful toward lots of people: Muslims, LGBTQ people, immigrants, people of color, refugees—and on and on and on. And if you’ve been on the planet for a few decades, you should have developed the critical thinking not to allow a network that brokers in fantasy and fiction to be your baseline for truth. That’s a you problem.

If The Religious Right defines for you what it means to be a Christian, your Christianity is going to look nothing like the actual teachings of Christ. It’s going to be an angry, violent thing devoid of compassion and gentleness. That isn’t your preacher’s fault, it isn’t Franklin Graham’s fault, and it isn’t the Devil’s fault. As a thinking Christian who supposedly reads the words of Jesus and reflects on them regularly—you should see through this sham in a hot minute and soundly reject it.

If the brazen, unapologetic racism and xenophobia and misogyny on display right now is too subtle for your sensibilities, and if Nazis marching through town squares, supremacist politicians, and election interference fall beneath your radar, you either intentionally have your head in the sand or it isn’t on straight to begin with—and either is a crisis.

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Many of my white Evangelical friends supporting Trump aren’t as much stupid or unaware as they are cowardly. They held their noses in 2016, voted in anger or haste or error, and then quickly got out of the politics business, choosing to escape the consequences of their decision on other people. So Newsmax and the Conservative Christian Church have become convenient places of sanctuary for people with privilege wanting to hide from the results of their vote.

Again, they aren’t ignorant of reality; they just are opting out of it altogether. If it is stupidity, the affliction is highly selective, extremely localized, and very convenient. And if that’s the case, are we supposed to expect in year eleven or twelve they’re going to finally have a magical epiphany and part with him?

It’s time we stopped giving adult human beings the benefit of the doubt, simply because we think they’re not smart enough not to be fooled by religious shysters, fake news peddlers, and political snake oil salesmen. If that is true, then they’re also not smart or mentally capable enough to be presented with objective data or compelling arguments and to filter them responsibly. They are, practically speaking, unreachable with rational measures.

I’m tired of having to treat people like children when they aren’t capable or willing to see what even a child can see, what my children can see. They know hatred and bullying without needing to read a think piece or do online research or unpack layers of religion and history.

I’m over justifying bigotry and racism and the horrible stuff happening in the country, and giving people who perpetuate it a pass because they supposedly don’t realize they’re supporting a monster—when most of the watching world seems to get it.

In a time when information is available at our fingertips and when conversation and study and exploration are limitless, I’m through excusing supposed adults for not being able to make a decision that is based in reality, simply because they’re in some hateful, self-righteous, nationalistic bubble. That’s their fault, not ours.

I don’t hate these people, but I’m also not going to coddle them and encourage their ignorance anymore because lots of people are damaged when that happens.

Sooner or later we adults all have to own our supposed stupidity–and choose to be wiser

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To the Ministers in America,

I’ve been where you are.

For nearly 30 years, I stood in the pulpits and on the platforms where you now stand.

I know the difficulties of the work you do that many people don’t think about: the collective expectations of the people you serve, the incredible pressures that come from both above and around you, the number of opinions you have to respectfully sift through. And I know the tumult that often creates within you.

I understand the dizzying high-wire walk of trying to carry your personal convictions as well as the virtues and values you’re entrusted to steward as part of your position, and I’ve felt the fierce internal whirlwind when those things don’t align.

And I also know how easy it is to find your voice gradually silenced, to grow beholden to a congregation or a denomination; to let the practical fears of losing your job or your health insurance or your livelihood slowly force you to make tiny concessions, usually without even realizing it.

I’ve felt what it feels like to soften your delivery, to edit your messages, to start talking around issues that you know will create conflict or bring turbulence or slow things down, and how tempting it is to rationalize why this is simply part of doing ministry.

And above all, I know that you didn’t begin this work wanting to become a compromised people-pleaser with watered-down words, unspoken passions, and feet of clay.

Because of this, I need to ask you: why exactly did you begin this work?

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What is preventing you from doing the one thing spiritual leaders are here to do: letting your faith speak unequivocally, pushback, conflict, and retribution be damned?

What is keeping you from centering the poor and the outcast and oppressed in that way that Jesus calls his followers to do?

Like him, you are here to be Good Shepherds: loving caregivers to the harassed and helpless sheep in your care and the fierce opposition to the wolves who would devour them, wherever they show up and however much influence they have.

It feels like those ministers are a swiftly dwindling species nearing the brink of extinction; like courageous prophets speaking truth to corrupt power are rapidly disappearing.

I’m afraid that we are running out of Christian leaders who will stand against the hatred having its renaissance here in the name of God—and I need you to prove me wrong.

The American Church needs you to prove me wrong.

The American people need you to.

Immigrants and trans kids and Muslim families and young black men need you to.

This weary, beleaguered, terrified nation in the throes of Christian nationalism needs you to draw deep from your reservoirs of faith, to clarify your calling again, to ask yourself why you do what you do.

And after doing that, it needs you to find your singular voice and to speak in such a way that the heavens shake and powerful people stagger and sleeping people are roused awake to the urgency of the moment.

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All faithful people here need to be reminded what that faith requires of them, so that they can be similarly courageous where they are.
Non-religious people here need to know that believers aren’t all wall-builders and book-banners; that many are moved by their better angels to acts of beauty and kindness and generosity, not exclusion and cruelty.

This world has enough ministers who’ve been content to stay silent and become complicit in the weaponizing of religion and the ascension of bigotry. We don’t need any more of those. America is at capacity for sanctified cowards who forever straddle the fence of neutrality.

I would never be cavalier with your life or your work. I don’t know your ministry setting, your family situation, your financial condition, or your faith journey. All I know is that if you consider yourself a spiritual leader of any kind, the one thing you have, the only thing of real value, is your authentic voice birthed by your spiritual convictions: not your church’s, not your supervisor’s, not your loudest church members.’

Your singular, irreplaceable gift is your personal burden to heal and help and lead—and your willingness to make that burden known without dilution.

The voices of the religious frauds and performative hypocrites are deafening right now. They are drowning out the compassionate, fiercely loving voice of Jesus, and it is your calling and your responsibility to be a steward of that voice. If you refuse to do that, no matter what reason you give to justify it, you have no business calling yourself a minister.

You don’t need to speak in a way that intentionally harms, that willfully divides, or that resonates nationally, but you can speak to the small world entrusted to you, and with unmistakable clarity you can plead for mercy, demand justice, advocate for compassion, and beg for audacious love to be what believers are known by in these days.

Sunday is coming, friends.

May you greet it with courage.

Dear Karoline,

Well, here we are, or more accurately, here you are.

I’d like to say I’m surprised, though that would be a lie.

We all saw this coming for you (well, those of us not indoctrinated into a treasonous predator’s mindless death cult). Like Pam and Tulsi and Kristi, and countless women before, you were destined to find yourself here.

This was always how this was going to end: with you finally understanding that you were never of any value to him, that you were always a tool; simply another expendable woman that he used for his pleasure and unceremoniously discarded.

This is the inevitable reality when one tethers themselves to a monster.

Good people tried to warn you from the very first day you stood in front of a podium and confidently spoke words that were bereft of truth and harmful to millions, but once you sign away your soul, you have to ride the thing out to the end.

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I wonder how you ended up here.

I wonder if you know.

I wonder, if in the quiet places, away from the lights and the bombast and the attention, you can now rewind through your story and see the thousands of small moral failures that led you to this place; the endless stream of seemingly insignificant concessions that began to overtake you.

I wonder if you can look back and see precisely where you lost the plot of the faith you so loudly profess; how you completely abandoned the compassionate, kind, loving Jesus of your religion and instead, willfully lied for a living on behalf of serial predator.

As you stood before the American people day after day, trafficking in untruth, justifying brutality, and celebrating prolific violence, all while wearing the cross of a dark-skinned foreigner who preached love for neighbor, did alarms of hypocrisy go off inside your head, or were the money and proximity to power too loud for you to hear?

But more than anything else, Karoline, I wonder if you feel like whatever you got for your soul was worth it.

Did eighteen months of rented importance, racists’ applause, and the public praise of a despot profit you enough to justify all that you sacrificed to get it?

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When you realize that History has recorded every lie you uttered, documented each act of treason, and preserved each word of effusive praise for a war criminal, does that worry you at all?

When your young children grow up and learn that their mother was the strident mouthpiece for one of the most despicable human beings to ever walk the planet, will all of this have been worth it?

I can’t answer that for you—but from where I’m standing, it wasn’t.

It wasn’t worth the people beaten, abducted, and murdered by ICE.
It wasn’t worth the lives of children blown apart in Gaza and Ukraine and Iran and Lebanon.
It wasn’t worth the grief of families who’ve lost healthcare and their homes and their businesses, and their livelihoods.
It wasn’t worth the pain of trans teenagers, Latino mothers, and black men who’ve been terrorized by their neighbors and their Government.
It wasn’t worth a nation riddled with conspiracy, decimated by tribalism, and assailed by suffering.

Because, while you were not the author of this chaos and death, you were its spokesperson, Karoline. You were its voice. You woke up every single day, and you legitimized it, championed it, defended it, and sold all of it—and so it is on your hands, as well.

As a woman and a mother and a wife and a Christian and a human being, maybe auctioning off your soul was worth all of that to you.

And if so, I feel really sorry for you.

This should be easy.

We are now two years into the most openly corrupt, inept, and relentlessly predatory presidential administration in our nation’s history.

We have watched an extremist minority commandeer Congress, the Justice Department, our Military, and the highest court in our nation, mounting an unprecedented repeal of the rights of women, of environmental protections, of voting rights, of elemental liberties.

Republican leadership across this country has declared open war on diversity, on education, on the legitimacy of our elections. Our checks and balances are nonfunctioning, our systems of protection have been compromised—and we are warring with one another.

We should be easily coalescing around our collective values, but we are not.
The upcoming midterms should be the slam dunk of the century, but they aren’t.
We should be rising together to eradicate this fascism en masse, but we’re not.

Some establishment Dems are formulating plans to combat rising Democratic Socialist candidates instead of asking why those people and platforms are resonating with voters, or what might be learned about their party’s weaknesses.

Far-Left activists incessantly push out strident, baby-with-bathwater objections to moderate candidates, disqualifying them for past behavior, one-time verbal gaffes, single-issue stances, or previous political positions.

Longtime party moderates are operating as if the former rules of engagement still exist, too paralyzed by fear and scarcity to do anything but what they’ve always done, while burn-it-all-down anarchists want to turn a massive tanker on a dime without acknowledging the diversity of thought among the voting bloc they seek and need.

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From the center to the fringes, we liberals war with potential allies, allowing no gray space of compromise, no personal evolution for people, and no possibility of future alignment with those who do not currently check every possible box. In doing so, we passionately partner in the work of our adversaries. We easily find ourselves violently fighting with one another over matters that are in fact trivial, when compared with all that hangs in the balance.

Put simply, the Left has a purity problem, and if we don’t get over it, it’s going to destroy us.

Meanwhile, despite some fracturing in the MAGA monolith, the other side is simply circling the wagons, making concessions, consolidating power, and gaining traction—spirituality and morality and virtue be damned. This is why we’re where we are today.

For all their sermonizing, Conservatives have never allowed their personal morality to get in the way of a political win. That has been the story for the past few years here: millions of people on the Right trading in their personal and religious values for the coming of a kleptocratic kingdom they will all benefit from. They have sacrificed their individual convictions on the altar of the bigger win, or at least, what seems like victory in the moment.

Now, I’m not asking moderates, progressives, liberals, and Left-leaning believers to do that. I’m not suggesting we collectively sell our souls the way our counterparts have. I’m not advocating for a collective treason against what we value.

We are different from our political and religious adversaries, precisely because we are more committed to our personal convictions than to purchasing influence.
We do stand for something greater than empty pulpit pounding and phony patriotic histrionics about Christianity and America under attack or returning to our days of former supremacist glory.
We are driven by moral and spiritual prompts that refuse to align with monsters or horde a consuming power that will corrupt us.
We aren’t fueled by a contempt that would snap its fingers and wipe out everyone else.

But if we can’t lay down our all-or-nothing, my-candidate-or-no-candidate absolutism and set aside our arrogant virtue to stand shoulder-to-shoulder against a formidable threat, we’re soon going to find ourselves with no voice whatsoever.

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Longtime rank-and-file Democrats, this is bigger than you.
Frustrated Progressives, this is bigger than you.
Democratic Socialist advocates, this is bigger than you.
Defiant Third Party holdouts, this is bigger than you.
Exhausted abstainers, this is bigger than you.
Ambivalent moderates of all parties, this is bigger than you.

Everybody needs to take a breath, find some humility, and talk to—not at or about one another.

We all need to understand how urgent these moments are. We need to stop killing our allies with friendly fire, and we need to discard the inconsequential battles of preference so that we can win the singularly vital war of which we all will prosper.

When our Republic is secured, and our essential liberties are restored, then we can go about the necessary and very attainable work of navigating our differences to renovate America into something we all can take pride in, something better than it has been.

But if we fail to confront this existential threat because we are distracted and divided by moral litmus tests, lazy squabbling, and performative purity politics, we will have all squandered the moment in front of us.

The Right is pushing America to the brink of theocracy and fascism, and we on the Left need to stop helping them.

We need to win together because when we win, life and the planet and the future does too.

It’s time we pulled ourselves together.

A full decade into one of the darkest chapters in our nation’s history, white people in this country need to be honest about something: White Christians ruined everything.

Over the last ten years, self-identified followers of Jesus have almost singlehandedly destroyed all that was good and decent and beautiful in America by hitching themselves to a monster and refusing to let go, no matter how unrepentantly evil he has proven himself to be.

I mean, think about it:

If not for them, his vile Access Hollywood video confession of assault is a deal breaker in 2016.
If not for them, his ridiculing of a disabled reporter is a bridge too far.
If not for them, he isn’t declared a Christian.
If not for them, he isn’t elected or reelected.
If not for them, there are no stomach-turning photo ops of opportunistic religious sycophants laying hands on him.
If not for them, thousands of brown-skinned families aren’t violated, terrorized, and treated like animals.
If not for them, no one breaches the Capitol on January 6th and throws our electoral process into chaos.

We are living in a completely different timeline, now, because of them.

If not for white, alleged Christians in our government, sick people aren’t creating GoFundMe pages to get routine medical care,
our elections aren’t polluted by techbro oligarchs.
women aren’t losing their fundamental liberties,
and ICE isn’t murdering people in cold blood and without accountability.

If not for White Evangelicals, his unhinged, racist vanity rallies are empty.
If not for them, climate change isn’t dismissed, science isn’t opposed, expertise isn’t mocked, and sound medicine isn’t disregarded,
If not for them, gun violence victims get more than #thoughtsandprayers platitudes.
If not for them, every pedophile and rapist in the Epstein Files is facing a legal reckoning right now.
If not for these Christians, MAGA is the extremist fringe movement it should always have been.

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Talk about losing the plot. Talk about mission drift. Talk about gaining the world and losing your soul. Talk about effing everything up for this monster... for this human garbage… for this loveless, joyless, empty, vacant nothing.

If not for the professed followers of Jesus, throughout this country, bigots aren’t emboldened to proudly parade their hatred in the light of day.
Sexual assault survivors aren’t belittled and traumatized anew.
Every one of his lies is named and condemned.
He is held accountable for his crimes and his immorality and his trampling of the Constitution.
If not for them, this planet is safer, more compassionate, and more just—period.

As a white person who grew up in the Church and pastored for decades, that’s a tough pill to force down.

Ironically, despite all their sanctimonious sermonizing, finger-wagging condemnation, and sky-is-falling histrionics, the white Evangelical Church has enabled, nurtured, and championed more inequity and more misery in these days than any other entity, and there is no close second.

For the disparate masses of the world, American Christians have become a barrier to belonging, a sanctuary for supremacy, and a hostile presence for the least of these.
By its marriage to a politics of exclusion, the Conservative Church has failed the poor, women, people of color, gender fluid human beings, the disabled, and non-heteronormative people.
It’s failed immigrants and refugees and foreigners; vulnerable and marginalized communities; non-religious and non-Christian human people.
It has failed everyone outside the tiny gated community of the white and the wealthy.
This is indeed a tragedy.

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But more than anyone, the White Evangelical Church has failed Jesus.

They have misappropriated his likeness, hijacked his name, and weaponized his message into something grotesque and oppressive—and it is rightfully repelling good people.

As someone still aspiring to a life of faith and still trying to speak into my religious tradition, it’s sobering to admit that we’re not here as a nation in this brutal battle for our existential life, we’re not at the precipice of authoritarianism, and we’re not steeped in this unapologetic supremacy, if not for people claiming to be devoted to the same Jesus I’ve grown up trying to emulate.

There are tens of millions of white people here, both Christian and non-Christian, who wake up every day working to be agents of kindness and generosity in this world, who are driven to sickness by the irreparable harm being done to this nation, to humanity, to the planet in the name of God.

And we, not people of color, not immigrants, we white people, are going to need to be the ones to make our presence felt in our neighborhoods, on social media, in school board meetings, and at the polls, and drive these charlatans and frauds out of power and influence, and into the places of irrelevance and shame they so richly deserve.

“So, this is what it’s like to feel normal.”

As I sat in a small cafe overlooking a sun-dappled Florentine piazza, that thought floated in with the evening breeze, bringing a protracted exhale that surprised me, as if I’d suddenly remembered how to breathe again.

It had taken me nearly five full days away from America to begin to realize how very unwell I’d been, how physically and emotionally depleted the past eighteen months had left me, and most alarming of all—how normal that exhaustion had become. It was as if someone interrupted the ubiquitous chaos I’d grown accustomed to and softly said, “Yeah, you don’t have to live like that.”

Little by little, with 4,500 miles and nearly a week now separating me from my beleagured home, all my recent symptoms had suddenly become clear: the jagged irritability bubbling always beneath the surface, the ever-present knot in the pit of my stomach, the low-grade dread hovering in the periphery of my thoughts, the pervasive hopelessness I’d gotten used to, the slow but certain attrition to my joy that no longer alarmed me.

Leaving America showed me how sick America has made me.

But it wasn’t just the change of scenery that had revealed the maladies afflicting me, afflicting us; it was the dozens of human beings I’d shared conversations with, people who reminded me that there are other ways to exist that I’d forgotten about.

Everywhere I went, shop owners, servers, Uber drivers, and other travelers from the disparate corners of this planet routinely verified how abnormal our daily life actually is:

Not everyone wakes up each day feeling they need to marshal every available resource to protect themselves from their elected officials.

Not everyone fears a routine surgery will bankrupt them.

Not everyone has masked, Government-funded goons murdering innocent people in their streets.

Not everyone has a career criminal and serial predator as a Head of State.

Not everyone is helmed by theocratic, conspiratorial Christian zealots.

Not everyone is watching every fundamental liberty evaporating.

Not everyone is feeling as though their nation’s best days are behind them.

And honestly, that all felt a bit shocking.

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That’s how insidious the sickness of living in this iteration of America is, how commonplace the brutality now is, how the monstrous now seems normal. We have been immersed for so long in a state of sustained urgency and unrelenting suffering that it no longer occurs to us that these are not the default settings of a civilized nation, that we are not supposed to be this deprived of optimism. We are gradually becoming acclimated to nightmarish realities that no decent human beings should ever make peace with.

My profound privilege is not lost on me. I know that many people here don’t have the good fortune of a respite from the horrors for 10 minutes, let alone 10 days. Most Americans can’t place geographic space between themselves and this country and have the precious white space of mental rest it yields, yet that doesn’t make the reckoning of the toll this place has taken on me, on all of us, any easier to accept.

I’m now back in the country I call home, and I’m trying like hell not to forget what I learned while I was away; the terrible afflictions that come from living here inside this unfettered epidemic of corruption and hatred. I want to remember how heartsick I’ve been, so that I can keep from sliding further into the abyss, so that I do not allow America to render me devoid of joy or bereft of hope.

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If there’s anything I can give you as a memento of my travels, it’s confirmation that none of this is normal, that we deserve something more than this dystopian bigot fever dream we’ve grown ever more comfortable with, that this leaden nihilism does not have to be our destiny, unless we allow it to be.

Maybe you’ve started to accept the unacceptable, maybe you’ve been emotionally numbed by the unrelenting atrocities, or maybe you’ve grown so weary from fighting that you’ve stopped remembering what it’s like to breathe. If so, may you be reminded that these are symptoms of illness, but they do not need to be a death sentence.

The only way we can help retain our sanity and stay tethered to our humanity is to not succumb to the sickness surrounding us, to not let this parasitic regime destroy us, to refuse to be swallowed up by the cancer of cruelty our leadership has released into our bloodstream.

To every American who is being sickened by America: take heart, keep going. We can get well together. We will.

Recently, I was on a Zoom call with some of my Substack subscribers. We were processing the state of our nation, which we all agreed was somewhere between sky-is-falling and Armageddon.

The conversation turned toward the alleged bright spot found in the reality of many of Trump's supporters joining the Leaving MAGA movement; finally being roused from the ten-year stupor of cultic adoration enough to see with lucid assessment that they have tethered themselves to a monster.

Some suggested with tentative optimism that after a confounding, infuriating decade of sycophantic devotion, they might finally be putting aside their fierce tribalism and joining the rest of the reasonable people in opposing this rapidly unfolding coup.

At first, I co-signed such a possibility as a sign of hope, but quickly realized that it was misplaced optimism. That’s probably not what we’re seeing at all right now.

The fact of the matter is, with very few exceptions, people who voted for Trump in 2024 (many for the third time) and who are beginning to come around enough to move them to action, have not had their humanity awakened watching his and his Administration’s violent, illegal weaponizing of I.C.E. against immigrants, both documented and undocumented.

They have not tapped into heretofore unaccessed reservoirs of compassion for LGBTQ people facing unlawful and unprovoked legislative and personal attacks by his surrogates in Congress, school board meetings, and in the streets.

They aren’t having their once-stone hearts broken by the abject horrors of the Epstein Files and moved to demand the unredacted contents be revealed, so that accountability for every monster and justice for every survivor would come.

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They haven’t experienced a miraculous, biblical Road to Emmaus spiritual awakening, realizing how many ways Trump has already violated the poor, withheld food from the hungry, visited injury on already suffering people, or urinated on the teachings of Jesus.

They aren’t being overtaken by some newfound responsibility as global citizens, feeling a sudden rush of affinity for the persecuted people of Ukraine, or Gaza, or Iran, or Lebanon.

No, the only reason Trump supporters are forming any kind of oppositional response to Trump is that the pain has become personal.

As they abruptly lose their jobs, see their companies move overseas, watch their 401(k)s evaporate, reckon with the skyrocketing grocery and gas prices, find their own voices silenced, and see their healthcare options dissolve, they are magically finding themselves becoming the resistance that decent human beings have been for a decade now.

Their rebellion is not born out of true contrition for their damaging alliances, genuine regret for being complicit in empowering a fascist, or a sincere desire to partner with the disparate human beings already united in saving our Republic and our planet.

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As MAGA Americans realize that they, too, are victims of the criminality and predation they initially hoped would only be for those despised others (the immigrant, the gay, the brown, the black, the woke, the blue staters), it is finally becoming a bridge too far. As their feet are finally put to the fire they wished upon so many others, suddenly immorality and overreach are becoming objectionable.

And this will continue to happen in the coming weeks and months with the people around us. We will see more and more conversions of convenience.

The moment members of Trump’s genuflecting multitude are jarred awake by the sobering truth that their whiteness and their party affiliation and their church attendance and their red hats won’t save them from the disaster they have helped create, then and only then will they care in the slightest bit.

I’d like to be wrong, but sadly, I don’t believe I will be.

And though it will still be a small consolation to see a larger swath of this nation find out that this president’s sociopathy will spare no one, it would have been nice if they’d been internally transformed by love for their fellow human beings instead of just for themselves.

The real victory would have been if they’d been moved by self-examination and not just self-preservation.

I could have celebrated their empathy, but I can’t celebrate their selfishness.

“I never wished for someone to die before. I’ve been suicidal many times in my life—but I’ve never been homicidal.”

So began the tearful confession of a middle-aged woman who approached me after an event in Lincoln, Nebraska. She paused for a second, exhaled loudly, and then continued, her voice shaking:

“I’m ashamed to say that I find myself wishing these terrible people would just... disappear, so that they can’t hurt us anymore.” She said, “I just feel like I’m waiting for them to get old and die off. What do I do with this anger?”

I knew what I was supposed to tell her, what I was expected to tell her, what I wanted to tell her.

I wanted to tell her that these impulses were wrong, that such feelings were unhealthy, that this kind of consuming hatred toward another human being was dangerously toxic.
I wanted to remind her that this level of contempt for a stranger was the very thing she abhorred in the people she feels this way toward.
I wanted to steer her from such negative energy… but I couldn’t do any of these things.
I understood her.
Her desperation and hopelessness made perfect sense.
Her terrifying headspace hit home.
This is a natural human response to unchecked brutality and unrelenting cruelty: wanting it all to end.
You don’t actually wish harm to people; you just wish harmful people would stop harming other people, and there seems to be nothing in them that will move them to stop, other than expiring.

When we see powerful human beings willfully doing damage to other people or to the planet, this rage is our heart’s alarm; it is our very humanity protesting against unspeakable violence that we feel powerless to do anything about. Imagining a world without predators and bullies and malevolent people is a way to stay tethered to our sanity; a defense mechanism against complete emotional collapse. Of course, we don’t desire violence or wish catastrophe, but we understand our past enough to know that sometimes injustice and hatred are generational: bigotry experiences a Renaissance, has a brief prolific period, and then passes. It seems like we are in the middle of that kind of brutal rebirth right now, and we want it to end.

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Throughout the history of the planet, when the powerful have viciously assailed mankind, there have been good people whose stomachs have been turned and whose blood has boiled in response, people who loved and cared and healed and prayed and worked, and who knew they might have to wait for change to fully come, through young people who rejected such hatred wholesale.

And that’s the pivot that needs to happen in our hearts when we feel that scalding anger at people who are presently evil: we look forward to what might be born on the horizon of history. We pour ourselves into the lives of young people, we work to change the hearts we can, we seek compromise and common ground with those who disagree with us, and we do everything in our power to prep the ground for the equality, diversity, and justice that will inevitably grow.

Of course, I’d never wish physical harm on another human being or ever rejoice in anyone’s early demise, but I confess that in these days I take some solace in the reality that we are all temporary: that everything shifts, that all tyrants pass away, that all evil empires fall, that all hateful movements die out, that all monuments to inequity eventually crumble.

I rest in the knowledge that the people here who seem singularly burdened to injure others will one day naturally cease to be. I don’t hope for that day, and I don’t hasten that day. I simply pray that when it does come, when the hateful people doing such unrestrained damage finally depart this place, that compassionate, kindhearted, loving people are born to occupy the space they leave.

I pray for a new Renaissance of empathy for this place, and trust that it will come.

No, I am not waiting for bad people to die; I’m doing all the good that I can while I live.

A reader outside of the US messaged me today and asked me to explain to him the Right’s incessant attacks on Dr. Anthony Fauci.

From his vantage point, some thousands of miles away, he couldn’t understand exactly what was behind the seemingly daily campaigns calling for his head, blaming him for the pandemic, and inventing all manner of supposed smoking gun “evidence” that within a few hours always proves to be nothing but manufactured myths and curated conspiracy that soon dissolve in the raking light of the smallest bit of scrutiny.

For those not here on the ground in the States, it’s probably difficult to comprehend how we ended up here: how tens of millions of Americans and the lion’s share of one of its political parties have found a mortal enemy in one of its most respected public health experts, but it’s actually quite simple:

Antony Fauci has sinned against their God.

He had the heretical audacity to oppose their unhinged orange MAGA messiah, and that is not something religious zealots tolerate.

The moment in February of 2020, when during another ego-stroking South Carolina rally, Donald Trump labeled the Coronavirus “the Democrats’ new hoax,” he’d set Conservatives down a deadly path they would take all the way to this very moment: a war against facts and truth in a time when millions of lives were in the balance.

As the case numbers rose exponentially and the deaths began to pile up, Trump did all that he was ever capable of or willing to do: he spoke recklessly, he stoked conspiratorial nonsense, he passed blame to China and to the media and to the Democrats—and he just made up whatever asinine refuse that came to his head in the moment, without considering the human toll. And as the months went by and the body count grew, his base and his party did what all myopic cult members do: they blindly followed their leader into the moral abyss, they fell prostrate before him, and they looked for enemies to unleash their misguided wrath upon.

And that is why they hate Anthony Fauci: because in press conferences and interviews he became the exhausted conscience of good people. He visibly showed his exasperation; he attempted to inject common sense into the terrifying circus of the president’s continual stream of verbal diarrhea and disinformation—and he did what he has done for decades: he tried to protect people because that’s what he is uniquely qualified to do.

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Anthony Fauci has faithfully served the American people under seven presidents of both parties. Alleging some ridiculous partisan narrative shows just how invested Trump’s sycophantic followers are and how little rational thought or substantive evidence they require to form an opinion. The moment anyone, whether a decorated retired general, a former revered party member, or a respected journalist, displays even the slightest deviation from their wild-haired deity—they are dead to them, persona non grata, hopelessly condemned sinner.

Anthony Fauci is everything Donald Trump, his perpetually uninformed base, and sociopathic GOP politicians like Stephen Miller, Mike Johnson, and Rand Paul (a doctor, though one more akin to Frankenstein), despise: he is intelligent, educated, principled, and compassionate.

And most of all, he dared to commit the one mortal sin for which there can never be any MAGA forgiveness: he stood in the face of their bloviating, belligerent spray-tanned savior, and he spoke truth that could actually help guide us through the greatest public health crisis we have ever faced. When given the choice between saving lives and keeping faith in Trump Almighty, the choice was easy. That’s why so many Trumpers buried someone they love during the pandemic, and why they’re still blindly worshipping their monstrous messiah and blaming the helpers.

Over half a million Americans died on Donald Trump’s watch. Half a decade later, his deluded disciples in Congress and in our police departments and in our schools and in the media and in our neighborhoods are still mocking masks, opposing vaccines, perpetuating conspiracy, and vilifying people with expertise and competency because those things are antithetical to the object of their cultic fervor.

Anthony Fauci sinned against Donald Trump by telling the truth.

And that is something his fear-addled congregation of ignorant acolytes will simply never allow.

America is dying.

I’m not referring to the systemic collapse of our Republic or the slow suffocation of Democracy here, though these are certainly not unlikely outcomes at this point.

This is far deeper than the seats of power or a congressional alignment, more than the structural implosion of this nation.

The greatest, most grievous failure of America in this moment isn’t legislative but moral.

The soul of this place is dying in screams and silences.

The brown-skinned screams rise from our collective home:

The anguished cries of a young mother being violently torn from her children on their front lawn.

The frantic pleas of a father of four dragged from his worksite by lawless masked mercenaries.

The inconsolable sobs of a woman whose husband will never see his daughter grow up.

The weary moans of devoted fathers, loving spouses, beloved uncles, and cherished nieces shackled in a stifling death camp.

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The screams rise from half a world away:

The desperate, terrified wails of a Palestinian toddler left buried in the rubble of what seconds ago was the only home she’s ever known.

The guttural howl of an Iranian father, holding the unrecognizable body of his teenage daughter.

The unheeded shrieks of a young couple assassinated in front of their children.

The tortured shouts of a Gazan family slowly being starved to death.

This horrific noise is the soundtrack of waking nightmares; the raw-throated echoing of the vilest of history repeating. They are sounds that shake decent human beings to their core.

But those screams are only half of this tragedy.

Equally devastating is the white-skinned silence; the contagious moral laryngitis afflicting people of profound privilege who avert their eyes and cover their ears.

It is the breathtaking quiet of human beings who have retreated into the cloistered places of temporary comfort and imagined safety; those who quickly scroll away from the videos because they do not want to hear the screams, because that would leave them culpable for their inaction and their stilled voices.

White America, we need to lean into the screams of brown-skinned people, to invite them inside, to let them break our hearts and boil our blood, until the fury within us rises and erupts in a fierce and sustained roar that violently disrupts the inhumanity that will not stop unless we make it stop.

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White friends, what exactly are you waiting for?

How much suffering do you need to see?

What terrible sounds will finally awaken your voices?

What line still needs to be crossed for you to declare it unacceptable?

What good is it if you claim morality or conscience, if these result in you saying nothing while our neighbors are brutalized?

How real is your professed faith if it yields no measurable opposition to the greatest violations of human life?

How much is your patriotism worth if the disregard for the elemental liberties of this nation leaves you speechless?

If ethnic cleansing and genocide do not stir your fury and your vocal cords, what is the point of you being here?

Your silence won’t save you, anyway; it will only postpone your suffering as you abdicate the elemental parts of your humanity during the interim. That is a coward’s path and one I refuse to take.

The only way we can endure as a nation is if we all find the courage to speak with clarity, if we allow ourselves to be heard here and now.

White friends, the cost of using your voice is nothing compared to the price of your silence.

Let your life say something before it’s too late.

All over America, MAGA Republicans will stream into churches this Sunday.

They will do so joyously.

They will do so confidently.

They will do so believing they are righteous.

It will be another hollow procession of fervent disciples of a felon-predator who have again spent the past week applauding the abuse and degradation of the poorest and most vulnerable among us.

They will proudly carry their Bibles, while evangelizing for a man, a party, and a movement that are antithetical to its contents regarding what it means to love people as God does.

Without a hint of self-awareness, they will take their seats in front of a cross symbolizing sacrifice, after another seven days amplifying a greed that will drive millions of people further into illness, food scarcity, and despair.

They will feign love for their neighbors, while breathlessly supporting a regime doing all it can to make sure those neighbors will experience poverty, have reduced access to education, and lives that will be far more painful and far shorter than they needed to be.

They will try and pretend they give a damn about Jesus, while celebrating the relentless violent persecution of immigrants, refugees, and anyone with brown skin who their repugnant cult leader’s goon squad decides to round up from worksites, graduation ceremonies, and church services.

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They will have the God-mocking audacity to sing songs about a Creator who sets the captives free, even as they pump their chests and post social media taunts about concentration camps that will be a blazing, miserable final destination for human beings whose lives and stories they will never care to know.

They will imagine themselves faithful soldiers in the Army of the Lord, while rejoicing in the protection of human traffickers and rapists, among whom is likely the man they claim is anointed by God to lead them.

These are the hypocrites and pretenders Jesus warned about. They are the fraudulent, performative predators he spent his entire life and ministry rejecting.

The only reason they should be entering a church at all is to fall to their knees in repentance, asking for forgiveness for so perverting Jesus’ love your neighbor message into something that dehumanizes the human beings in their path, something that only wounds and expels, something that is the very embodiment of evil.

As a former pastor, I wish I could be in these buildings this Sunday, so I could look these people in the eyes and hold the compassionate, gentle, generous words of Jesus up to them like a mirror in a way their spiritual leaders won’t, because they, too, are morally compromised.

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I’d love to shove Jesus’ commands to love the least, to care for the most vulnerable, to welcome the stranger in their faces and watch them squirm and rationalize and desperately engage in theological gymnastics to try and avoid accountability for urinating on the loving, healing, helping, immigrant Christ.

I wish I could confront them with the truth, that if Jesus were to show up in the flesh in their midst, they’d have him cast out for his woke theology, removed from their gatherings for daring to preach an empathy they now find detestable, and capriciously tossed into some prison for no other reason than the color of his skin or his nation of origin.

Every decent human being, whether they claim faith or not, sees what a gross and empty Sunday parade these self-identified Christians are making into buildings where they will surround themselves with the trappings of goodness and faithfulness, all the while making life for so many outside the building a living hell.

I don’t expect a single one of these MAGA acolytes to step into their churches and actually hear the words of Jesus in a way that softens their hearts, moves them to repentance, and sends them out into a nation they have done such irreparable harm to in order to bring any kind of healing or equity or restoration. This is mostly because they no longer have any need for Jesus.

In fact, I’m really hoping Jesus doesn’t show up in their gatherings.

He wouldn’t be safe.

I’m just gonna come right out and say it: I’ve had it with people right now.

OK, it’s probably not particularly healthy to have a grievance with an entire species, so let me narrow that down a bit…

I’m angry with everyone who isn’t angry.

I’m having a really hard time with the unbothered people, the “everything is gonna be fine” people, the people who are acting as though they are above those of us who are blowing gaskets, breaking down, and freaking out.

You know who I’m talking about: those friends, family members, coworkers, classmates, and social media acquaintances who tone-police us for surveying the monumental destruction being inflicted upon our fragile Republic and its people and being livid. Those people.

I’ve arrived at my breaking point with human beings around me who are still averting their eyes, avoiding the news, and anesthetizing themselves on a mind-numbing cocktail of wishful thinking, retail therapy, self-preservation, and American exceptionalism.

I’ve reached the limit of my tolerance for people who have seemingly spent the past year poo-pooing hundreds of atrocities and illegalities, any one of which would be an alarm-tripping red flag for a nation sliding swiftly into fascism.

And I’ve really had it with people who are still criticizing the emotionality of those of us who’ve been told for a decade that we’re overreacting, while we’ve watched every single supposedly impossible prediction come to pass.

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I don’t think laissez-faire wait-and-seers who are banking on a simple November midterm resurrection are particularly helpful right now.

Look, I believe in being rational and level-headed whenever possible, in offering a measured response to most kinds of adversity, to being strategic and sober of mind in the face of many struggles.

But right now, circumstances are such that we could use a lot more furious human beings. We need people who have seen, heard, and have had enough: enough injustice, enough lawlessness, enough dehumanization, and who aren’t afraid to be labeled too loud, too pissed off, and too passionate.

There is a time and place for self-control, for tolerance, for listening and bearing with people, for breathing and being still. But there is also a time and place when the gravity of the moment calls for something fierce and unwieldy; a wildness of heart that isn’t interested in decorum or social norms. I suggest that now is such a time, and here is precisely the place.

Authoritarianism has overtaken America.

Our president is a sociopath.

His Cabinet is sycophantic.

His party is complicit.

They are at war with the world.

They are ignoring law and morality.

They are building concentration camps.

They are murdering protestors.

They are silencing journalists.

The media are bending the knee.

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This Congress is neutered.

The Supreme Court is compromised.

The checks and balances are disappearing.

The systems are failing.

People are being arrested for existing.

People are being targeted for who they love.

These are not hyperbolic rantings of overly emotional crepe-hangers; they are the clear-headed conclusions of those of us who are paying attention, who’ve read the files, who’ve waded into the minutiae of the legislation, and who don’t scroll away from things that turn our stomachs and break our hearts.

I’m not advocating for an aimless, reckless assembly of panicked people running around like headless chickens, but some urgency and a little ferocity from a lot more people would be a good start. Ignorance is bliss until it’s deadly.

If you’re already furious, fed up, and losing your filters and your fucks, celebrate that. We need a lot more fire and a lot less chill.

Right now, it’s a sign of your humanity, of your sanity, and of your soul, to look around at it all and say, “I’ve had it… I’m furious.”

Note: If you’ve had it and want to know how to productively and strategically wield your exasperation with other similarly pissed-off people, start by contacting your local Indivisible group, connecting with the ACLU, and partnering with Remove Coalition or Red, Wine, & Blue. You can also research progressive faith communities, nonprofits, and candidates, and ask them where they can use your help.