I’d really tried to steer clear of overtly political topics in my substack, but realized two things:
That’s why I wind up with way too long in between posts, because my life is incredibly political - all ours are, but some of us are too atuned to it
and, as noted above, pretty much everything is political one way or another.
So here we are.
I hope, though, that you grant me some grace with this one, because, while it does have to do with politics, it’s actually much bigger.
Daily, we’re contending with a political landscape that is surreally horrendous, namely, that the Democrat occupying the White House is clearly in every way incapable of functioning as President of the most powerful nation on Earth, a role we used to call the leader of the Free World. Whether or not either of those is true is arguable, but the fact remains: this man is incapable of finding his way to the men’s room (are we still allowed to say that?) let alone being the leader of anything. ANd what’s worse: the world is watching, laughing, mocking. It’s a gigantic embarrassment in and of itself, and when you add in his policies including the nightmarish withdrawal from Afghanistan that led to countless of thousands of deaths and the arming of various of our enemies to the tune of hundreds of millions of dollars’ worth of armaments, as well as the clear message that the US can not be relied on as an ally and serves its enemies far more generously than its friends, well when you add all that up, the man is as awful a head of state as one could ever imagine.
Then you consider how he and his cohort are viciously, underhandedly, deceitfully and let’s not forget hypocritically going after the Republican frontrunner, Donald Trump, and we must consider that the democrats will stop this man from running, by any means necessary.
So our system is broken. January 6, everything to do with Hunter Biden, with his laptop, the diary, the lies, the craven narcissism (fake empathy for the survivors in Maui with a story about a kitchen fire? despicable), one could go on forever about the political lies out of the White House even without getting into COVID, climate change, circumventing the Supreme Court, and the election itself.
Will Trump be the nominee? What will happen with DeSantis? Will Biden be the Democrat nominee? What about Bobby Kennedy Jr? When will Newsom get in? What about Michelle Obama? What will the Democrats do with Kamala? What about Vivek? Will there even BE elections in 2024 and if so, will they be legit, or will it all be stolen (again)?
The questions abound, and we all watch with intent fascination.
And we discuss and noodle and debate, even as we recognize we haven’t a freaking clue, because this is far from politics as usual; policies, facts, truths don’t seem to matter when the media is the arbiter of what should and shouldn't be known, and the courts and election committees are the arbiters of what happens with the votes. Add in the indictments and, well, all bets are off. We are living in a 3rd world country when it comes to elections, and it’s hard to wrap one’s mind around. And we are on the edge of catastrophe in a way that is nearly impossible to fathom.
But this is how I see it:
This is clearly a battle between good and evil, and I don’t think that’s overstating it. Any party that sees permanent mutilation of children as “care” and seeks to hide its abusive and torturous acts from parents is simply evil. Any agenda that includes the perverting of children’s natural sense of self and of sexuality - words that should never be in the same sentence - is evil. Any judiciary attacks on citizens from the President on down out of purely political motivation is evil, even as these same institutions are master contortionists at concealing behavior far worse in among its own adherents. The recasting of our founding in accordance with a lie - 1619 - to create shame rather than pride in our origins is evil, and the anti-meritocracy efforts underway in nearly every institution in the name of “fairness” and “equity,” as antidotes to another lie, “systemic racism,” is also evil as it not only tears down our functioning society, our healthcare, medicine, arts, engineering, law and so on, but also harms those it most professes to help; that is pure evil.
And I could go on, as I know you could, too.
Meanwhile, we have on the other side, good. That’s not to say that the good is pure, perfect, ideal; of course not. We are all humans of course. But our goals are these: uphold the Constitution and the intent of the Declaration of Independence: that all men are created equal and are endowed by our Creator with certain inalienable rights, among them being life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. We believe that there is a balance to be struck between government and the individual, but that the government is by, of and for the people and that we are a self-governing nation. We believe in equality of opportunity and that we each are the agents of our own success.
(I’m realizing I’ve gotten pretty far from my main intent about not being political, and way far from my original goal of this piece, but I’m almost there)
So, I do believe that right now, it is a battle between good versus evil.
I also believe that the United States of America was founded, from its very earliest days, through miracle after miracle after miracle. We were born out of miracles, grew out of miracles, thrived, prospered, rose to our current place all due to miraculous intervention by the Hand of God.
It was Michael Medved’s book, The American Miracle: Divine Providence in the Rise of the Republic, that first made this clear to me, and his subsequent ones continue to make the case. I can’t remommend them highly enough.
In addition, not as far ranging, is Catherine Drinker Bowen’s Miracle at Philadephia about the details of the drafting and ratifying of our Constitution. It is a masterpiece, revealing the complexities of all that went into the creating of this most remarkable document, the very edifice of our government, and how close we came time and again to it being something else. We take this so for granted, that it is what it is, but the book reveals the very miracles that occurred during that time in Philadelphia.
My thinking is this: that since we were created, grew and became what we are through God’s intervention, that in a time such as this, only with His intervention yet again can we prevail against the evil that has become pervasive at all levels, including the abuse of our children, the harming of the weakest among us, the infantilizing of those who require empowering, and the general destruction of the main pillars of what have always made us the greatest, freest nation on Earth.
Given the evil that too many in this nation have embraced, one might despair of His intervention; it would be easy to see that He might be deciding that we are too far gone, that He would permit evil to win, at the very least.
In fact, He had destroyed the world with a flood but then pledged to not do so again, the rainbow being a sign of that covenant… and yet, look what we have done with that rainbow.
Now, many of us are engaged in the fight for good, in the fight to preserve America and our founding principles. We work in various domains: the political, the cultural, even the spiritual. We work to fight against “woke” education, against totalitarian measures, against the destruction of freedoms generally.
But I don’t think any one of us will be the savior of this nation. I don’t think Charlie Kirk, or Donald Trump, or Ron DeSantis, or John MacArthur, or Dennis Prager, let alone I, will save this country.
But I do believe this: that the more of us who are engaged in this fight on the side of good, the more I hope that He will continue to see this nation as miracle-worthy and will decide, again, to intervene on behalf of what makes this nation exceptional: the founding values on which we are premised.
When I do the things that I do, I hope to make a difference at some level, to be sure. But overall, I hope that my actions, together with those others in the same fight, contribute to His view of us down here and will lean Him towards deciding that yes, this nation is still miracle-worthy, and to do what He has so many times before: side with good over evil.
That’s all I want. Not to save the world, but to be one data point in favor of the miracle-worthiness of this great nation.
And if more and more and more of us are dots - see this substack from a while ago - I do believe that that will also help Him see us as miracle-worthy.
That’s the best we can ask for.
Brava! for saying out loud what so many are thinking. My thoughts on the subject of God are not the same as yours—indeed, they are still being shaped—but I share your feelings of imminent crisis, and your hope that we on the side of good will prevail over the other side, which is either evil or hopelessly stupid. I am astonished that we are in the situation we are in. I hate that the way things are shaping up, we will soon be forced to choose between Biden (or a stand-in for Biden) and Donald Trump, who is the lesser of two evils. Neither is fit to be the leader of this once-great country. I pray for some sort of intervention.