What Just Happened?

I don’t know.

I wrote this before the election, not wishing to stay up all night watching results and feeling fairly certain we wouldn’t have a definitive result before this article posts. I planned to go to bed on election night. I have a lot of friends who won’t.

The election has brought out a lot of feelings, fear chief among them. The other day a friend texted: “We’ll find out if Harris wins and Trump burns it all down or if Trump wins and then burns it all down.” From coast to coast, people are hoping for the best and imagining the worst.

Nobody is neutral about the Dark Lord of American politics. Donald Trump creates passionate loyalty and intense fear. Think of the words used to describe him: unhinged, unstable, fascist, demented, evil, pathological, racist, misogynist. How can someone mount a campaign for President with that sort of baggage? I remember a time, not that long ago, when apathy reigned and voters would say, “It doesn’t matter who wins.” No one has said that lately. I keep hearing: “This is the most important election ever.” I first heard that in 2016, heard it more in 2020, and have heard it even more in 2024.  

I’ve drawn three conclusions.

First, I’m not going to get what I want. Actually, I haven’t been getting what I want this whole election cycle. Climate change is an existential threat to humanity but neither candidate talks about it. Instead, they talk about whether or not immigrants are eating pets. As a result, I am cynical and disappointed. I am not trying to be equivocal: over the past decade with Trump involved in politics, the Republican party has sunk to new lows. People believe his lies. Yet as outrageous as Trump is, it’s especially discouraging because he creates the rules of engagement, and both sides engage in passion, not substance.  

I’m also not going to get what I want because as much as I want Trump to lose, what I really want is for him to be repudiated. I want a Joe McCarthy “Have you no sense of dignity?” moment where the scales fall from America’s eyes. Yet if the Access Hollywood tape, January 6^th, two impeachments, the E. Jean Carroll verdict, 34 felony convictions, and bizarre rambling about Arnold Palmer’s genitalia didn’t do it, nothing will. As a result, we might be waking up today to the reality that this horrible person will be President again.

Second, it takes a village to enable a despot. Donald Trump is only here because others allowed him to be. Here’s an example: Mitch McConnell could have ended Trump’s political career. McConnell was genuinely upset after the January 6^th insurrection. Yet he delayed Trump’s second impeachment trial in the Senate, a move that guaranteed Trump would not be convicted. Why? McConnell didn’t want Republicans to publicly fight each other. He put partisan power ahead of the good of the nation. McConnell could have exiled Trump to Mar-a-Lago, but didn’t.

There are more examples of when Trump could have been stopped. Those on the religious right could have turned on him after the Access Hollywood tape. The Senate could have convicted him after he tried to bribe Volodymyr Zelensky. The Supreme Court could have limited instead of expanded Presidential immunity. None of those who could have stopped him did.  

I’m left to conclude Trump is not the disease but a symptom.

There is a sad, frustrated part of me that believes if Trump wins this election, the United States of America will be getting exactly what it deserves.

Third, since I don’t know the results of the election and don’t know whether I should be breathing a sigh of relief or getting ready to sit weeping by the waters of Babylon, allow me, then, to step away from American politics and step into the Reformed tradition by asking, “What is your only comfort in life and in death?”

Another way to ask the question is, “Do you believe in politics more than you believe in God?”

Please don’t read this as a spiritualizing evasion of reality. I simply want you to consider where you are placing your faith today. What (or whom) do you trust? It’s a question I have asked myself repeatedly in the lead up to the election.

The left is quick to condemn Christian Nationalism, yet I hear plenty of progressive Christians using religious language to describe what’s happening. Politics has become religion, the first Tuesday in November our high holy day, and voting our sacrament.

God is elusive, so we grab onto politics.

Over the last few months, I have heard voting called both a form of prayer and a sacred duty. I want to push back and ask if they are. Maybe we ought to step more fully into the separation of church and state. We’re voting for President, not Pope, Savior, or Messiah.

Let’s take a step back. Let’s take a deep breath. Let’s remember God is God.

“Do not put your trust in princes, in human beings who cannot save,” Psalm 146 says. Today is an especially important day to remember that.