Questions.

In recognizing my abundance of posts, let this be the last post for the week:

It is regarding questions I have asked people.

Regarding election fraud, if you do not trust the courts, the states, the governors, the secretary of states, both Republicans and Democrats when they tell you there was no substantial election fraud, what would you trust?

Regarding antifa overtaking the events at the capitol, is there a source you would trust if they told you that after their investigating, they found no evidence of antifa in this crowd? Because the FBI has said this, and the media has looked into those accused, resources have been offered to counter that claim, but seemingly these are not trustworthy sources.

If the president says things but he doesn’t actually mean them, how can we take him seriously? And what action do we as a nation take when his followers then “misinterpret” him and commit violent acts inspired by his words?

If we cannot trust our institutions enough to verify claims, if we cannot accept corrections to our baseless or shallow claims, if we cannot trust the spoken words of our highest officials, we have no democracy and no way to heal our divide.

If you trust nothing but respond defensively to efforts to explain, there is no solid ground left. It’s fundamentalism of catastrophic proportions. Any party is guilty of this.

Look I know, these last four years I’ve spoken passionately against Donald Trump, I know my post are more liberal than what many of you see elsewhere, but these have been the concerns at the core of all of that, married to how this has effected the impact of Christianity and emboldened racism.

Before Trump ran, I voted for Republicans only. I’m in awe of how easily he’s been accepted and how those who called him the deceiver he was, so quickly used him for their own power and let him take advantage of this country. These were vocal people. Passionately vocally against him, who used his deceit for their gain. This is still happening though many Republicans have said enough after this Wednesday. Only now they’ve created a monster, as seen explicitly on Wednesday, that not even they can control.

Correction and consequence is not a negative form of response. We need both desperately and we ALL need to be open to both.

What is happening this past year may be censorship on some level, platforms have been taken away, posts have been flagged, but I’ll also invite us to consider if we have no basis for trust, no basis for truth, no basis for correction, and lies spread like wildfire, then what avenue is left?

What avenue is left?

The first question is what do we do about this? The second is who gets to decide? How do we debate towards truth without trust?

We can’t let lies lead us. And currently that is what is happening.

We can’t let the growing anger of those caught up in lies dictate how we put forth truth and justice. We need everyone in this effort. Especially Republicans who too have had enough.

Many of us dislike Trump because he has effectively convinced many people that he alone is reliable. Don’t trust anyone with a bad or critical thing to say about him, that would be bias. Don’t trust the media, don’t trust the intelligence communities, don’t trust the democrats, don’t trust the Republicans who disagree with him or go against him, they are RINO’s, don’t trust the scientists, anyone who tries to correct you or hold you accountable is censoring you, and now, NOW, don’t trust even his Vice President.

“Hang Mike Pence. Hang Mike Pence.” They cheered inside the halls of of our nations most powerful and decisive building.

After four years of Donald Trump, who has he left for you to trust in but himself?

The videos we’ve seen from this week are the cost of this marriage. I hope we each have an awareness of just how bad it really was, and just how close we came to so much worse. We cannot accept this.

That distrust and inability to challenge and correct in a substantial enough way to provide alternative explanations or context, or correction, to baseless claims is why we had violence on Wednesday.

There is no stopping that anger. Because we have no control over the only one they trust.

Unless we do something. Unless we hold him accountable for this. Unless his party holds him accountable. Our democracy has already done this. We voted him out. His influence moving forward is dependent on more than that. And that’s not just ensuring what remains of a peaceful transition of power. But consequences for these actions and this deception.

Sure this distrust has existed prior to Donald Trump, it transcends Donald Trump. But it has never had a greater friend than Donald Trump. He took advantage of this and effectively used it to his glory. And it worked really well because people are angry and people are afraid that their America is disappearing along with their place in it. But this perspective, I believe, is largely because many of us are segregated from one another and have never seen the whole of America. An America that isn’t “theirs” or “ours” because it never belonged to one group alone, but rather out of many, one.

These United States, with brokenness and pain, disaster and triumph, as well as excellence and compassion and growth.

When we look at these crowds and photos we largely see very angry white individuals, that shouldn’t be looked away from for a number of reasons. Least of all they’re not going anywhere.

My question then is if I am to understand this anger and pain, but we have no outlet to explain away lies that have become associated with this movement, how can we come together? If every effort to look honestly at America is viewed as radically leftist and hateful, how can we move closer to those who have experiened hurt by our nations history and injustice?

The left has many problems. I’m sure I embody many of them myself and I am open to those conversations. But I wasn’t born in “the left.” I abandoned “the right” before the rise of Trump because of everything I’ve laid out here. I saw it coming miles away and I chose to no longer be a part of it. It has made me angry, it has hurt me, and I’ve spent these last five years receiving that hurt, digesting that sorrow, and pleading for our country and my friends to stand against it.

I hope we can do that. I believe we’ll get there, I just don’t know which lines are left to cross.

Whether left or right,

This has to be enough. We must fight conspiracies and not narrow our trust so thin. We must think more diligently and love more openly. We need to ask questions. But if our questions are just defenses in no pursuit of answers, we’ve failed. And truth has nothing left to offer.

This is a disturbing video but reveals the severity of this moment.