Hey Ed Sheeran,

Well, you’ve had quite a busy week.

You’ve caved to your billionaire buddy Robert Kraft, you’ve deferred to the pearl-clutching Pink, you’ve fallen in line behind your promoters, and you’ve kowtowed to a handful of football stadium owners and allowed rapper Macklemore to be booted from your tour for saying the words “Free Palestine.”

I can imagine how traumatic that must have been for your audience, the emotional scars they must be carrying right now by being asked to see the Palestinian people as deserving of dignity and self-determination…. the horror.

My newsfeed is absolutely littered with news stories, think pieces, and video critiques lambasting you for what people are saying is your cowardice, your selfishness, your obvious racism, your thinly veiled Zionism.

And with the fierce media firestorm raging all around you right now, I wonder if anyone’s considered your feelings, what it’s like to walk a mile in your custom Air Jordans.

I mean, this couldn’t have been an easy decision for you. In this economy, a guy with a net worth of 400 million has to stay on the road to keep the lights on, right? We can’t have you missing any meals out here, can we?

Oh, sure, tens of thousands of Palestinians have been brutally murdered, once vibrant cities leveled to dust, and an ancient culture violently erased. Yes, generations of human beings have been assassinated, starved, tortured, and burned alive. And yeah, children are being raped and shot and ripped from their mutilated parents in these very moments, but the show must go on, right? Can’t let a little gen*cide stop the party.

So what if a few thousand miles away an entire country is being wiped off the map with the taxes of your fanbase, you got a gig to do, merch to move, a few more homes to add to the mere three dozen or so you’re being forced to make do with.

You’ve dismissed Macklemore for having the audacity to choose integrity over the paycheck, for giving a damn about thousands of brown-skinned people who can’t buy concert tickets or boost your streaming numbers, and you’re going to bravely carry on with business as usual, playing the part of the happy, humble white savior of soccer moms and suburban preteens everywhere.

You’ll continue packing out stadiums, basking in the breathless adoration of a mix of the uninformed, the lazy, and the heartless; people who either don’t know what’s going on in Palestine or who simply don’t care enough to be inconvenienced enough to opt out (though you could inform and inspire them).

And you’ll get up there awash in spotlights and the intoxicating roar of an army of the most privileged people on the planet. You’ll wear that grinning everyman facade you’ve perfected. You’ll joyfully churn out your loops and whirl around in the middle of a massive sea of humanity (the largely white kind, the kind whose worth and safety might actually matter enough to you for you to get “political,” as you did with Ukraine, btw).

I’m sure it’ll be a blast… but not the kid-killing IDF kind.

But I wonder if the crowds at the shows will sing loud enough to cover the screams erupting from the rubble of Palestine. I wonder if the stratospheric tour revenue will be worth the suffering you’ve ignored to get it.

Maybe I’m being too hard on you. Maybe you’re really struggling with this. Maybe you’re going to have a change of heart and show some courage and something resembling a spine, and allow your humanity to take the lead. Maybe I’ll end up apologizing to you for underestimating you. I would welcome that, because it would mean you decided to leverage your privilege to save the lives of people who are being treated like animals.

But right now, Ed, for a guy who’s made a fortune with words, it’s your silence that is most telling. You are choosing to say nothing, and there is a cost to that, too. Unfortunately, you won’t be the one paying the highest price.

Maybe you are what your critics say you are. Maybe you’re a coward, or worse. Maybe the people of Palestine aren’t worth the show guarantees you’d have to part with to stand up to the bullies and Zionists. Maybe it isn’t that you’re not willing to take sides (because you have been), but that the Palestinian people don’t fall within the borders of your empathy or the comfort of your courage.

I suppose no matter how successful and powerful someone gets, every person has their price, and yours was a 10-city tour.

The Palestinian people deserve our discomfort, Ed. They deserve to be on our breath because the voices of white people can carry their cries to people in the world who need to hear them, despite how uneasy it makes them—or us. That turbulence is where our humanity gets to prove itself.

It’s just really sad that with the size of the stage and the reach of the microphone you’ve been handed, and with the voice you’ve been given that could resonate so loudly on behalf of imperiled human beings, you have such moral laryngitis now.

Enjoy the rest of the tour, Ed… knock ‘em dead out there.

Free Palestine.

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We’re all worried about a Tuesday in November, 50 days from now.

It’s the place our minds and hearts are solely fixed on.

Right now, our energies are understandably marshaled and our hopes pinned to this singular day ahead, as if at the end of it we will have some resolution, some sense of closure, as if healing and rest will finally come.

But what if things don’t go that way?

At a recent tour stop, a visibly exasperated woman asked me, through a breaking voice, “What if everything goes wrong on Election Day? What do we do then? If we lose, where will the hope be?”

You may be asking yourself that, too.

I’m not sure, but I imagine hope then will be wherever it is for you now.

Regardless of what happens on that Tuesday in November, whatever propels you into the voting booth needs to push you to your feet when the sun comes up the next morning. Because no matter the outcome and whether you feel vindicated or devastated, whether there is calm or chaos, many things will still be the same:

You’ll still be surrounded by systemic ills, relational fractures, and national discord. You’ll still have seen every grotesque reality that’s been uncovered over the past ten years.You’ll still be walking shoulder to shoulder with weary, wounded human beings who will be looking for compassionate people to see their suffering and to move toward them.You’ll still have a specific front row seat to a place filled with terrors and traumas, and you’ll be the only one with your unprecedented ability to be what that world needs.

So where will hope be if it all hits the fan on that Tuesday in November?

It will be you and me, finding whatever it is that pulls us out of the crippling funk of grief and sadness and disbelief we’ll want to stay in, and back into the fray of living.It will be found in our faith convictions and our personal burdens; in our activism and our advocacy, and in the stuff we’ll still believe in.It will be found in us deciding what matters most in this life, and whether or not it still matters enough to defend and protect it even if the threats seem greater than they are even now.

Hope will be in the sunrise on Wednesday and how you decide to meet it.

In that way, the day after that Tuesday in November is actually pretty important, too.

On that day, there will still be hungry people needing to be fed, strangers seeking refuge, outsiders needing welcome, hurting people looking for the healers.

No matter what happens, win or lose, you and I will need to place our energies and fix our gaze on the ways that we can choose gentleness, peace, and generosity, far away from the ballot box.

Soon, we’ll experience one of the most pivotal, consequential moments in our lifetime.We’ll have a chance to allow our voices to be heard and to transform the very planet we’re standing on, as well as the one we leave to people who will follow us.We’ll get to leave an inheritance to those we love, and a legacy for those we’ll never know.

That particular Tuesday, we’ll get to let our lives impact the lives of countless human beings with one simple, yet profound act that we participate in. It will be our sacred opportunity to speak precisely from our deepest convictions, to let our hearts clearly resound into the world, and to know that we can be the difference in the day. In the face of a deafening fear that would gladly overwhelm us, we’ll get the chance to let love have the last, loudest word.

This is beautiful news. But the even better news is that we have that opportunity well before Tuesday, and we’ll have it long after it as well.

As you read these very words, you have it.

Every single moment we’re here, you and I get to be agents of equity and justice. We don’t have to wait for an event to choose such things, and we can’t be fooled into believing they have an expiration date either.

As you move through these days, don’t miss the countless opportunities you have, with every seemingly infinitesimal decision to elect hope, well before you ever step into a voting booth, and long after you walk out into the day.

So, yes, please canvass and organize and work and volunteer and protest and vote, and give everything you have to give. But regardless of the results of the election, remember that you always have that choice.

Yes, that Tuesday 50 days from now is vitally important in ways that are difficult to comprehend and impossible to overstate.

Wednesday is, too.

Today is just as critical.

This day is the most important day of your life.

It always is.

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I’ve been a pastor for nearly three decades.

I’ve been a Christian for most of my life.

Throughout that journey, I took the words of Jesus seriously: his calls to love my neighbor, to care for the most vulnerable among me, to welcome the stranger and the alone, to give my overflow to ensure everyone had enough.

I aspired to his compassionate heart that fed disparate multitudes, that healed the wounds of the suffering in his path, that shunned retributive violence, that declared solidarity with the hungry, the overlooked, and the forgotten.

In the words and stories of the Gospels, I found a generosity that compelled me to live with an open hand, an empathy that moved me to learn the stories of people around me, and a gratitude to see prosperity, opportunity, and geography not as birthrights to be hoarded, but as blessings meant to be shared.

The Jesus I know from those pages and those stories was moved with compassion, not contempt, when he saw the crowds in front of him.

The Jesus I know warned of the ways wealth and power could poison and harden the heart, distorting the lenses someone viewed the world with.

The Jesus I know didn’t blame the poor and the sick for their condition, but the broken systems and power structures that kept them there.

The Jesus I know said that his followers would be known, not by their showy professions of faith, by worship service attendance, the volume of their virtue signaling, or by the titles they affixed to themselves—but simply by their ability and willingness to love the people in their path.

The Jesus I know from the New Testament would violently upend the table of Christian Nationalism, as it was far smaller than his love of the world.

He would be furious with the weaponizing of religion so many of his alleged disciples traffic in.

His heart would be broken by their refusal to see their disparate neighbors as deserving of safety, care, and dignity.

He would be sickened by the perversion of his teachings into a gated community of white supremacy.

And a lifetime of scriptural study, prayer, and reflection tells me that the Jesus I know would challenge his disciples to drive MAGA’s hateful movement back into the hell it sprang from—and Christians who care about the teachings of Jesus need to.

When 81 percent of White Evangelicals voted for Donald Trump, they enabled this violent circus of unrelenting chaos, and on a Tuesday in November, they could end it once and for all.

With their votes, White Christians could reject the nonsensical conspiracies, the immigrant dehumanization, the masked thug armies, the capricious wars of choice, the tax-funded genocides, the wall-building taunts, and the abject lies.

They could condemn the persecution of the poor, the pillaging of the planet, the mockery of the suffering, the protecting of the predators.

With their voices and votes, they could stop the bleeding of a nation besieged by leaders who show complete loathing for the very people they are entrusted with protecting.

In a single day, people of faith in the Jesus in the Gospels could step into the polls throughout this nation and end the reign of the most loveless, heartless, hate-addled regime in our nation’s history—and all they’d need is Jesus.

I’m not talking about the heretical marriage of Church and State that seeks to mandate theology and legislate a religion of coercion for everyone else; I’m talking about choosing morality over party, virtue over muscle memory.

I’m talking about followers of Jesus wielding a faith that does no harm: that refuses to exclude, that will not co-sign ethnic cleansing, that will not consent to concentration camps, that will not allow the poor and the sick and the disabled to be cast aside, that will not let the foreign and the different be preyed upon.

I’m talking about professed Christians actually embodying the loving, inclusive, generous namesake of their faith, and declaring with absolute clarity that they will not allow this place to be home for racism, safe harbor for bigotry, or a soft place for phobic violence.

The unrelenting mayhem that Trump and this regime have thrown this nation into isn’t just an existential threat; it’s a collective sin that flies in the face of everything Jesus’s life and ministry stood for.

Christians could stop this madness at the polls, and they don’t need approval of a church or their pastor or their grandfather; they don’t need some blind allegiance to a political party they were taught they need to align with; and they certainly don’t need to empower a hate-addled, failing serial predator whose corroded heart is among the blackest on the planet.

No, to end this national nightmare and make a collective stand for actual table-setting, wound-mending, belly-filling, stranger-welcoming love, all they need is Jesus.

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How did this happen?

For as long as America is remembered on this planet, people will try to understand these days through the lens of time and distance.

Authors, sociologists, criminologists, cult experts, political scientists, and brilliant minds in future generations will attempt to explain how tens of millions of once-reasonable, sane, seemingly goodhearted human beings betrayed their love of country, their spiritual beliefs, and their moral convictions.

Volumes will be written about how otherwise rational adults passionately embraced a man who lived with complete contempt for them, how professed Christians sold off their souls and fell prostrate before the vile, hateful antitheses of Jesus.

Hundreds of years from now, a myriad of creative theories will be proffered as to how a court-adjudicated rapist convicted of 34 felonies successfully used every available legal and illegal method to avoid accountability for engineering an insurrection in an attempt to overturn a free and fair election, as well as for the stealing and sharing of classified documents.

The greatest scholars of their times will strain to explain how a career criminal, serial predator, and bankrupt businessman hijacked an entire political party, a compromised Supreme Court, and a complicit media to not only evade justice of any kind for his crimes, but to be rewarded with the presidency a second time despite them.

And no matter what history records, they won’t have a prayer of truly explaining it—because we’re living it right now, and honestly it makes no damn sense to any of us. Oh, sure, we can rattle off a few likely motives and contributing factors, but ultimately we’re still left incredulous.

All the available research, carefully sifted data, well-researched think pieces, and late-night talking-head commentaries don’t explain once rational, otherwise decent, educated people fully taking leave of their senses: people we’ve grown up and shared our homes with, people we’ve worked and worshipped alongside: older relatives we spent decades aspiring to become, ministers we once respected for their compassion, old friends we knew until we realized we didn’t.

Nothing adequately explains their complete rejection of Science, medicine, and objective truth.Nothing fully accounts for their complete embrace of the most nonsensical conspiracies.And nothing, from racism to ignorance to poverty to partisan media to irrational fear, will ever fully justify throwing your nation away for objectively speaking, one of the worst human beings to ever walk the planet.

There’s no satisfactory answer coming to those in the future, and certainly not to those of us who are presently horrified that what we spent a decade trying so hard to help our nation avoid is coming to pass right now.

And at this point, the how’s and why’s really don’t matter anymore, anyway. We’re simply left with the what, and that what is that America as we’ve known it up to this point is no longer anything we can count on seeing or experiencing again. Few of the systems or safeguards or rules of engagement are relevant.

With three branches of Government, a cadre of billionaires, a negligent media, and a shrinking but still terrifying number of unwavering cultic sycophants willing to kill and die for him, the damage we’ve already seen to our Republic is impossible to fathom; the cost in human and civil rights losses beyond what we can measure.

And as we rocket toward an election that will likely determine the fate of our Republic, these monstrous, treasonous predators are marshaling every possible method to prevent a free and fair election. They are carving up maps, assailing the courts, commandeering the Postal Service, culling polling sites, and openly attempting to obstruct, silence, intimidate, and disenfranchise voters. They are threatening to have ICE at the polls or cancel the election altogether in the name of safety.

And should these methods fail, they’re preemptively promising that they will, without proof, treat any losses as election fraud, and refuse to honor the results, thrusting this nation into a chaos it has never endured.

And none of that matters.

We still need to defeat them. If we are who we say we are, and believe what we say we believe about goodness and democracy and liberty, losing is simply not an option.

This means we need to clear our calendars to volunteer, organize, and canvass.We need to contribute financial resources to candidates in every local race.We need to meet every one of our neighbors, and physically get them to the polls.We need to leverage our social media and our circles of influence to make sure everyone understands the urgency of the moment.We need to reach across every political, social, theological, and ideological line and consolidate our numbers and our collective power to defeat an extremist fringe minority.And, we need to prepare for how we will respond as a people, should these emboldened fascists (as they are forecasting) refuse to honor the will of the people.

Yes, it’s all likely about to hit the fan in ways we’ve never known or seen, and the rest of us need to decide that we’re not going to go quietly, that we’re not going to easily cede an inch of ground, whether legal or moral.

I don’t have a clue what’s coming in the wake of the election or how to best prepare, and I’m not sure any of us truly do.

What I do know is that I’m not letting these monsters win.

I refuse to allow this loveless, heartless, rotted-out husk of a man and his deplorable disciples to engineer a hostile takeover of this nation, and I hope you won’t either.

I don’t know what the future will record about these days, but I damn sure know that right now, with my voice and my influence and my time and my work, I won’t make it any easier for this wretched fraud and those who conspire with and worship him to write the epitaph for America.

Today and every day we’re here, may we stand together and raise a strident middle finger to their hateful parade as it passes by, because we will never join it.

We cannot let the monsters win.

HERE’S A GREAT WAY TO FIGHT BACK! CLICK THE PHOTO:

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“I feel like I’m losing my mind.”

That thought runs through my head more than I’d like to admit these days.

As someone who has navigated the past three decades with a mental illness, I’ve gotten used to the crushing despair that visits from time to time, sometimes staying for a few bleak moments before departing as quickly as it came, other times moving in for weeks or even months, derailing recent progress and swallowing up my tenuous joy.

I have endured the darkest nights of the soul, and I’ve passed through protracted seasons of utter hopelessness.

Yet, as difficult as those times have been, they were always the exception; brief or extended detours from an otherwise manageable and often even enjoyable existence. I could usually be certain that, despite their ferocity, these internal storms would eventually pass and a more stable default would settle in.

I’m not sure I can say that anymore.

In fact, if I set aside the weight of others’ personal and professional expectations of me, the facades of competence I work incredibly hard to maintain, and the worries of judgement, disappointment (or worse, pity) that may or may not come, I gotta say there’s a 24/7 sh*t show going on inside my head.

A pervasive, insidious, and increasingly loud sense of dread is pretty much ubiquitous now.

It sits alongside me in traffic as I think about my neighbors abducted from their workplaces and children lying under rubble half a world away.

It hovers over my shoulder as I am hit again and again by an unrelenting flood of suffering flickering wildly through the screen in the palm of my hand that I can’t seem to put down.

It sits like a massive stone upon my chest at night, as I inventory the nightmares of the day, and wait for sleep to come, knowing it will likely not be restful.

It greets me in the morning with a sudden jolt of panic, the second I happen upon the horrors du jour curated by powerful people who seemingly cannot be stopped.

I do my best to beat those stubborn black thoughts into submission or at least soften their jagged edges with the well-worn stockpile of coping strategies I’ve used and endlessly recommend to others: meditation, therapy, prayer, volunteering, exercise, nature, travel, fasting, medication, journaling, community, touching grass.

Yet, if I’m honest, these have become an exercise in diminishing returns, rarely offering more than a short respite from the feeling that things in my head are not improving anytime soon.

And far from some nebulous, undefined source, I can precisely pinpoint the disparate authors of my despair:

It’s the unthinkable cruelty that appears to be contagious.It’s the seemingly inexhaustible capacity some have for hurting fellow humans.It’s the apparent apathy of so many others.It’s the brokenness of systems that seem beyond repair.It’s what feels like the irreparable relational fractures that have been revealed.It’s the burning of the planet, the disregard for the vulnerable, and the mockery of empathy.It’s the realization that no one is coming to save us and we may not even be willing to save ourselves.

These are quantifiable, tangible realities; or at least they point to those things. This isn’t some negative mindset that positive thinking will magically remedy. I can’t manifest my way out of it or speak it out of existence. This is terrifyingly real, and knowing that actually helps a bit. It’s a comfort to realize this is not all in my head.

Look, there are things I know to be true about the hell we are all living through right now:

I know that I am not responsible for carrying all of it. I know I can only stay in the small space of my agency. I know that there are tens of millions of people working tirelessly to push back against the same darkness I am.I know that all evil empires fall, that every malevolent regime is temporary, that things are never as black-and-white as they might feel.

I can know all of these things with great certainty, and still feel like the sky is falling.

I’m still functioning, still doing my work, still making plans, still finding moments of joy, still stepping into the trenches of the fight, still creating, still endeavoring to “live well as the greatest resistance”, but there remains the lingering grief over how much has been lost and the sad realization that we didn’t have to be here.

I think feeling that is less a sickness and more a sign of humanity.

Please hear me: this is not a cry for help, an invitation of sympathy, or a solicitation for solutions; maybe more a plea for solidarity.

It’s the difficult admission of a far-from-ideal mental state that I wish I didn’t find myself in, in the hope that I’m not the only one whose head is a scary and disorienting place right now.

You don’t have to have a diagnosed mental illness to feel this. These days are making otherwise mentally healthy people emotionally sick, and making ill people much worse. We’re all playing hurt, which I guess is the point.

Maybe you might encounter these words and suddenly recognize the symptoms of a lingering sorrow that you haven’t been able to shake, a fear that does not relent, and a rest that does not come.

Maybe if we all admit how not well we are, that will be the healing we need to keep going for one more day.

Is your head a mess these days, friends… or is it just me?

I’d love to hear your thoughts in the comments…

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MAGA Republicans are telling us something right now, America.

The message they’re sending is unmistakable.

With every panicked, desperate move, they are speaking with absolute clarity.

There is only one reason they continually gerrymander themselves a more favorable playing field.It’s the same reason they eliminate voting sites.The same reason they’re casting doubts on voting by mail.The same reason they remove active voters from the rolls.The same reason they continue to attempt sleight-of-hand legislation to sneak in more restrictive voter ID laws:

The reason they do all of these things is that they are mortally terrified of American voters.

We are their greatest threat.

We are their only outstanding obstacle to unabated rule.

We are the single remaining line of defense Democracy has left here.

We, the People, are the last-gasp breath of a dying Republic being slowly suffocated beneath the weight of institutionalized racism and disdain for the poor and contempt for diversity.

Donald Trump and his enablers do not want Americans to speak.

They know they represent a tiny and rapidly shrinking minority.

They know they are hopelessly underwater on the economy, on ICE, on Iran, on Gaza, on climate change, on foreign policy, on human rights, on healthcare, on just about every issue, which is why they have no platform beyond obstruction and demolition.

They know that if the voices of the people are heard, we will, in one glorious, sprawling, clarion choir, declare them fraudulent and malignant and unequivocally undeserving of stewarding this nation a single day longer.

And they know that if they lose their current, tenuous stranglehold on this nation, they will likely never get it back, as the swift current of changing demographics will soon swallow them up, taking with them the unearned spoils of privilege that once seemed permanent.

They know that this could well be their last moment of unmolested barbarism, and so, like cornered, wounded animals, they are frantic and flailing and violently trying to save themselves.

Which is why we need to show up now: in numbers that cannot be manipulated, in a show of strength and resolve that is simply unalterable, in a moment so immune from pollution that it will be undeniable.

We need to leverage the networks of our local communities to make certain that every single voter is physically able to vote early, in person, or through a drop box location.

We need to throw aside our petty semantic squabbles, our minor skirmishes of preference, our purity politics, and our litmus test deal breakers, because these things only dilute the full potency of our collective presence—and that is what these fascists want. They want us to not only have to overcome their malfeasance, but also our fatigue, egos, and apathy as well.

Because that is the great truth of these days and they know it: that despite their every attempt to stack the deck and tip the odds, despite every clandestine legislative maneuver, despite this President’s unapologetic efforts at perverting the system—we still have the numbers and we can still save this flawed but promising experiment in liberty. We alone can find out what it might be capable of if the full expanse of humanity was welcomed at the table for the first time.

We can see if the old parchment promises can still yield a new promised land of equity for everyone, without caveat or condition; if it still has enough life and liberty and happiness for all of us to have a full helping.

I think that would be something beautiful to behold. I think it might alter the history of this planet, and I think it’s worth whatever is required between now and November to see it.

Friends, this is not about defeating people who have voted and normally would vote Republican. They are not the enemy. This is about defeating this President and these MAGA Republicans, who have no love for America or Conservatism or Jesus, who are historically corrupt and uniquely parasitic, and who threaten good people of every distinction.

I firmly believe that decent and disparate people of every political leaning, religious tradition, and value system can navigate those real and profound differences if we create a space where that is the sincere desire and honest objective. But this cannot and will not happen with this President and with these minority extremist leaders in power, and it’s as simple as that.

Losing this nation is not an option, no matter how much hell they throw at us in the coming weeks, on election day, and in the wake of the results.

Yes, these MAGA Republicans are fully terrified of us, America.

Until, and if necessary, after the election, let’s make them right to be afraid.

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A vote is loud.

Whether that vote is cast joyfully or with trepidation or begrudgingly or without all the information or as a protest, it makes the same bold statements:This is my choice.I am with this person.I consent to their conduct.I co-sign their actions.I endorse them.

A vote doesn’t have qualifiers or caveats or escape clauses. It simply says Yes or No.

And as we’re witnessing a rapid and expansive dismantling of our nation’s systems, a complete mockery of our Cabinet positions, a pervasive chaos enveloping everything from our social services to our healthcare to our Military to our essential needs to our standing in the world, the one question I keep wanting to ask those of you who voted for him is:

Is this really what you wanted?

Did you want prices on groceries and gas to rise stratospherically as he taunts our long-time allies?Did you want a senseless and unwinnable war of choice in Iran that is depleting our financial resources and throwing the world into unnecessary turmoil?Did you want to live under an oppressive police surveillance state, to have every intimate aspect of your life monitored by the Government, to have surrendered any sense of privacy or personal freedom?Did you intend for immigrant families to be terrorized in their workplaces, schools, and homes, with no regard for due process or for legal and human rights?

Did you vote for the Epstein Files to be hidden from view, protecting the absolute most vile predators and pedophiles?Did you vote for the selling off and destruction of protected natural lands, for concentration camps, for screaming, water-guzzling data centers swallowing up your community? Did you vote for the elimination of programs that provide veterans their benefits, poor children a school lunch, the elderly their hard-earned retirement?Did you want us alienated from the world and removed from every global humanitarian and diplomatic partnership we have participated in for decades?Did you vote for massive, opulent ballrooms, gaudy vanity arches, ego-stroking building alterations, and wasteful reflecting pool renovations?

Is this what you voted for?Because if this isn’t what you voted for, you need to be vocal now.

Silence is not a luxury anyone can afford in days like these.

To be silent now, after voting so loudly, is irresponsible and unhelpful.Your silence doesn’t protect refugees or avoid disastrous Cabinet appointees or pay treatment bills for the now uninsured.It doesn’t shield marginalized communities from hate crimes or protect America’s farmers or care for the disabled or challenge the President’s flagrant nepotism.

Your silence doesn’t encourage lawmakers to push against their party even if they feel they should, and it doesn’t show solidarity with activists in the streets spending themselves to advocate for equality and justice.It doesn’t discourage the President and his spokespeople from rolling out an unrelenting stream of lies or attacking those doing real, Constitution-guarding journalism.It doesn’t hold those in the highest levels of power and influence accountable for disregarding every procedure, rule of law, and safeguard established to ensure that every citizen is protected from those governing them.

Your silence doesn’t do anything right now but allow you to divorce yourself from your vote, to avoid any accountability for the man you’ve chosen, and to perpetuate the erratic, reckless, criminal behavior that is endangering every human being here.

What this means, friend, is that if you are indeed regretting your vote in any way, this would be the time to stand up and say so. Millions of us are out here doing the work of pushing back and speaking for the marginalized and poor and disregarded (including Trump voters), and we’re marching, and we’re calling our elected officials, and we’re busting our butts to keep our Constitution intact.And all the while, the narrative the President is selling is that this is a partisan, Liberal Media-created mirage. He’s attempting to manufacture a political civil war via social media to divert attention from the insidious stuff happening right now that should be horrifying all of us.And every day you say nothing, our Republic is more and more vulnerable, more and more compromised, more and more in danger of losing the very essence of its freedoms and liberties.

All this to say, I’m really sorry for your embarrassment or your guilt or your feeling foolish, but even more concerned about your silence.

I hear that many people are leaving MAGA, that they are tired of this waste, this recklessness, this greed, this incompetence. Maybe you’re one of those people. I just hope you won’t leave quietly.

Your vote in 2024, for whatever reason you cast it, was loud.

And if you regret that vote or if you don’t consent to what you are seeing from this man and this Administration, your volume and your vote now is necessary, too.

Please join those of us who are resisting together because we love America more than a political party, because this isn’t about any of us; it’s about all of us.

Please speak, and speak loudly.

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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…

… s**t.

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.

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.

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.

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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.

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.

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…

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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?

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.

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.

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?

The Beautiful Mess by John Pavlovitz is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.

This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit johnpavlovitz.substack.com/subscribe