The Beautiful Mess by John Pavlovitz Podcast

Today, an alarming video surfaced of a woman being assaulted at a Trump rally in Youngstown, Ohio, for wearing a shirt that said, “Release The Epstein Files’ while heckling the President as a fascist.

The video shows a group of large, grown men violently pushing the woman around, one punching her, wrapping her in a headlock, attempting to rip off her shirt, and knocking her down.

Around the woman, hundreds of adults—presumably teachers, parents, police officers, and business owners film the assault on their phones, laugh to one another, shout slurs at her, move away from the melee, or join the salivating crowd's chants of “USA! USA!”

A legion of self-identified patriots, alleged protectors of women, and professed followers of Jesus do everything but move in to protect one woman from the brutality of several men, a woman truly advocating for vulnerable women and children.

To a person, they refuse to stop the vicious attack of a mindless mob, mainly because they are part of it.

Meanwhile, from the platform, their beloved spray-painted, barely literate predator cult leader, a sitting U.S. President no less, ridicules the woman as “fat”, “very fat,” and “low class”.

Police finally intervene, not to protect the woman from being beaten by a group of men, but to escort her out.

No charges against them. No accountability for their thuggery.No justice for the laws they broke.

This should sound familiar. It’s what created him and this putrid national mess in the first place.

This rally isn’t an aberration; it’s a microcosm.

This is what MAGA is. This is the depravity this movement foments.This is what these people are.Every single person in that arena, just like every single person who still supports him, is morally broken, all of them.

The people at his rallies, the people who voted for him, the people who are preparing to step into a voting booth in a few weeks and put a legislative hedge of protection around him, the people we know who align with him—are defective human beings.

His supporters are men and women who lack the same kind of decency the rest of us feel obligated to; otherwise, they would have long ago jettisoned him.

They have had to make so many ethical and theological exceptions to remain tethered to him that they are no longer capable of empathy or courage or elemental kindness when it is needed.

Once you make the initial deal with this kind of devil, the soul transaction is complete and binding.

You cannot be partially associated with a career criminal. You cannot marginally approve of a rapist.You cannot conditionally cheer on a vile, belligerent serial liar.

Donald Trump is a pass-fail test of one’s capacity for basic human goodness—and over and over again, these people have failed miserably, completely, and joyfully.

I am a person of compassion.

I believe in seeing the complexities in people, in realizing they are not two-dimensional caricatures or shorthand stereotypes, in believing that they cannot usually be easily summed up in broad strokes.

Like many people, I’ve spent the better part of a decade giving people the benefit of the doubt, trying to separate their political affiliations from their humanity, and dismissing every screaming red flag as something else.

I’ve labored through ten years dismissing their reprehensible actions as a byproduct of theological programming, family indoctrination, and political brainwashing.

I’ve tried to convince myself that they were basically good people, duped by charlatans and led astray by professional liars.

But it’s become impossible to rationalize away or make excuses for anyone who, at this point, would attend his rallies, sing his praises, boost his propaganda, vote for his enablers, or stay silent in the face of his prolific, barbaric violence.

With every human rights atrocity they shrug off, with every violent diatribe they dismiss as humorous, with every Constitutional crisis they justify, they sink deeper into a cavern of inhumanity that can never truly crawl out of.

The people throughout this country who stand with this toxic human filth are no different than the violent mob in that arena.

Just like this seething, jeering crowd applauding the assault of one woman whose worth and safety they had no regard for, they too are participating in, silently watching, or cheering it all on.

We all need to stop trying to convince ourselves they have been fooled or manipulated by him, and admit that in far too many ways, they are him.

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I feel like we’ve read this book before…

Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth recently stated that for the first time in nearly one hundred years, the United States plans to broadcast the execution of a human being. Ft. Hood mass shooter Nidal Hasan, who killed 13 people, is set to die by firing squad on December 6th, an event that would be live-streamed if the Pentagon has its way.

In the wake of the announcement, Hegseth has received fierce backlash, with ministers, media members, and politicians expressing concerns. Even President Trump is reported to be conflicted on the idea, though he did give and defend the initial go-ahead. Much of Trump’s base remains supportive.

Are any of us actually surprised?

If we’ve been paying attention, we’ve all seen this coming.

Over the last ten years, under this president and his morally vacant coconspirators, we’ve watched a precipitous descent into the darkest depths of what some people are capable of and other people will allow.

In our homes, at family holiday tables, in workplace conversations, and in car repair waiting rooms, we’ve had a front seat to a malignant collective soul rot that has left tens of millions of people unable to see the worth of a human life.

Throughout the two Trump terms, we’ve all witnessed an unrelenting campaign of dehumanization intended to desensitize otherwise decent human beings to violence against their neighbors, to see it as justified, as even sacred.

Conservative Evangelicals, who’ve been the bedrock of the MAGA movement, have been Trump’s early adopters and most steadfast champions, following him into every campaign of character assassination, mindlessly parroting his incendiary rhetoric targeting Muslims, people of color, immigrants, and transgender people.

They have defended each vulgar diatribe, excused every legislative assault on vulnerable human beings, shrugged off atrocities against children, and ratified unthinkable brutality against their neighbors—all while having the stratospheric gall to pretend they give a s**t about Jesus.

These self-identified God-lovers have stuck by their guy through a mismanaged pandemic, through illegal wars of choice, through genocides and ethnic cleansing, through the protection of pedophiles, through domestic terrorism, all the while drifting further and further from the namesake of their faith.

Though MAGA Evangelicals look to the New Testament and fancy themselves as Jesus’ righteous disciples, the truth is, they’d have been the political power-holders and the religious zealots who persecuted them.

They’d have been the lathered-up, bloodthirsty rabble calling for a criminal’s head, the ones demanding an eye for an eye, the ones dancing around the flesh-streaked, blood-soaked dirt around a cross, believing they’d done God’s work. Trump Christians would have celebrated the crucifixion, and it’s not at all shocking that they would be the authors and co-signers of public executions.

And is this proposed barbarism of a broadcast killing really any different from what we’re already witnessing every single day? From the bombings of Iranian schools, to the Minneapolis assassination of a young mother, to the relentless slaughter of Palestinians, to the indiscriminate violence of ICE, we are getting live-streamed executions whether we choose them or not.

And these horrors are largely being applauded by people who spend their Sundays in a church feigning adoration of a Jesus whose life and teachings they spend the rest of the week ignoring.

This is just another sickening sign of the death of humanity at the hands of religious people, convinced their bloodlust is justified and unable to resist the worst of their impulses because they’ve been told by their spiritual and religious leaders that God is on their side.

This is kinda the logical moral regression of the White Evangelical Church.

The story here isn’t that for the first time in a century, a United States presidency fueled by alleged Christians would be broadcasting an execution; it’s the fact that a decade into the widespread moral collapse of professed followers of Jesus here, it’s all pretty much on brand.

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Not all heroes wear capes. Sometimes they wear Primus t-shirts.

This morning my newsfeed was filled with videos of a woman in a yellow jacket and concert tee being escorted by police from a Trump rally in my birthplace of Syracuse, NY. As she moves through the sneering, jeering, glassy-eyed mob raining boos down on her, she walks proudly, makes a strident double middle finger salute, meeting their derision with defiance.

It was glorious, cathartic, and it reminded me that we’re going to make it through this nightmare—if we remember who we are.

“Why won’t someone do something?!”

That’s the question we ask when we look at the world around us, when we see how much suffering and injustice there is, when we inventory the brokenness in our path. We wonder why someone isn’t taking up that cause, or fighting for those people, or doing that urgent work, or standing up to that corrupt power.And when we wonder when someone is going to do something, we usually expect that someone to be somebody else; someone with more experience, someone younger, someone more talented, someone more charismatic or socially connected, someone more popular. We discount our abilities, minimize what we’re capable of, forget the impact our lives have—or maybe we’re trying to sidestep discomfort, but the result is that we deny our own humanity by forgetting who we are.

But if we step back from lamenting that someone needs to do something and remember that we are someone —that we’re here, that we’re alive, that we can be the kind of person the world needs—that might change the way we move through the present turbulence. It might make us feel differently about the darkness around us that seems to be winning.People often ask me how we can stay hopeful right now, and the way we do that is by staying human in the space of our agency, by deciding over and over again who we will choose to be. We stay hopeful by making decisions that center compassion, that override selfishness, that show courage, that reflect whoever it is we aspire to be. We ask ourselves what kind of person the world needs right now, and do our best to be that kind of person by showing up, speaking, creating.

Some of us understand that we have gifts and talents and resources; we know that we’re someone, but attach caveats and conditions and qualifiers to the realization: I am someone, but I am not going to be that someone.So we think to ourselves, someone needs to be in the streets protesting ICE… but I am not going to be that someone.Someone needs to stand up in a school board meeting and make sure books stay in libraries… but I am not going to be that someone.Someone needs to be running for office… but I am not going to be that someone.Someone needs to challenge my wacky neighbor on his anti-immigrant tirades… but I am not going to be that someone.Someone needs to start a support group for queer teens… but I am not going to be that someone.But what if you are that someone? What if you stop waiting for anybody else to show up?What if every single one of us fully embraced our someone-ness? We might just transform our neighborhoods, our towns, our state, and our nation.

These days are made for courageous, loving, generous someones like us.The next time you find yourself thinking, “Why won’t someone do something?” remind yourself that you’re someone.When you see a family broken down on the side of the road and you think, “I hope someone stops to help them.” Remember you are someone.

When you’re in your school hallways or your workplace, and another human is being bullied or excluded or dehumanized and you think, “someone should stand with them,” remember you are someone.When you read a friend’s homophobic social media rant and think, “I wish someone would set them straight.” Remember that you’re someone.When you think about the poor in our community and think, “I wish someone would help make sure they have food and shelter.” Remember that you’re someone.

As you move through your day and into tomorrow and the rest of your life, let your moral values, ethical principles, and religious convictions make themselves known in whatever way you feel moved to.

This week we really needed someone to enter the rally for a monstrous president and call him a rapist to his face, someone to invade the space of the mindless rabble still worshipping him, someone to stand as our defiant middle-finger-flying proxy.

Thank God a woman in a Primus t-shirt and yellow jacket remembered that she’s someone.

But we need more someones than her.We need someone to ensure that our schools are safe for LGBTQ children. We need someone to make assault weapons less available in our streets. We need someone to secure our elections and ensure everyone has a vote and a voice.We need someone to legislate protections for the planet and the poor and the marginalized. We need someone to dismantle the systemic racism still afflicting our nation. We need someone to loudly push back against anti-immigrant bigotry when it shows up in our neighborhoods, newsfeeds, and holiday gatherings.

Right now America needs someone strong… It needs someone kind.It needs someone compassionate.It needs someone courageous.It needs someone fiercely loving.America needs someone to drive back this fascist, pseudo-Christian MAGA pestilence and save this nation.And here’s the great news: we are someone.

Your move…

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Warning: this piece contains profanity and references to sexual assault that may be disturbing to some.

“That’s it; he’s done for.”

Those were the words an older relative spoke matter-of-factly ten years ago this week, as we listened to then-Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump’s vulgar ramblings to Access Hollywood host Billy Bush.

As the conversation with Bush begins, Trump brings up TV host Nancy O’Dell, bloviating proudly, “I moved on her, actually. You know she was down on Palm Beach. I moved on her, and I failed. I’ll admit it. I did try and f*ck her; she was married… I moved on her like a bi*ch. I couldn't get there, and she was married.”

“He’ll never survive this,” my relative went on.

Then, referring to actress Arianne Zucker who they were about to interact with, Trump brags to Bush, “Yeah, that’s her with the gold. I better use some Tic Tacs, just in case I start kissing her. You know I’m automatically attracted to beautiful... I just start kissing them. It’s like a magnet. Just kiss. I don’t even wait. And when you’re a star, they let you do it. You can do anything….Bush interjects, "Whatever you want."

Trump replies, "Grab them by the p*ssy. You can do anything."

Boom.

Political disaster.

Unsurvivable scandal.

Game over.

I exhaled deeply for the first time in months, being certain of the end of a vile, year-long campaign of unabashed bigotry and unprecedented vitriol.

Surely, Evangelicals would finally come to their senses and jettison him as the very evil they always loudly condemned.

Of course, the Family Values Conservative voters would make a massive and rapid exodus from him and this kind of dehumanization.

Without question, my Republican family members and friends would part ways with him now.

Or so I thought…

I truly believed that this open confession of predation by a man already a serial adulterer who had been credibly accused by dozens of women of sexual assault, misconduct, or harassment would be the final nail in the coffin of his presidential aspirations.

Yet, just weeks later, on October 9th, 2016, I woke to the abject horror that I was mistaken.

Unthinkably, after getting clear access into the absolute vile recesses of his blackened heart, tens of thousands of Americans, over 80 percent of them professed Christians, many of them with children of their own, cast their vote for this vulgar, lecherous, admitted sexual predator to occupy the highest seat of leadership in the nation, and arguably, the world.

The thought was incomprehensible. There was no way to make sense of a man blathering on in that kind of obscene detail about his behavior around and his feelings toward women, being rewarded with the Presidency.

This was not simply a wildly unexpected political victory; this was a mass rejection of decency, a casting off of morality, and an endorsement of cavernous moral filth—not only by a massive swath of America—but of people I knew, loved, believed in, cared about, and up until that moment, respected.

And nothing has been the same since: not me, not this nation, and not the relational fabric that once connected us to each other.

Over the last decade, I’ve watched people I was once close to move the goalposts of what their ethics and theology will allow. I’ve seen them abandon their declared convictions and justify every kind of indecent and illegal act, including the physical violation of women and children. Over and over, as they have continued in undying support of this hateful, violent, empty husk of a man; as they have fallen deeper into cultic fixation, they have severed any tethers between us.

I have mourned the loss of them or of the people I thought they were countless times since the Fall of 2016.

But it was that moment a decade ago, watching that sickening video, feeling that certainty about his political fate, and soon feeling the gut punch of being wrong, when I lost faith in a good portion of this nation, and in those who made up my family, my church, my tribe, my community.

It turns out, Trump’s disgusting Access Hollywood admissions weren’t the end of his campaign, but they were the beginning of the end of the nation we might have been and the relationships we could have had.

It will be a grief that I and millions of others like me will never be able to shake.

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Dear Evangelicals,

Growing up in the Church, I’ve often heard you extol the virtues of “speaking the truth in love,” so I hope you’ll receive this in the spirit in which it’s offered.

You’re supposedly familiar with the words of Jesus, so I know I’m not telling you something you don’t already know, but you might benefit from a reminder. He said that the single greatest aspiration, the very highest calling for those who follow him, is to love God and to love their neighbor as themselves. That is job one.

And here’s the problem, from where I’m standing: you have LGBTQ neighbors who you most certainly aren’t loving by any measure, rather just the opposite.

I see how angry and consumed with hatred you are; how bitter you’ve become toward people who have done you no harm.

I see the way your theology has left you addled with fears and phobias that have no basis in reality or in the Gospel.

I see the effortless venom you hurl at strangers for unchangeable parts of their humanity, and it tells me you’ve really lost the plot of the religion we both were raised in.

Your incessant attacks on queer human beings are the putrid fruit of a toxic faith that needs an enemy to feel valid; a defective religion that cannot exist unless it has an imminent danger to wipe out—even if that danger is imaginary, even if the threat you rail against is completely fabricated.

I’m not sure how you ended up believing this is what faith looks like, what actual good you believe you’re accomplishing, or exactly what your endgame is, but I hope you hear me because I am telling you, without malice or ill intent: you’re getting it horribly wrong.

This life is fragile and fleeting, and you’re wasting daylight; squandering precious time and breath, fighting a battle you can’t possibly win and weren’t asked to wage to begin with. God is not in this holy war with you, no matter how much your pastors or politicians or favorite news show host wants you to believe.

Jesus never told you to do any of this. I know, because as a pastor, I’ve read and studied every word he ever uttered in the Scriptures. Despite what you’ve been indoctrinated into believing, someone else’s sexual orientation, gender identity, or body are not your business. They’re out of your jurisdiction, above your pay grade, and beyond your control.

And yet Evangelical friends, because there is so much that is within your control, here is some unsolicited but hopefully useful advice for you with whatever time you have left on this planet: stop working so hard to erase queer people, to make them disappear. It isn’t going to happen.

They exist. They are here. They have always been here. They deserve to be here. God made them as much as God made you.

If your faith really matters to you, it would be a beautiful thing if you channeled that tireless passion to making hungry people less hungry, physically sick people well,lonely people feel welcome, invisible people feel seen, bullied people feel protected,and grieving people feel comforted.

Those things you can accomplish, and Jesus did explicitly call you to them.He states that this healing, restorative work is his business, and so it should be yours.

Love is the only worthwhile expression of our theology, and frankly, right now yours is devoid of it. This love is how Jesus said he would determine your love for him: not by the culture wars you wage, the signs you hold, the insults you hurl, the coldness you deliver, the relationships you sever, the protests you mount, or the havoc you wreak.

Because while you’ve been so busy bothering LGBTQ people, a waiting and weary multitude has passed by you looking for the hope and help and healing you’re supposed to offer them, and you have missed it all. In fact, worse than that, you have become a source of wounding.

Because of your unrelenting cruelty and your unprovoked attacks on queer human beings, you are now a barrier to people’s belief that God is defined by love.

If you could abandon this breathless outrage for one moment and just look around, you’d see that the possibility for goodness is everywhere. It’s right in front of you.You’ve been given this time and space and your presence all as priceless gifts from God, and it would be a tragedy to miss the chance to use them.

There are hopeless situations you can remedy, blessings you can provide, people you can care for, paths you can beautifully alter, healing you can accomplish, prayers you can answer, wounds you can mend, kindnesses you can extend.

The question is: do you really want any of that, or are you married to this ultimately fruitless cause that is doing nothing real but damaging already vulnerable people?

Friends, LGBTQ human beings’ existence isn’t harming you in the least, and if you were able to step back and be honest enough to admit that, you might have to ask yourself what the hell you’re so angry about. You might find yourself seeing what the rest of us see: that you are the danger here. Maybe that’s your goal, but I really hope not.

In over a half-century on this planet, I’ve never seen or heard a single queer person show up at your churches calling your perverts, or demanding that your right to your own bodies be taken away, or trying to legislate you out of existence, or shouting through bullhorns at your gatherings.

All I’ve ever seen is a group of people simply trying to live and asking to be allowed the same personal liberties and opportunity to exist you have. That’s pretty much what loving your neighbors and doing onto others is about. In fact, you could take a lesson from them. You’ve always said God works in mysterious ways.

Evangelicals, the clock is ticking on our time here.The sun is fading.Time is wasting.People are waiting.Your life and others’ lives are flying by.

Do something worthy of it all:

Repent of this sinful crusade and start loving your queer neighbors the way Jesus told you to.

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So, here’s the bad news: fascism isn’t coming to America; it’s here.

We are long past the warnings of an approaching existential threat looming on the distant horizon of our story. The nightmare is no longer a future improbability but a present reality.

The current President kept his 2024 campaign promise to be a “dictator on day one,” wiping out decades of protections and partnerships with the stroke of a pen.He filled his Cabinet with the absolute moral dregs of humanity, people committed to nothing but him, and the power and wealth that sycophantic devotion affords them.He and his soulless accomplices have quickly dismantled every system and safeguard that, up until a couple of years ago, were established givens.

And the only question left is: do we have the strength to stop them?

History is a really good teacher.

If we pay attention to her, she reminds us that populations don’t become monstrous overnight, that nations don’t abandon humanity in a single moment, and that generational human rights atrocities don’t form in an instant or a vacuum.

Collective sickness is never sudden. There is always a slow, deliberate, almost imperceptible pattern, and we’re seeing it now:

Manufacturing fear: misinformation, fake emergencies, and abject lies all designed to create an unnecessary urgency in the heads of easily manipulated people and to make them feel hopelessly assailed.

The crafting of surrounding enemies: encroaching threats to tangibly embody the nightmares they have made in their heads; someone to go to war against, to take back their country from—someone these leaders can save them from.

The weaponizing of religion: making the manipulated believe that their mission is not just important or right, but holy; that they are being obedient to God while eradicating other human beings.

In that state of frantic, perpetually terrorized self-righteousness, they begin to allow everything. They can justify all manners of cruelty, all denials of care, every act of violence, because they are purifying and protecting their divinely curated country.

Once this happens, once-ordinary, rational, even compassionate people begin to lose their ability to see the humanity in front of them—it’s too late to help them see clearly.

This is how holocausts and genocides happen.

This is where historic national malignancies grow.

These are the first steps down a road that at the beginning seems unthinkable.

Decent Americans, we need to listen to History right now.She is warning us that we are on the precipice of a free fall.We can’t afford to go to sleep now.We need to wake ourselves up.

America is not yet near where Germany was at the peak of Hitler’s power, but Germany wasn’t always there either, and that is the point.

That hideous transformation (like so many before) required targeted propaganda, fake news streams, dehumanizing rhetoric from leadership, an uninformed electorate, coercive religion, and a marginalized population to serve as the focal point for the holy war.

Most of all, it required a large number of decent people to be silent, which is why we will not.

It would be completely irresponsible and reckless to suggest that the United States in 2026 is Germany in 1941, but it could very well be Germany in 1933.

We cannot let the myth of American exceptionalism numb us into imagining we are above devolving into inhumanity. We have every ingredient in place to abandon the best of ourselves and to become something monstrous, something History records as yet another shocking failure of the center. It can and will happen here unless we refuse to allow it.

It’s not a foregone conclusion that America will give birth to something as tragic and sickening as we have seen. Still, we’re stupid and arrogant if we don’t believe ourselves capable, and that we aren’t already seeing the warning signs of bigotry and prejudice irreversibly taking root.

The question is whether or not we have enough good people who are willing to push back and to move together across lines of politics and religion and race and nation of origin and orientation and to declare our independence from fascism.

Do we have the energy, the diligence, and the courage to join our disparate voices into a single, furious choir that refuses to stop singing songs of freedom for everyone?

Do Americans have the attention span and intestinal fortitude to fight as they’ve never had to fight before because they’ve never had to go to war with their government in this way before?

Will we refuse to tolerate injustice in the name of national greatness or divine will, to reject and oppose denials of people’s worth and humanity even when it comes from our party or our church or our families?

And perhaps most of all, do we have the humility not to imagine that we are too intelligent or spiritual or informed not to become as monstrous a nation as we have seen others become?

My money says we do.

Yes, the bad news is that fascism is here, but the good news is that so are we.

Dictators don’t oust themselves, horrible regimes don’t leave on their own, and oligarchs don’t tire of devouring up nations, but fortunately, decent, brave, and organized human beings like us aren’t gonna wait around for that.We have a month left to transform the what is into the what will be.

May we be our best selves in this moment, so that History one day tells our story as one where disparate humanity twisted the plot.

Now that fascism is here, let’s make sure we drive it back to the hell it came from.

We can. We must. We will.

Take heart, good people.

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.

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Warning: this piece contains language regarding sexual assault that may be triggering or uncomfortable to some.

In October of 2024, a then 20-year-old young woman alleges she was brutally assaulted by 7 of her Cornell University classmates, at least one of whom she considered a friend.

Right now, in the wake of her decision to speak publicly and file suit in an effort to bring her abusers to justice, she is being assaulted a second time by a similarly grotesque mob:

A sitting president, himself an adjudicated rapist, is expressing sympathy for the accused, with no such regard for their accuser.

Men all over the country are flooding social media with their crude Neanderthal hot takes on her supposed culpability.

Conservative male content creators like Matt Walsh and Michael Tracey are assassinating her character in tweets, YouTube videos, and reckless think pieces, championing countersuits and calling for her doxxing.

And women like Megyn Kelly are leveraging hours of programming on their massive platforms to perpetuate a narrative that is right out of the misogynist’s playbook: blame the victim.

Kelly has spent the past two weeks running extensive hit pieces on Jane Doe, criticizing her drinking habits, doing drive-by psychotherapy, and questioning the two-week delay in Doe’s reporting of the incident, despite Kelly herself seemingly taking a full decade to disclose alleged sexual harassment by then Fox News CEO Roger Ailes.

Rather than educate her audience on the pressures women face at every turn; the sexism saturating media, the Evangelical Church, and the GOP ecosystem; and the widespread sexual violence permeating our culture, Megyn Kelly would rather throw raw meat to the snarling, unevolved rabble.

Kelly, like all perpetually performative Conservatives who continually sermonize about “protecting women” in college sports, doesn’t seem at all interested in defending them when they step off the field and onto their campuses. Once they have exhausted their use as pawns in a Right-Wing culture war, they’re thrown to the wolves.

As thousands of women take to social media to declare solidarity with Jane Doe (#iamjanedoe), counting themselves among the 81 percent of women in the US who testify to having been sexually assaulted or harassed in their lifetimes, they too are being met with ridicule, insults, and vulgarity.

This is why more survivors of sexual assault don’t come forward; because they know that in doing so, they will find themselves facing violence and indignities from strangers that compound their wounds and amplify the shame of their initial trauma.

They understand that they will face a microscopic scrutiny of their dating histories, clothing choices, and public conduct that places the burden of the violence visited upon them squarely on their shoulders and never on those who authored it.

The United States has a long-gestating r*pe culture that ensures that the Jane Does will always be hounded and that the Cornell 7s will always be sheltered. This not only makes survivors more reticent to report their trauma, but it emboldens unwell men who are more apt to act out on the monstrous things in their minds, believing accountability will never come.

Until this nation stops electing predators and politically rewarding abusers, they will continue to be prolific in their atrocities.

Until men of conscience police the men around them, no rapist will ever feel as unsafe as those he harms.

Until law enforcement and university boards decide to root toxic masculinity from their ranks, survivors will continue to remain silent. Until internalized misogynists like Megyn Kelly stop partnering in their own subjugation, young women will continue to question their worth and carry unnecessary shame.

Until Conservative parents stop coddling their sons and diminishing their daughters, campuses and workplaces will be where young men believe they can embrace the darkest evils harbored in their hearts.

And unless we abolish a pervasive rape culture that extends all the way up to the Supreme Court and the White House, every Jane Doe in America will know that if they do choose to expose the unspeakable violence committed against them, they will be further assaulted by a sprawling crowd who would rather practice or excuse violence against women than confront it.

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I am grieving right now, and my family members, former friends, and neighbors who support him don’t understand why, though they think they do.

The accumulated sorrows I’ve been carrying have almost nothing to do with that repugnant, needy, narcissistic bigot in the White House who has never had a single noble impulse in his privileged existence.

This was never about him. He is who he has always been: callous, hateful, bereft of kindness or empathy.

I am mourning everything he has shown me about them.

I am grieving the fact that they are everything he is.

From the very beginning, he’s just been a spotlight.

Over the last heartbreaking decade, he has merely revealed the hidden ugliness of the place I call home and the people I live alongside here—and that is the thing that keeps me up at night and boils the blood within my veins.

And this is not the mourning over a single traumatic event; it has been a daily and pervasive grieving; a bleak, protracted funeral over the people I thought they were.

It’s the daily atrocities they’ve ignored.It’s the murders they’ve rationalized away.It’s the war crimes they’ve shrugged their shoulders at.It’s the criminality they’ve averted their eyes to.It’s the lynchings they’ve dismissed, the rapes they’ve excused, the car executions they’ve justified, it’s the abductions they’ve turned into memes. It’s the billion chances they’ve had over the last ten years to access their humanity; to dissent from his vulgarity or denounce his cruelty or demand accountability—and repeatedly refused.

His pestilent presence is not the source of my despair. It is the reality that all of this vicious, toxic filth that we are collectively infected with today is something people I loved and once respected are seemingly fine with. The rising hatred has never been alarming or discomforting enough to them to move them to action, or to speak, or vote against it.

Oh sure, some of them might inwardly twinge with discomfort at one or two of the most egregious offenses or shudder behind closed doors or harbor the smallest regrets in the quiet of their hearts, but by and large they’re obviously good with it all. They’ve made that clear.

With their silence as much as with their volume, with their absence as much as their presence, people around me have made it clear that they are still more with him than they are against him, that they are more like him than different from him, and that they and I are increasingly morally incompatible.

His bigotry and his violence and his viciousness have not been dealbreakers for them, and this is a dealbreaker for me. I simply cannot respect people who respect him.

They ridicule me for what they believe to be my unhealthy preoccupation with him, saying that he “lives rent-free in my head.” He doesn’t; they do. I cannot fathom how I could have been so wrong about them for so long. Coming to terms with how poisoned their hearts are is something I’ll never recover from. It’s a funeral I will be forever attending.

So yes, his ascendancy has been a raking light illuminating everything hidden, and I am viewing everything differently because of him.

I no longer see America, or my church, or my neighborhood, or my family the same anymore, and I’m not sure I ever will again.But that isn’t the worst of it.

To me, the greatest tragedy of all of this isn’t him. It isn’t that the person who has our nation in a stranglehold is impervious to compassion, incapable of benevolence, and mortally allergic to human decency.

The greatest tragedy is how many Americans he now represents, and that he apparently represents those I loved and lived alongside and used to feel at home with.That’s where the sadness is and why I mourn the loss of the people I thought I knew.Long after he is gone, that grief will remain.

No election result will change that. What has been your experience of relational grief over the past few years? Let me know in the comments.

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I am a beta male.

Sometimes, I’m apt to forget that.

In the course of my ordinary days, I rarely question whether I’m masculine enough.

I usually move through the world thinking I’m a reasonably normal adult human man, believing I’m adequately meeting the job description: doing my work with care, being a loving and emotionally available husband, showing up faithfully for my kids, helping the people in my path as best I can.

Thankfully, I have Conservative, self-identified alpha males to remind me otherwise.

Like self-appointed testosterone police, they fly into my mentions to make sure I know just how deficient in being a dude I actually am.

They relentlessly ridicule me for protesting a pedophile president, for calling out Evangelical misogyny, and for condemning frat boy college rape culture; these things all supposedly revealing my shortcomings as a card-carrying man. They deride me for being afflicted with toxic empathy as I advocate for survivors of sexual assault, openly grieve children being blown apart by bombs my taxes paid for, and call out the monstrous violence of masked thugs brutalizing my neighbors

I try to explain that I can’t help it, that I was raised this way, that I am a product of my upbringing.

Looking back, I can see that my parents and mentors apparently all failed to make me into a “real man.”

I grew up believing that a woman’s consent trumped anything; that I should yield to her will regarding her body, no matter what the circumstances.

I was taught that I was solely responsible for my choices, that it wasn’t a woman’s job to dress or act in a way that ensured that she would be safe in my presence; that my presence should guarantee her safety.

I was raised to believe that real men have the courage to stand alone and speak out when every other man around them is devolving into the worst of themselves.

I was indoctrinated by leftist propaganda into thinking that the true measure of a man is whether he can hold on to his convictions when no one else shares them.

By his example, my father told me that a man wasn’t ashamed to show emotion around his children, was easy with his affection, and made sure no one around him felt alone or unloved.

And it seems in all of these cases, I was duped and lied to, led astray down the path to becoming the sad, sorry, unmanly wuss I apparently now am.

Maybe there’s still time for me. Perhaps if I were stronger and worked harder, I could be like the alpha men who mock me.

Maybe like them, I could completely subjugate my identity and my voice to a lift-wearing, makeup-caked serial predator.Like them, I could also stay silent while thousands of rapists and pedophiles are being protected from accountability by the leaders I chose. Maybe I too could blame the survivors of sexual assault, instead of the monsters who desecrated them.If I were as rightly manly as my conservative critics, perhaps I could be as comfortable as they are with the government taking away a woman’s autonomy or disregarding her elemental freedoms.

Given a proper manosphere deprogramming, perhaps I could join the sprawling ranks of perpetually insecure man-children who’ve never been able to find a fully formed understanding of what it means to be a gentle man and a loving human being. Immerse myself in the Evangelical ecosystem long enough, and I might evolve into a knuckle-dragging amber-trapped caveman who is terrified of strong women and intimidated by any expression of sexuality that doesn’t fit my brittle Old Testament sensibilities.Spend enough time in Republican politics and I too may one day be tough enough to fall prostrate before a man who has verbally, emotionally, or physically violated nearly every woman in his path, and to still pretend I’m strong.

I’m pretty sure too late for me, though.

At this age, I might be resigned to my soft, swishy sissified state: just another weak, soy boy, leftist cuck of a man striving to live with decency, self-control, and compassion; to be someone a woman doesn’t need to fear being around when alone or vulnerable.

I might just have to settle for being a father whose son would never be silent when anyone else was in danger.

I might be doomed to be a dad whose daughter feels respected and loved by him because she’s watched him respect and love her mom as an equal.

I may be resigned to being a husband whose partner in life has never felt the pressure to be any other kind of woman than the woman she is.

Yeah, I’d like to fight it, but I confess that the overcompensating alphas are right; I’m a beta male.

Guess I’ll just have to live with that.

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I don’t imagine Jesus was the litigious type, but if he were on the planet right now, I’m pretty sure he’d sue JD Vance for false association or identity theft.

At the very least, he’d violently flip the tables of the entire Trump Administration and him along with it.

Vance, a professed Christian, is stumping through Texas today, where he continues to demonize and dehumanize undocumented immigrants in a pathetic, dangerous attempt to distract voters from the myriad ways he and Donald Trump have decimated our economy, dragged us into an illegal war, and abandoned the needs of the people.

This follows a week where the Vice President slandered and misrepresented pastor Adam Hamilton and James Talarico, two men running for Senate as both Democrats and Christians. Over the past year, Vance has also unleashed a steady stream of venom against Pope Leo for his critiques of the Trump Administration’s partnering in genocide, war, and the persecution of immigrants.

The fact that Vance is intentionally targeting undocumented human beings, some of the most vulnerable people residing here, illustrates his full contempt for Jesus’ clear directive to care for the least of these as if we were caring for him, and the VP’s abject refusal to love his brown-skinned neighbors as himself. He is willfully preying upon the very people Christ claimed solidarity with.

JD Vance claims to be a follower of Jesus.

In fact, he never shuts up about it.

He wears his religion openly, brandishing it at every opportunity in performative piety and finger-wagging condescension, while justifying the harboring of pedophiles, the rolling back of human rights, and the indiscriminate assaults of brown-skinned people by government-funded, masked mercenaries.

Vance is doing all of this while breathlessly doing the bidding of a man he only a couple of years ago compared to Hitler: a court-adjudicated rapist and 34-count felon indicted several times for high crimes; a man whose racism, misogyny, and immorality are at stratospheric levels.

JD Vance’s God isn’t an empathetic street preacher from Nazareth, but a narcissistic, racist former slum-lord from New York City.

Vance has been bending the knee to his vile, belligerent, spray-tanned savior for so long that the actual teachings of Jesus are no longer a concern at this point, which is why he now spends his days trying to connect dots between mass violence against immigrants and a poor, dark-skinned, itinerant minister commanding his people to love everyone in their path.

If the Vice President actually gave half a damn about the non-American, non-English-speaking, “blessed are the peacemakers” center of his faith tradition, he’d fully denounce Donald Trump’s profane, sociopathic violence and condemn ICE’s brutal persecution of immigrant human beings.

If Jesus truly meant anything in his life, he’d fall down in repentance over the ways he has partnered in taking food from the starving, withholding care from the sick, funding a genocide, pillaging the planet, and bearing false witness against political rivals, Democrats, and refugees.

If his faith were anything other than a costume of convenience, he’d work the rest of his life to undo the grievous damage he has done in such a short time to so many beautiful human beings created in the image of God, who do not share his pigmentation, native language, or nation of origin.

JD Vance despises men like James Talarico and the Pope and Pastor Hamilton for the same reason he vilifies refugees and immigrants: because the former actually aspire to the teachings of Jesus—and the latter force him to face the truth that he has no such motivations.

JD Vance may be able to B.S. Trump’s final holdout sycophantic disciples with this hateful, heretical, Jesus-less parade of hypocrisy, but the rest of the world (Christians and non-Christians alike) knows he’s really playing for the other team.

Literally and figuratively, to hell with JD Vance and his fraudulent, phony faith.

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