I’m sick.
Here I am sitting in the middle of the city I’ve dreamed of living in for years, surrounded by incredible friendships and serving in a church whose sole focus is radically changing the culture of Dallas by living wholly in the love of Jesus and I should be ecstatic. And in a lot of ways, I am.
But when I look around at this beautiful nation that I’ve been so blessed to call home I’m freaking sick. It’s absolutely horrific.
Politically left members of my own generation are acting like total babies because Trump was elected president.
Practically the entire political right in this country seems to have forgotten how rotten a person Trump has shown himself to be over the last few decades and have changed their tune dramatically from when Trump was one of 16 possibilities rather than the president-elect himself, going so far as to say that God himself chose Trump to lead (and while the scripture does say God appoints authorities over us that is still a different discussion for a different day).
Violence in the U.S. is outrageous. Five law enforcement officers have been killed since SUNDAY. (WFAA Channel 8, Dallas, 11/23/16 6:00 PM broadcast)
FIVE.
Families are being torn apart. Strangers are attacking each other simply because of who they voted for. What were once deeply-rooted friendships are now overturning at a moment’s notice, maybe never to be mended again.
It’s Thanksgiving but nobody in America seems to want to talk about anything except all the stuff that pisses us off. Evidently we don’t know anything except how much of a failure our country is becoming right under our noses.
Well I’m tired of it.
Not to the point that I want to ignore it. Oh, no. There is work to be done.
Liberals need to get up off their butts and stop crying, focus on what their values are and start doing something about it. If they want to see change in America that aligns with their beliefs, crying about it and playing with Play-Doh® isn’t going to do anything. Did you see Martin Luther King Jr. sitting criss-cross applesauce on the university quad bawling his eyes out? No. He got work done. Even from jail (even though we should never have put him in a position where he had to, but that’s another conversation, too).
Conservatives need to shut up. We’re not helping anyone by rubbing Trump’s win in everybody’s faces. So what. He won. Have you forgotten how crookedly he treats the people around him? It occurs to me that quite a few people have. I once read an article that proposed the idea that a young man addicted to pornography can’t expect to waltz into marriage and suddenly be freed from it because he’s now sleeping with his wife. It will still be there unless he does something about it. In the same way, Trump’s position in the White House isn’t gonna magically change his heart and his actions, either. And at 70–I’m just saying–his chances are slim.
I want us to remember things we can still be thankful for today, because God knows we need to.
This election showed us a ton of things in America have changed.
BUT
We still put people on the moon first.
We still invented Dr. Pepper. And Cheez Whiz. And the alarm clock. And the car. And the airplane. And the internet. And the calculator. And the cell phone. And cotton candy.
And Blue Bell.
We still won 2 world wars (and, admittedly, war isn’t something to be proud of but at least the ability to put an end to a few is, I think).
We still are a beacon of light and hope to millions upon millions of people each year. The reason we have an immigration problem stems from the fact that America is still a land of opportunity.
I could make this list go on forever, but I hope you’re starting to see the point because I don’t have the patience to write for that long. We need to get over ourselves and remember the most important underlying thought in all of this: whether we voted red, blue, green, or any other color this election, and however we feel about the results, we are still Americans at the most fundamental level, and we need to act like it.
Together.
We’re not going to make it through the next four years if we don’t.
Ty Hirsch 