Our nation soundly rejected Christian Nationalism last night. The depravity at the heart of MAGA that has been on full display throughout the Trump regime revealed to voters who had previously misguidedly believed in the Trump cult that such a direction can only be derived from societal rot. And waking up to this realization has rightly placed within me a fragment of hope for the future of this country. But it is only a fragment of hope. My hope is never in a nation-state, especially one as deeply damaged as ours. We have been the victims of a self-imposed fascist regime that has alienated us from our allies, murdered our own citizens in broad daylight, embraced dictatorship at home and abroad, and has dehumanized the marginalized in our midst – the immigrant and the trans person. MAGA is the product of Hell being made manifest on the good Earth. Hell cannot be brought to the world only to be dissolved by a mere election. Accountability is absolutely the next right immediate action.
Every MAGA official must be held accountable for their collective and individual crimes against humanity. Hegseth must face trial for his war crimes against random boats in the Caribbean and for blatantly violating the Establishment Clause of the First Amendment. Trump must face trial for using ICE as his own personal gestapo, invading democratic cities, murdering American citizens, and for illegally starting a war without congressional approval – for doing everything without congressional approval. The Epstein Files must be released in their unredacted entirety and those implicated within them must be imprisoned. Every MAGA official must face legal consequences for allowing DOGE to illegally dismantle so many of our government agencies that were designed with the disenfranchised in mind.
Every MAGA official must face the societal cost, the ostracization necessarily resulting from blatant racism against immigrants, the championing of former Nazi rhetoric such as “remigration” and the Great Replacement Theory, from taking the white supremacy already existing within this nation and using it to increase their own power. No MAGA official can ever again know a moment’s peace when they are not surrounded by their yes men.
“Peace” and “unity” cannot exist without justice and accountability. The world will be correct in continuing to turn away from us so long as MAGA is allowed to continue without consequences. Any “peace” or “unity” that comes about in the coming weeks and months that does not coincide with immediate legal action is a “cheap grace,” to use the language of Dietrich Bonhoeffer.
I cannot allow myself to forget that this nation chose fascism when it elected Donald Trump as president. This nation chose dictatorship, so long as the hated minorities – those of us in the LGBTQIA+ Community, immigrants, People of Color, women who believe in having a choice over their own bodies – were the ones under the heel of the Empire. This hatred is a cancerous rot at the heart of the American experiment. It reveals a catastrophic failure of our democratic processes that Trump has been able to override the Constitution with the assistance of a non-existent congress. We cannot pretend that last night’s elections alone will heal us. We must stamp out everything that enables MAGA within the heart of our country. Time alone will tell if we are up to the challenge of causing real change to occur.
As a gay man living under this current regime, my hope for this nation is frail. We cannot afford to place our trust in whomever happens to occupy the halls of power within this country. My hope, rather, is in immediate community and in the Gospel of the Crucified God. I believe in my people. And I believe in a co-suffering Christ whose Kingdom establishes a superior telos, a superior goal, for the cosmos. My hope is not in power structures. It’s not in power at all, or dominion, or strength. My hope is in love.
I do not believe in the redemption of The White House. We are a nation that enslaved people for four hundred years only to punish their hard-won freedom from that slavery by imposing Jim Crow laws, Mass Incarceration, and anti-DEI initiatives. We put Japanese Americans into concentration camps during World War Two. We failed to hold the leaders of the Confederacy to account, placing them back in control over their southern states. We elected Trump twice. So I do not have hope in the redemption of The White House. My hope is in the God who kisses me on the breeze and in my friends and family.
But last night was certainly an excellent start to building a brighter future. I pray that we maintain this momentum. May we love our neighbor as ourselves by enacting justice so that we may have a lasting peace.