Month: November 2016

It is done. I keep reading all over the interwebs “How did this happen?” It’s pretty clear to me.

When changes happen too fast (for the “average” person), even if changes are good changes, the pendulum will ALWAYS swing back hard…with equal force.

Change breeds fear. Fear breeds hate.

1928 was the last time we saw Republican control of the Senate, the House, majority of Governors, Supreme Court pick, and presidency. This immediately shut down the super scary changes of the “roaring 20s” – but that pendulum swung really, REALLY hard… giving us the stock market crash in 1929, the Great Depression that followed and the 1929 Mexican Repatriation (1.5 million American CITIZENS of Mexican descent deported).

Pendulum back swing didn’t just impact America – it impacted the world…change-fear-hate created the atmosphere allowing for the rise of Hitler…who people followed willingly; gleefully. People united in their desire to return to some unnameable time “before the changes.” Unable to point to the exact cause of the changes, blame turned to anyone “different.” Jews, targeted both as a race and a religion mostly, but gays and mentally ill and others, too.

The past eight years have seen a lot of change. The iPad didn’t exist when Obama was elected. Things like Pinterest and Instagram hadn’t been invented yet. Add on big social change in the US [like new (controversial) healthcare and same-sex marriage] and in the world [like ISIS and refugees from Syria and Libya]. It would be an easy cheap shot to over-simplify a slogan to “Make America ‘white’ again,” because it’s not, at its core” purely about race or religion or any one thing. If it were, poll predictions would have been easier and more correct.

I believe this is more complicated–a pendulum swing…an attempt to take us back to before all this change that has overwhelmed half the nation. Just like in 1928.

In case you’re wondering, I am not a liberal. I have generally identified as moderate to conservative. I have deeply-held religious beliefs – Southern Baptist, born and raised – living on the buckle of the bible belt in the South for the larger part of my adult life. That being said, I have never been afraid of change.

Now I am afraid.

It’s not that I can’t believe this is happening. It’s that I can’t believe it’s happening AGAIN.

“Then said Jesus, Father, forgive them; for they know not what they do. And they parted his raiment, and cast lots.” Luke 23:34

Dear God in Heaven, please let me be wrong.