A friend send me this thoughtful commentary about our country. It’s both discouraging and uplifting in that it at least tries to analyze what’s going on in an historical sense. I converse with my 85 year old sister regularly in Pennsylvania who proudly voted for Trump. She didn’t like him, but likes the people around him. She’s not quite sure what Trump will really do. She’s a social conservative who can speak without anger so we can chat comfortably. I need to listen but so does she. What she does not realize that her “old order” is dying in a slow and painful way. Some readers may not agree with this. I welcome your comments on this blog.
From William Malcolmson: “I have been thinking a lot about what I want to say after the election. So much has been said. There are post-mortems all over the place. So what can I say? Here goes.
“It seems to me that we are in a transition period in which the old order, the America we knew, is dying, and the new order, the America to come, is being born. The old order was dominated by white men, mostly Protestant, by hierarchies, by European immigrants (generations removed). A mainly mono-cultural society. A place that felt reasonably safe for the majority, but unsafe for the minority. A culture determined by the myth that if you worked hard, didn’t break the law, and abided by the rules, you would succeed financially and spiritually (God would reward you). This was the “American Dream.” Actually, very little of this was actually true, even for white Protestant males and females, but the past is often romanticized, and this was the romantic myth. This was the America in Trump’s “Make America great again.”
“The old order dies hard, and it dies slowly. And painfully. If you are in the dominant group in the culture, and your dominance is coming to an end, it hurts. If the American Dream is not working for you and you think that it should work, you feel “screwed.” If your pain is expressed and no one in power is listening to you, you lash out.
“The emerging new order seems so strange to so many. Women and men are equal. White people will be in the minority. America is becoming a multi-religious nation. You can marry a person of your same sex. Folks who do not look like you are moving into your neighborhood. Mainline churches are losing members. Jobs are there only if you have a college education, understand technology, and can adjust to change, change, change. We are less and less American and more and more global persons, interdependent with other cultures, other ways of looking at life. It is so new, it is so scary, it is so anxious.
“An African-American president? We had that for 8 years. Now we are supposed to elect a woman as president? Too much, too soon, too upsetting. Whatever happened to “Father knows best?”
“For that matter, whatever happened to America as the greatest nation on the face of the earth, the most powerful nation in the world, the place where everyone wants to live?
“Sometimes I think America is divided between two groups of people: Those who hate change and those who welcome it. Those who want to live in safety in tribes, and those who want to live in uncertainty in the middle of all kinds of humanity. The new order is coming. You can’t stop it. Trump will not be president forever. Leave it to Beaver has left. Once the door to massive change has opened, it cannot be closed.
“When Jesus was alive, the old order was the Roman Empire. The old order was priestly dominance of the religion. The old order was oppression of the poor. Power was imperial power, power was priestly power, backed up by imperial power. Jesus was a spokesperson for the new order. The order that he called the Kingdom of God. In this order, which he believed was coming, men and women were of equal worth. In this order, the poor were the beloved of God. In this order the emperor was not Lord, love was lord, compassion was lord. In this order he was not the new Emperor, he was not the Messiah who would save his people from the tyranny of Rome or of the priests. He was the proclaimer of the Kingdom. He was living the Kingdom. He was treating all people as of worth. There were no enemies whom he recognized. He was inviting folks to live with him in the new order.
“The new order is here. It has not been known in its fullness as yet. But it is here. It is scary only because we are not used to it, because we may not feel as safe in it, because our new friends may not look like us, may not talk like us, but we are them and they are us. The Kingdom of love is costly. It cost Jesus his life. It cost Martin King his life. It cost Bobby Kennedy his life. It is costly for you and me. It costs our willingness to change, to accept a future we cannot determine, to move into a new land–a new earth.
“Neither death nor life nor things present nor things to come nor principalities nor powers. Nothing in all creation can separate us from the Spirit of compassion, the eternal power of unmerited love.
“Nothing. Not Trump, not a political party, not a government. Nothing.
“If nothing can threaten you, you are free.”