We have to stop the hate, understand election fears

I sat and watched our president weather questions from the press that the new president-elect will never answer. Donald Trump doesn’t have the knowledge. Some say this is why he was elected. Some people wanted change and Trump was the most radical change on the ballot.

I cannot help but remember Luke 23:34: “Father, forgive them. They know not what they do.”

Gov. Matt Bevin, in a recent op-ed, applauded Trump’s victory and delineated plans to do the complete opposite of what this state needs: deplete natural resources, bust unions, destroy the public-school system, widen income gaps and empower state government to think less of their constituents than powerful elites.

Bevin mirrors the Trump campaign and, like a Trump presidency, his policies will lead us further into the abyss of divisiveness.

Barack Obama’s presidency may be the last time we have an intelligent, qualified president elected by the majority of U.S. citizens. Under Citizens United, our next elections could simply be a display of whom the wealthy selects for president.

Our Supreme Court could turn into an alt-right fraternity party. Women’s wages and minimum wages could get pushed back, minority populations could be deported and terrorized, and white supremacy could reign in public after only a few decades of being behind closed doors.

Some people are fearful for the first time. Others of us have been all our lives. We know white supremacy well. We know sexism well. We know disenfranchisement well. Yet, for the last year, news commentators have been fixated on the plight of working-class white people; that they are losing jobs and they are angry.

Well, so are a lot of people. Where was this concern about black workers? When black people rise up, they are met with police suppression, not a presidential candidate using their fears for political endorsement.

Where was the concern for the scores of Mexicans losing jobs in Mexico as American companies cheapened their labor? Where were the stories about lost jobs, lost ways of life, and the loss of identity for the millions of black, brown and yellow people who have lived in this country for centuries? You would think North America has been a haven for “indigenous” whites since its inception.

People with nostalgia for some magical time forget the black women who nursed their children, the Chinese workers who built railroads and the Mexican people who cook their take-out meals. Not to mention the scores of people of color who work as lawyers, doctors, teachers, etc. What about Native Americans who have suffered disenfranchisement more than any other group on this continent?

The media still fails them. In fact, it fails us all. The media elected Donald Trump. The fascination with personality and the spectacle of it all increased his popularity. Now we have capitalism personified at the helm of our country. Trump wants to make our country rich again. Remember how we got rich in the first place: genocide and slavery.

We have to stop him. We have to stop hate. We have to stop greed. These are all things a lot of us hear in churches but some cannot hear the true message of these parables: Jesus turning over the tables of the merchants, shaming those who don’t feed their brethren, walking with prostitutes and claiming their worth.

Some professed Christians want to push the “other” out. They want Muslims gone. They want gays gone. They want blacks gone. They want the empowerment of their daughters, sisters, mothers and grandmothers gone.

There is time to turn back.

Jesus wasn’t a billionaire oligarch. He was a radical Jewish man who showed what compassion looked like in action. He was an immigrant. He was brown. If you say you are a Christian, take an honest look at the life of the man you follow. He was nothing like Trump.

This story was originally published November 18, 2016 at 2:08 PM with the headline "We have to stop the hate, understand election fears."