Things are going badly for traditional Christians in the present Presidential race. They are going so poorly, and the state of the nation is so disappointing, that it is tempting to quit.
This would be wrong.
It would be wrong because quitting keeps us from learning. As the Red Cap movement marches forward, I need to ask: “Why is this possible?” Even failed politics, and a system that makes Clinton and Trump the front runners, teaches something. We cannot hide: a plurality of the Republican Party wants to make a reality television star, foul mouthed strip club owner, racist, authoritarian, and misogynist the next President.
This is bad, but why is this happening? Why have people chosen madness over more sane options?
Isn’t it because for many Americans, the poor in both parties, things are getting worse? The numbers don’t say so, but the feeling is there. It is even possible that some of this feeling is itself a problem . . .a denial of reality. Overwhelmingly, people in America think we are on the wrong track . . . and we must be if only because so many people think we are!
The Red Caps have a solution: Make America Great. They have a leader: Donald J. Trump. What does anyone else have? We could have more Clinton. We could have had more Bush or (fair or not) some Bush-wanna-be. What politics reveals this round of voting is: our problems are not political.
Lower the tariff, raise the tariff. We can argue about that, but neither solution will make America great again. We are rotting within. Politics can make rot spread more quickly by picking at the wound. When the Red Caps appeal to racism, they spread the rot that was there by allowing the racism to bubble up and grow. The racism may be there, America has always had this vice, but racists can be motivated by better tendencies.
This is not a solution, but it helps. We need changed hearts, but at least we are not rioting so we might hear the quieter voices of love and reason. The Red Caps find great strength in the people of my birth: the white lower middle and “underclass.”
Rod Dreher has written eloquently about the problems of the white underclass and we can start there. (He has an excellent follow up article as well.)
West Virginia, the state of all my roots, is in trouble. The culture my grandparents built and loved is gone as Hillbilly Heroin, porn, and family breakdown overwhelm the old Christian values. The small churches of Charleston are emptying and the bigger churches too often teach a prosperity gospel that doesn’t have a prayer against Red Caps who would prey on their vulnerability.
An attack on the Red Caps is easy to portray as mere snobbery. What would you do to help the broken communities in Appalachia? And the truth is, like Dreher without his eloquence, I do not know. I do not know because (partly) this problem is our own making. We have chosen poorly . . . all of us. Some of us have done better than most, but we are all infected with a softness, a decadence, and an unwillingness to embrace hard virtues.
As the Greatest Generation has died, we have not done well replacing them. There are not enough good jobs: Sanders gets this and the Red Caps exploit it. The jobs are not coming back by protectionist tariffs, robots are not going to vanish, and forcing eleven million people out of the country will not do anything. All of us know, if we want to know, that if the jobs did come back, we are not ready for them.
Donald J. Trump doesn’t hire Americans for his resorts, not so much because he is cheap, but because he wants good service. I personally know people who have tried to open factories in the United States (in areas with “decent” schools) who could not find enough employees with a good work ethic for (fairly) high paying jobs. Is poverty the cause of family breakup or is the family breakup the cause? When the rich sin, money buys a second chance. When poor people mess up, they sink deeper into poverty.
Give the Red Caps credit: they know free trade isn’t the answer, lowering taxes isn’t the answer. More than one Red Cap has told me they know that Donald J. Trump is flimflamming them, but do not care. Like people in a multilevel marketing pitch, they know it is probably a hoax, but they want to believe, despite the evidence. They will not even be very disappointed when it does not work.
Trump once sold supplements in a multilevel marketing scam. I have been to many of these presentations and they are just like the worst kind of Evangelical church service. You begin by being told you are wretched and that it is your fault. What have you done? Opportunity is sitting in front of you, but you have heeded the lies of the Evil One (the banks, the pharmaceutical companies, the mainstream press) and allowed them to steal your best years. Prosperity can be yours if you simply do as the presenter says.
He is often open about his own failures and will talk about how much of multilevel marketing is a scam, but he has at last found redemption in Red Caps. If you sign up, buy the product, then you can have a giant check like the one he got at the last meeting. Everybody at the presentation knows that probably it will fail like the last product they sold. They will never go Double Diamond. They will alienate their friends with their irrational devotion to Red Cappery, but maybe. Maybe.
There is a chance this way, right? “If you don’t try,” the presenter says, “what do you have to lose?”
Nobody stops and says what I should have said at different points in my life: “Too much is spent and too little is earned. I’d better give up cable.” Nobody has to say: “We may be here because of drinking too much.” Nobody has to say: “I should not have gotten a divorce and quickly remarried.” Nobody has to be wrong. Nobody is judged except then . . . resentment marries narcissism and breeds poverty.
Nobody gets better because nobody will admit to being sick and to having been part of causing the sickness. “Those evil food courts,” I cry as I eat another Chik-Fil-A sandwich.
And of course, Rubio was right as he closed his campaign: all the institutions have failed. Hollywood tells us decadence is good. Churches have failed in every possible way veering between self-serving authoritarianism to approval of decadence. Dreher notes that these diseases have invaded what the Victorians called “the thrifty middle class” and many of the children of the rich. Millions of college graduates are bewildered by simple job instructions or are post-literate. But my generation, late boomers or early X, is no better: we have sown the wind while letting our children reap the whirlwind.
Nobody is righteous. The Red Cap answer is worse than other “answers” because it is authoritarian and plays on racism and fear, but it isn’t as if Hillary Rodham Clinton or Jeb Bush will save us. Whatever the merits of the politics of 1980, that day is done. We face Putin not Brezhnev and ubiquitous mass media that allows us to amuse ourselves to death.
So why not give up on politics?
I cannot vote for Trump and the alternatives seem not much better. Why try? Why fight the Red Caps or the Clinton machine?
Politics matters because any hard choice based on morality is vital just now. Our politics may be the outer sign of inner rot, but by standing firm in our politics, we may start the process of good change. We are a city building faith, from David’s royal city to Constantine, building the bulwark that held back barbarism. The city building is external, but it is good for our souls. When we say, “no” just now that “no” . . . a refusal to compromise values, but also a refusal to become angry or violent . . . is powerful.
We can refuse to simply demonize. We are part of the problem.
We can refuse to believe easy answers. We know we do not know.
We can refuse bad answers. We know big government is not the friend of the working person, but neither is big business in bed with big government.
We can, just now, choose the best choice and not the lesser of two evils. We can actively say “no.”
And then we will get up in the morning, buy some Girl Scout cookies (4 boxes!) we cannot eat because it is Lent, but neighbors, and go to work. We will build new schools. We will not stop voting. We will draw lines, but listen.
We ask the Holy Spirit to come and build a city within us, around us, and through us in our family, our church, or business, and our politics.
Yes.
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