I donāt even know where to begin.
Every single time I write a paragraph about political news, another wave of political news crashes and the old post seems pointless. I have a feeling this will be the case for the next three months. I feel as if weāve had an October Surprise per month, every single month since at least March of 2023. I do not like this. I think Iāll just copy this little paragraph to my clipboard so I can save time saying it every single time I write about politics until January.
Now, there is something I want to say about politics in general, before I dive into the past 24 hours or so of political news. No one is making me say this. I can say just about anything I want on Patheos as long as it isnāt x-rated. Iām saying it because I want to have some integrity.
I would feel like a hypocrite if I didnāt make this absolutely clear: youāre not committing a sin if you donāt agree with me politically.
I was spiritually abused for many years of my life into thinking thereās some kind of rule that youāre in mortal sin if you donāt vote Republican because of the abortion issue. In fact, I remember a thousand years ago when Rudy Giuliani was having about five minutes of success as a primary candidate for the Republican nomination, and someone in my social circle said that now we would have to leave the top of our ballot blank, because Rudy was pro-choice and you couldnāt vote for a pro-choice politician even if there were two pro-choicers going head to head. This isnāt true, but I thought it was. I was guilted into voting for some very slimy people I regret voting for, because of that false teaching. The truth of the Catholic position is that there are many intrinsic evils, and youāre never allowed to vote for a politician who holds some good and some evil positions BECAUSE OF the intrinsic evils he or she supports. Youāre allowed to vote for them IN SPITE OF some of the things they support, because you think theyāll do the most good or mitigate the most evil overall. That goes for any intrinsic evil, and there are lots. Remember, āintrinsic evilā doesnāt mean āespecially evil,ā it means āevil in itself instead of evilĀ because of the context.ā Lying is an intrinsic evil. If a politician has told some really bad whoopers but you think their voting record is solid, itās not a sin to vote for them. Itās different if you were to vote for him because you think itās COOL that heās dishonest. Veritatis Splendor says that deportation is an intrinsic evil. You donāt sin if you vote for a politician whoās in favor of deporting migrants if youāre doing it because you think his or her good ideas outweigh that bad one. But you would be participating in their sin if you voted for them BECAUSE you wanted to help them deport people. Same for abortion. Thatās how it works. And that goes for every candidate.
Ironically enough, one of the reasons that I usually vote Democrat is that abortion rates tend to fall faster under Democratic presidencies and they sometimes rise under Republicans, probably because Republicans yank at the social safety net and make things so unstable people donāt want to start families. Abortion rates reached their nadir under Obama because of the economic recovery and Obamacare. Voting the way I do is not a sin. But if you vote differently than I do because youāre trying to do good, youāre not in sin either. I insist on that.
If youāre going to leave the ticket blank and just vote for your local town council, I think youāre making a mistake, but youāre not committing a sin. If you just canāt stomach Trump or Harris and youā vote for Kennedy or whoever the American Solidarity Partyās got running this year, I think thatās the wrong choice, but youāre not in sin. If youāre a libertarian because you honestly think thatās the best way to order society so that people can be virtuous and help each other, Iām frustrated with you, but you havenāt done anything sinful. If youāre a libertarian because you want to hurt the poor and keep all your resources for yourselfā well, that is a sin, and you need to go to confession. If youāre going to vote for Harris itās not a sin unless youāre doing it in the hopes sheāll hurt the unborn babies or any other human being. If youāre going to vote for Trump, even at this point, because you hope heāll do some good, I think youāre very dumb, but you havenāt sinned. If you are voting for Trump because of the cruel and dangerous things heās promised, like mass deportations of millions and the death penalty for drug dealers, then youāre a bad person. Thatās the Churchās position and I agree. And as Iāve observed, the remaining Trump supporters seem to be doing it for sadistic reasons, and that would be sin. But itās not a sin to make a mistaken choice. Thatās the Churchās position, and mine. Got it? Good.
Now that weāve got that boilerplate out of the way: the last few days have been, dare I say it, very weird. Yesterday we had a really excited and noisy Kamala Harris rally in which Megan Thee Stallion gave a performance wearing a cropped business suit and tie. I am a nerd who doesnāt follow pop music at all, so I donāt know who Megan Thee Stallion is. I actually thought her name was Megan Three Stallion. Personally I hate pop concerts because I am autistic and hate noise. Having to stand in a room where a giant throng of excited people shout and sing along with thumpy music while waving their āHarrisā signs in tandem sounds like a fate worse than death, to me. But Iām the last one to say that everyone has to have fun the same way I do. Having fun at a concert is fine. Itās refreshing to see somebody having fun with an American political candidate for the first time in far too long. Hillary wasnāt a very fun candidate. Trump is anything but fun. I have come to be fond of Biden, but heās not exciting. I donāt agree with Harris on everything, but she seems like a fun person and her rallies are fun. Thatās a good thing,Ā a human thing. We need more of that in our politics.
Meanwhile, weāve got J. D. Vance being J. D. Vance. I am so tired of seeing that manās face I donāt even know where to begin.
Weāve got yet more unearthed audio of him deriding and insulting childless women, whom he openly despises. He claims this is āpro-familyā but he never wants to do anything to help or encourage actual families, he just wants to say nasty things about women who donāt produce biological offspring. Indeed, he doesnāt seem to care about actual families as a unit at all, since every childless cat lady is part of a family in some way. He just cares about the number of biological offspring. Heās beenĀ baselessly deriding Harris for being against the child tax credit, which she is not.Ā Incidentally, the Senate is going to hold a vote on expanding the child tax credit on Thursday morning, but Senator Vance is going to be in Cochise County, Arizona that day and will miss the vote.
The only other thing Iāve seen Vance doing today is being nasty to his ownĀ family by snatching a glass of chocolate milk from his daughter and complaining that she sipped it while at a filmed campaign appearance in a diner. At that point, Donald Trump mercifully stole the attention away from Vance.
Today, in Chicago, at the National Association of Black Journalistsā Conference, Donald Trump sat down for an interview with three Black journalists who had the audacity to ask him questions about the things heās said and done. Trump made an even greater boor of himself than on just about any previous occasion besides the covert Billy Bush confession. I canāt count how many commentators have called this the worst interview of his career. He attacked them again and again for being mean to him. He spoke over them. He belittled them. When asked if Kamala Harris was a DEI hire, he replied that she wasnāt really a Black person but had somehow become Black when it was convenient. The scandalized audience whooped and laughed and gasped in shockedĀ disbelief. Trumpās own team cut the interview short after only thirty minutes, after which Trump got on his social media, denounced the women as ānasty,ā and claimed the victory.
Iām exhausted.
On one side, we had a concert and some noisy fun.
On the other, we have a grouchy young weirdo who deeply loathes women and steals chocolate milk from his own daughter, and a grouchy old weirdo who is as overtly racist as the summer day is long.
Itās not a sin to vote for the grouchy weirdos.
But I canāt think of a reason why youād want to.
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Mary Pezzulo is the author ofĀ Meditations on the Way of the Cross,Ā The Sorrows and Joys of Mary, andĀ Stumbling into Grace: How We Meet God in Tiny Works of Mercy.
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