The midterm election results were many things.
They were the final lethal blow to the maniacal aspirations of a cancerous career narcissist who has never had a single noble impulse in his eight-decade parasitic presence on this planet.
They were a resounding declaration of the American people’s insistence that they be represented by leaders who fully embody the beautiful breadth of their diversity.
But perhaps more important than anything else, the election was an unequivocal referendum on cruelty.
The blue tsunami that swiftly renovated the totality of our political landscape on Tuesday was less about coronating a political party, and more about a fierce and forceful rejection of the kind of unfettered malice that Donald Trump and his enablers have unapologetically trafficked in for the last decade.
The flipping of Congress this week was the furious upending of a seemingly indestructible edifice of predation, phobia, fear-mongering, and contempt for the vulnerable and the hurting and the stranger and the different.
The glorious tether running through every single winning campaign through this nation, whether helmed by Christians or Muslims or Jews, by people of faith or by secular humanists—was a steadfast commitment to love one’s neighbor.
Voters of nearly every demographic through the country (other than, sadly if not unsurprisingly, white men) cast aside a man and a movement made solely of grievance, vitriol, and aimless rage.
It was as if, finally, after a ten-year immersion in the Republican Party’s thick, toxic sewage of immigrant slander, culture war attacks on queer people, and the demonization of brown and black-skinned human beings, America reached its saturation point.
For the first time in far too long, it feels like compassion may be trending again here; as if the wasteful hatred that’s been paraded by those in power and become fashionable to their rank-and-file might at long last be going out of style.
Despite being dragged into an unrelenting cesspool of political tribalism, as a collective, it seems as though the vast majority might be feeling the same gravitational pull toward kindness, toward decency, toward truly expanding the table so the whole massive sprawling crowd who call this place home or wish to.
I hope that as we head toward the coming year and lean into the promise of what a politics of love might mean for all of us, our imaginations will be reignited, that our default setting might become hope and not nihilism.
My prayer is that in policy and practice, imperiled lives will be saved, suffering human beings will find relief, and people will begin to experience how much better it is when every single soul’s humanity is acknowledged.
And I truly hope that as the coming months unfold, those who inexplicably are still clinging to politicians who peddle stereotypes, stoke division, and manufacture discord will also discard them like the dying dinosaurs of a disappearing age they are.
I believe regardless of our political affiliations and religious worldview, Americans are exhausted from the emotional terrorism, relational fractures, and physical wear and tear that come from leaders whose only instinct is division and whose sole platform is hatred.
Donald Trump and his malicious movement are rapidly losing their stranglehold on our collective psyche, and we will all see the fruit of that separation.
In a wave of humanity like we haven’t seen in decades, the American people have rejected cruelty and are ready to look to their better angels.
Empathy… for the win.
