Am I Going to Keep Re-Fighting the Election?

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Short answer: No.

Longer answer: I am going to do exactly what I would have done if Hillary Clinton had won, which is to keep writing my own material and posting articles from other solid sources. To keep trying to advance ideas of reasonableness, conservatism, and, most importantly, faith. To not give in to the thought that no one wants to hear those ideas.  To not feel, as one journalist said last week, that I’m just “screaming into the void.” I know that I have been an encouragement to some of my readers, and I want to continue to have that role. I hope that I have helped at least a few people to think rather than just react. And it’s important to me personally to write about my thoughts and feelings, even if no one else reads what I say.

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What Does It Mean to Be “Gracious” about the Election Results?

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I have been admonished by a commenter on my Facebook page to “Give it up already, Deb. Be gracious.” So I guess what he means is that I should just say, “Okay. You win. Congratulations!” Which would be fine, except for one problem:

The election is not the Super Bowl.

Unlike that event, after which everybody goes home and no one’s life is particularly changed except for team members and those who won or lost money, we will be living with the consequences of Tuesday’s vote for many years to come.

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I Am Heartsick but Hopeful.

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Well, this of course isn’t the post I thought I would be writing today. I told myself that the election was by no means a done deal. Still, since I’m kind of like Joan Didion and don’t know how I feel about things until I write them, it was pretty impossible for me not to go around writing blog posts in my head.

So I thought, well, Trump started out his whole path to the Presidency by talking trash about Mexicans, so the Latino vote will come out strong against him. And he told African-Americans they had nothing to lose by voting for him, so they’ll tell him “yes, we do.” And he has insulted and degraded women, so they’ll hand him his hat. I’ll be able to say some variation of “the chickens have come home to roost.”

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A Wise Voice Against the Alt-Right

Well, folks, it’s lunchtime, and I’m just glued to all my website faves. I’ll get the “election isn’t rigged” post up later on today. But I ran across this article from William Kristol of the fine conservative news outlet The Weekly Standard and felt that it was worth posting because Kristol had the distinction of being branded a “renegade Jew” by Breitbart News back earlier this year when he was considering mounting a third-party challenge to Trump. He joins David French and Evan McMullin in the elite club of NeverTrump conservatives who thought about running against the lamentable Republican presumptive candidate and were then absolutely deluged with hate from the alt-right. (Twitter is alive now with anti-Mormon rants because McMullin may end up winning Utah and thus take away those electoral votes from Trump. May I be allowed a very ladylike “Yay!”? But I am most decidedly not cheering about this new species of hatred.)

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A Sincerely Wrong Evangelical Pastor.

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I get a fair amount of pushback on my views about who to vote for in this election, much of it thoughtful and sincere. My facebook page gets a little bit of attention, and I have honestly tried to present the truth about our choices in this election from a conservative and Christian point of view.

A couple of days ago a dear friend sent me a link to a sermon titled “The Continental Divide” by a Texas pastor named Tommy Nelson.  I think he’s a committed Christian, and I paid him the compliment of listening to most of what he had to say. (I got through about 40 minutes of a 58-minute presentation.)

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The Pro-Life Argument Against Trump.

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I will keep beating this drum until election day. Below is an article brought to my attention by Al Mohler, whose Daily Briefing is a treasure trove of his own and others’ ideas. Mohler, the president of Southern Seminary and a voice for godliness and graciousness, is a true national treasure. He and Russell Moore have been among the stalwarts against the Trump Travesty.

The article is by Ross Douthat, a young conservative writer whose books I now plan to read. Here’s a good representative section:

 

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I Ask for a 20-Minute Investment.

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I did something yesterday that I haven’t done before in this election: I sent out a (very small) group e-mail explaining why people should read the article below which was sent to me by a dear and respected friend. My attitude up till this point has been that people who want to read what I post will do so on Facebook or here on this blog. The temptation is so strong, though, to just send out that one perfect article or video that will, one thinks, change hearts and minds. Well, we’ll see about this one.  So far the response hasn’t been stellar, but who knows?

I’ll repeat here what I said in my e-mail (which went mostly to people who don’t read my publicly-posted stuff): Invest 20 minutes or so in reading this article, even if you’ve already voted or are completely committed to voting for Trump.

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Trump Brings Out the Worst in His Fans.

Great takeaway line from over at RedState, from their great Susan Wright (who is NeverTrump and NeverClinton, just to be clear):

“While I would never endorse anything that came from a Clinton, I can say I’ve never heard her make reckless attacks about entire groups of people, or paint a picture of a broken, apocalyptic society and call it ‘America.'”

Amen, sister.

Note: Lurking in her statement, whether she means for it to be there or not, is a “lesser of two evils” argument. I will still maintain: One of these two awful candidates is going to be President. You can abstain or vote third party, as I wrote earlier today. I understand why people just can’t pull that lever for Hillary. But then you’re counting on other people to do the work for you. You’re aghast at Donald Trump? Well, then you’re stuck with Hillary Clinton.
So I say once again: Vote the split ticket for the good of your country, maintain the Hillary Hedge in Congress, and keep the disastrous GOP nominee out of the White House. That way we’ll all survive to fight another day.

“Trump’s Post-Apocalyptic Vision of America Brings Out the Worst in People”


Keep Your Eyes Open–and Vote for the Lesser Evil

Always so, so great when an author you admire agrees with you! Takeaway line from this great article by Jennifer Rubin of the Right Turn Blog at the Washington Post:

“Sorry, Clinton haters, but Trump beats her hands down when it comes to unfitness. That doesn’t mean that one has to vote for her (for some it’s a bridge too far), but it does mean voting for him is unthinkable.”

I would strongly encourage you to read her whole article. We need steely-eyed realism, not wishful thinking, as we make this most important of decisions.

“Trump’s Putin Problem Returns In a Big Way”


A Sad, Disappointing Evangelical Response to Trump.

Oh MAN! How did I miss this great article from last month? I’ll have more along the same lines to post later today or tomorrow, but I don’t want to wear out my audience. Dear readers, if you have bought into the wishful thinking that’s going on out there about Trump, I would encourage you to read the following from the always-reliable conservative website RedState:

“Dr. James Dobson Is Supporting Trump for the Most Bizarre Reason Possible”