onward

So, what we now have will destroy our economy, at least as bad as the last Reprobate administration orchestrated up to 2008, and the recovery will not be as fast as with our current President (in spite of obstructionism to recovery by the Reprobates in Congress).
It will put us in danger of new wars and a heightening of the current ones that the last Reprobate administration got us into, because of the hawks in the cabinet, and the profit of the military industrial complex.
It will disenfranchise minority voters as gerrymandering and voter suppression become the new political norm, among other Reprobate tricks (i.e. North Carolina and the Governor's office right now).
This will sour our relationships with allies and create new enemies, and we may be a puppet government for the political rise of the Soviet Union (again) and economic rise of China.
Jobs will be lost.  Healthcare will be lost.  Resident aliens, scapegoated by those who put these self-destructive-for-their-profit policies in place will be deported.  Muslims will be targeted, all people of color treated shamefully along with women and our LGBT sisters and brothers, anyone not practicing white, fundamentalist "christianity" will not be tolerated and our environment will be wasted, destroyed and polluted, all for the profit of the few.
The free press is being threatened.  The prophets are being silenced.  Opposition is being rendered powerless.  Policies are being put into place to assure that this will continue for decades by those who have controlled the Congress for six years and now have all three branches of government.

The hatefulness that lay under the surface with some, that others in the nation have learned to grow beyond, has already been emboldened and enlivened by this campaign and candidate, and will be the norm in our nation.
And who will be there to help us out of this, when all branches of government represent this hateful greed?  And Europe is seeing a rise of hateful ideologies and intolerance with stupid economic decisions as well.

So, what must we do?
Nothing.
The time for doing was before November 8, 2016.
The time for doing was ON November 8, 2016.
Now, we live with it. 
"You put down your money, you make your choice, and then you live with it."
The people who voted in the primary and election, and the people who did not vote have spoken.

I lament the pain that people I love and so many strangers who God loves will suffer.
I lament what this will do to the future, and for my grandchildren.
I lament what this will mean for the most vulnerable among us, who will be most hurt, as always.
I lament what has become of Christianity - the twisted, American Civil Religion, ignoring of Jesus' teachings, limited vision of me and Jesus, personal salvation theology, the self-promotion instead of practicing Jesus' mission of Agape Love in the world, and the juvenile level of faith and practice, the prosperity and church growth self-serving, and the silence of those in most mainline denominations.
The damage has been done and we will all feel the consequences of this.

We can write, demonstrate, call, speak and complain.  At least four of those things we SHOULD do.  Most among us are most likely only to do the last.
But with all three branches of government handed over to the Reprobates by this nation, we have no one to turn to for help.
Democrats in Congress can and should say, "NO" to everything hateful, hurtful and greedy that will be put in front of them, but with a majority who are Reprobates in office, that is all they CAN do.  The power is in their hands.

We can strategize and plan the next local, Mayoral, Judicial, Gubernatorial, Congressional and Presidential election cycles all we want, but with the norms of greed and hatred being established, with the gerrymandering and voter suppression being put in place now, and the clearly gullible, easily duped electorate we have, any rational, reasonable or even progressive hopes are slight at best.

All we can hope for is that it will get SO BAD under this debacle that people will finally wake up and see that Reprobate policies in economics and hateful ideologies in politics HARM ALL OF US... but those who pull the strings are VERY adept at obfuscating the real causes by misdirection of blame, and there is no reasonable way to hope that this time will be any different.  AND, if it is as bad as I am afraid it will be, there will be nothing left to save or restore.

The hatred of our black President, the misogyny, homophobia, xenophobia, rising white nationalism, racism, ethnocentrism, religious intolerance, classism and abject GREED that drove this campaign and election has been energized, emboldened and in the eyes of those who perpetrate hatred and greed, legitimized by the easily duped and gullible who put them into office and the complacent and apathetic who did not stop them.  The 1% pulled the strings and the puppets danced.  Putin was included among the puppeteers, toward their desired ends.

The very few will gain MUCH off the backs of the rest, still pitted against each other and convinced that the 1% have their best interests at heart while others beside or "below" them, those other-than-them but most like them are to blame for their plight. 

The New Gilded Age of serfdom begins.  And with it, the predictable natural consequence of economic depression, except for the 1%, who will enjoy more wealth at the expense of everyone else and our environment.

With it comes the New Jim Crow era, and the intolerance of and discrimination against anyone not white, fundie, straight, male or submissive to males and a born citizen.  Normalized hatred that many had made such strides in moving beyond, will again have daily expression.

The only form of justice that will be experienced is that while so many innocents are being hurt by this for the next decade or so, we can rest assured knowing that many among those hurt will also be the hateful who put the Reprobates in office.  Their jobs will be shipped off, their economy ruined, their futures jeopardized, their retirement eliminated, their healthcare coverage taken away, their safety compromised, their houses lost, their children unable to attend for-profit schools or relegated to deplorable conditions in the for-profit schools in their areas, their environment poisoned and their loved ones killed in wars for profit.   
This one small, bitter consolation will be there for the rest of us who must share the same fate.

So, we move backward, but onward.  We do NOT progress.  We live, well, some of us.  We survive hopefully.

Every empire in the past that got corrupted by its hubris, greed, intolerance and exploitation of others has fallen.  It appears that now is our time. 

My prayer is that God, who has been ignored until now (even or especially by the fundamentalist conservative "christians", and the silent denominations), will make some good of this during and after the suffering.  It would be nice to see it in my lifetime, but I have little hope of that because of what I have seen of late.  This, I fear will have implications on life in America for decades to come.

Onward through the swamp we have created, we must go.

Pastor Jamie