On May 2, 2011, Oskar and I were watching TV when programming was disrupted by breaking news: Osama bin Laden had just been killed in a secret raid. I turned to Oskar and high-fived him (!) and then I was immediately ashamed. I had just high-fived my husband over a man being murdered—what was wrong with me?
Like all Americans, I had been devastated by the terrorist attacks on 9/11 and viewed Osama bin Laden as Public Enemy #1. My gut reaction to his death was a rather base reflex triggered by all of the anxiety he had caused me and my fellow citizens. As a Christian, I condemn evil in all its forms, but I also know that it’s not my job to condemn another human being (even if that human being does evil things) OR to celebrate their death. I was able to forgive myself for what I considered a very human reaction, and I prayed that in bin Laden’s final moments as the raid was occurring, he somehow recognized his sins and was able to make his peace with God.
History repeats itself
Fast-forward to last night: I read that Hope Hicks, a close aide of Trump’s, had tested positive for Covid-19. My immediate gut reaction was a mixture of excitement and hope, thinking: “Maybe he’ll get it and this nightmare will end!” Then again, as with the bin Laden incident, I felt ashamed.
This morning, I awoke to the news that my wish had come true when my sister texted me, “Is it wrong to say I hope he dies? Or at least gets very sick?” I responded, confessing that I had had a similar thought the previous night. Then I reflected on the whether it was morally justified to wish for some kind of karmic justice… After all, Trump is not an innocent victim of the coronavirus the way that millions of others have been. He has had top epidemiological experts advising him, access to the latest data/research, any precautionary equipment (tests, PPE) that he could possibly need, and a whole team of sycophants willing to cater to his every whim, and he has willfully chosen not to utilize any of these resources in a responsible manner. Furthermore, as a result of his negligence and his lies, 200,000 people have died.
So, my thinking is that if the virus is among us and someone is going to catch it—or even die from it—then there is a certain poetic justice in it being him. But, looking at the situation from my Christian perspective, I can’t “celebrate” that, in the same way that President Obama never celebrated the death of bin Laden, even though he was the one who ordered the raid. Instead, I will follow the lead of both Joe Biden and Nancy Pelosi who have exuded admirable class when they—honestly, I believe—express concern for those GOP members afflicted with the virus and pray for their recovery. Because that’s what decent human beings do in a civilized society. (Frankly, I’m not sure I would be able to display as much grace as they have, had I undergone the many personal attacks they’ve had to endure from Trump.)
Was I guilty of giving oxygen to hatred?
And that last sentence sums up my biggest issue with Trump. The thing that I hate most about him is that he has exposed my own hatred. I really loathe the man. I hate his policies, his greed and his racism, yes, but more than that, I hate the way that he makes a mockery of our democracy and plays Americans—even his most devoted followers—for absolute fools. And I hate the fact that he has done irreparable damage to my relationships with people who fail to denounce him. Because, by accepting (or even tolerating) his lies, his white supremacist ideology, his fascist dictator-like posturing, his condemning of the media, his threats of violence if the election doesn’t go his way—they have lost all of my respect. I can never look at them the same way or continue to have a social relationship with them.
And I hate myself for hating him so much. While I recognize that “hating the hater” is not the same as “being a hater” (after all, as we learned in math class the double negative cancels itself out) holding that kind of hatred in one’s heart is a poisonous proposition.
Resentment is like drinking poison and hoping that it will kill your enemies.
Nelson Mandela
I realized earlier this week that I’ve been generally unhappy for a very long time. Yet when I examine my life, most things in it are going pretty well. I have a supportive spouse and family, I’m financially secure, I live in a comfortable home, have good health, etc. While I don’t like dealing with this pandemic any more than the next person, I’ll freely admit that it’s affected me much less dramatically than it has many people. In fact, I consider myself fortunate in many ways. So, it didn’t take me long to identify the source of my unhappiness: Trump. Or, perhaps more specifically, the hatred and chaos that he thrives upon and brings out in other people.
And then I had another realization: I have just one life and, for-better-or-worse, this is it. Yet each day I’ve been giving mindshare over to this horrible person who doesn’t deserve an ounce of my respect, let alone any of my waking thoughts. Consequently, I had been giving oxygen to the hatred that he thrives upon. Worse, I’d been letting him steal my happiness in the same way he’s been trying to steal the election. And then I got determined… I’ll be damned if I let him steal my joy!
Instead, I vowed to redirect my election anxiety into optimism and positivity. So, while I won’t wish a Darwinian death upon the cause of my unhappiness, what I hope for—and will pray for—is that this experience does two things:
1) Wakes up the 1/3 of the population that thinks this virus is a “hoax,” “just like the flu,” or “will disappear” so that they start wearing their damn masks and stop undermining the rest of us who are trying to get this pandemic under control (so we can avoid further needless death and rebuild our economy), and
“The arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends toward justice.”
Martin Luther King, Jr.
2) Gives 45 an excuse to bow out of the race (for health reasons). As a classic narcissist who is facing the near-certain humiliation of losing, this would allow him to save face. I don’t even care if he resigns while proclaiming that he has been the Greatest President of All Time. I just want him gone. Gone—so we can shore up our badly battered democracy, control the outbreak of this virus, begin to recover our economy, and provide basic human rights and justice for ALL Americans.
However, since we can’t be confident this will happen, we have to double-down on the original plan of making sure Biden is elected—and preferably by a landslide so as to minimize any post-election violence. My dream is to make this a reality:
The takeaway…
If you have NOT yet voted, PLEASE DO SO. And vote EARLY, so there is time to straighten out any possible registration or postal issues. 2020 has been one for the history books. But we need to do our part if we’re to succeed in containing the chaos to just this one calendar year. If you have any questions about HOW to vote, WHERE to vote, how to register, etc., send us a message and we’ll help you determine a safe voting plan.
Now Stormy has been prolife for as long as she has been aware of the issue. In grade school, back in the post-Roe v. Wade late-70s, a women’s group visited our parochial school classroom to tell us about the issue of abortion. But they didn’t just bring pamphlets and rhetoric, they brought “visual aids” in the form of embryos and fetuses in glass jars preserved in formaldehyde. (Were they aborted? miscarried? I don’t know the details, I was only about 10 or 11 at the time.) All I can tell you is that peering at their tiny features in different stages of development affirmed to me that 1) they were tiny people 2) it was impossible to tell at what stage they went from being “a blob of cells” to tiny people. One of them even had a bruise where his/her head was hitting the glass—a very “human” reaction that I could relate to as a fairly rough-and-tumble girl who was usually sporting a few bruises and scrapes herself.
So, as a prolife Christian who has voted on this issue myself in the past, I’m not experiencing any such conflict. Why? It’s simple. Trump is not prolife. Being prolife extends far beyond appointing conservative judges or regulating against abortion. It means respecting life. It means working to ensure that everyone has health insurance and access to affordable birth control. It means fathers stepping up to 
Ultimately, being prolife means 
Easier Said Than Done 