My Parting Shot

Okay, I’m back. I’ve learned to walk and chew gum. I can volunteer in defeat-Trump programs (you can watch my video at Republican Voters Against Trump) and continue to write for On the Fence Voters (thanks to Jeff and Greg). However, my posts will be fewer than before. Anyway, thanks for allowing me back.

This post is a letter I intend to have read at my funeral. (What better time to offend my Trumpist friends who refused to listen to me while I lived!) Here we go…

You refused to listen to me when I was alive. Now, out of respect for the dead, you have little choice. You, sit back down! Don’t you leave without hearing my rebuke. Like it or not, you will hear my posthumous pronouncements. When the service is over, go ahead and curse me to your heart’s content. I’m not listening—just like you shut me out during those dreadful Trump years. But now, you will listen.

Yes, obviously I wrote this some time ago—June 22, 2020, to be precise. Still mired in the muck of this horrid Trumpocracy so many of you brought upon our beloved nation.

Though some of you called me a “hater” because I criticized your messiah—no not Jesus—I never hated your messiah, nor did I hate any of you. You may not be able to distinguish the difference between criticizing and hating, but the difference does indeed exist—at least for those whose mental and emotional capacities are developed beyond the point of childhood petulance. I never wished any calamities upon you or your messiah. But, for the good of the people of this nation, from the day Donald J. Trump was elected President until his final day in office, I wanted little more than to see an end to his reign of ignorance, selfishness, racism, and xenophobia.

Now—at the time of this reading, many years after the Trump era—our nation is valiantly working to recover from the devastation wrought by the most incompetent, most self-serving, and most stubborn president this nation has ever endured. It has been and will continue to be a long, hard recovery. Four years of gross mismanagement, of dismantling the Constitution, and of dividing the populace for personal gain, followed by an uprising that bordered on civil war reduced this once great nation to nearly third-world status. Future generations will curse our generation—and you Trumpists in particular —for the hardships they will face.

Most of you Trump supporters who sit out there now are evangelicals; you say the Bible guides your life, your decisions. Yet you chose to give your unyielding support and cult-like devotion to a man whose lifestyle and words mocked the Bible. You chose a new messiah over the historic Messiah. You excused his every transgression. When he equated people from Latin America with rapists and murders, you defended him. When he mocked people with physical disabilities, you shielded him. When he called white supremacists good people, you shrugged your shoulders. When he told duly elected American non-white women to return to their home countries, you saw no need to object. When he called several other nations “shithole countries,” you kept quiet. When he called himself “the Chosen One,” you agreed. When he violated our Constitution by seeking election help from leaders of other nations, you believed his patently false claim of “no collusion.” When he suggested drinking disinfectant to ward of COVID, you considered doing so.

Donald J. Trump’s transgressions were flagrant and profuse, but you stuck by him, cult-like, as he destroyed our Constitution, our institutions, our economy, and our respect for one another as humans created in God’s image. You need to repent.

But most of you probably will not. You refused then and I suspect you are choosing right now to refuse again. A central theme—perhaps THE central theme—of the Bible you claim to follow is repentance, admitting to one’s mistakes and changing in response. But doing so requires humility. And, like your erstwhile messiah, you’ve chosen pride over humility. You will go to your grave extoling what you proclaim as the virtues of the most corrupt American politician ever to seek public office.

Here are my final words to you Trumpists: Repent! Repent and warn future generations to avoid the dreadful mistakes you made in turning a monster into your messiah. May sleep evade you; may your consciences spin turbulently until you humble yourselves and admit to the pain you helped inflict on future generations.