What happened yesterday, didn’t start yesterday

I received an email from a European friend expressing her sorrow and disbelief about what happened in the capital yesterday. She’d spent several years in the U.S. getting her PhD in the 1980s when we became close friends and she’s returned several times and is now a granny. Brief messages in social media over the past years have shown her to believe the usual European press and American press about our President, while ignoring the accomplishments the last 4 years like Israel peace agreements, low unemployment, cutting red tape, lessening the power of the bureaucracy, lower taxes, prison reform, better treatment of veterans and prison population. Here’s how I responded.

What may be more unbelievable is what happened in the summer with federal and state buildings being vandalized, statues torn down, even of Abraham Lincoln, of required “reeducation camps” for workers in private and public businesses, and anarchists (mostly white) in the streets of every major city controlled by Democrats. It was impossible to travel through downtown Columbus. Businesses not already destroyed by the pandemic where leveled by the rioters. After the Republican convention in August in DC, attendees were attacked in the streets returning to parking lots. But the party of tolerance and diversity said little or nothing except “defund the police.” Biden hid in his basement. Kamala Harris was raising funds to bail out the anarchists arrested for looting and burning.

We don't know who took over the buildings yesterday, yet we know who the press will blame. We know that a few minutes of footage was run on loops in the news programs and reporters who called our summer of riots "peaceful" are now suddenly awake and casting blame and on the job. A group terrorized a Republican Congressman’s home in a DC suburb just this week, yet Washington Post called it a peaceful protest.

I urge you to hold judgement; I'll wait. The culprits don't represent anyone I know who supports our president. Many people including us are angry about how Trump supporters have been treated for 5 years (even before the election). The media, the education system, the churches, and a very powerful Marxist wing of the Democrat party maligned and insulted us. There are hundreds of viewpoints along the political spectrum. The issues aren't just the symbolic black or white, right or left, Democrat or Republican. There are many, many views from anarchists to survivalists to everything in between. We are sorry too, yet who to believe?

We are in three small groups at our church that meet on Zoom, and the divisions are palpable. Yet, all are Christians, all are Lutheran, all are white, all living in same community, all using the same Bible, all college educated, all upper middle class, mostly retired, mostly married or widowed, and deeply divided. And they were divided during the Obama years, which he exacerbated. Plus Bush was ridiculed and maligned during his administration by the media and his supporters depicted as knuckle dragging troglodytes. I remember scanning the few English publications on the news stands when we were in Finland. The European media literally couldn't speak Bush's name without rancor and hate.

So let's wait and see how this unfolds. Prayer would be good, however, the American people abandoned their Christian roots decades ago, so perhaps God is leaving us to our fate of worshiping materialism and the created world.