Advertise on podcast: The Beautiful Mess by John Pavlovitz Podcast

The midterm election results were many things. They were a repudiation of the most openly corrupt group of politicians to ever defile the sacred halls of Congress and disgrace the hallowed grounds of the White House. They were the final lethal blow to the maniacal aspirations of a cancerous career narcissist who has never had a single noble impulse in his eight-decade parasitic presence on this planet. They were a resounding declaration of the American people’s insistence that they be represented by leaders who fully embody the beautiful breadth of their diversity. But perhaps more important than anything else, the election was an unequivocal referendum on cruelty. The blue tsunami that swiftly renovated the totality of our political landscape on Tuesday was less about coronating a political party, and more about a fierce and forceful rejection of the kind of unfettered malice that Donald Trump and his enablers have unapologetically trafficked in for the last decade. The flipping of Congress this week was the furious upending of a seemingly indestructible edifice of predation, phobia, fear-mongering, and contempt for the vulnerable and the hurting and the stranger and the different. The glorious tether running through every single winning campaign through this nation, whether helmed by Christians or Muslims or Jews, by people of faith or by secular humanists—was a steadfast commitment to love one’s neighbor. Voters of nearly every demographic through the country (other than, sadly if not unsurprisingly, white men) cast aside a man and a movement made solely of grievance, vitriol, and aimless rage. It was as if, finally, after a ten-year immersion in the Republican Party’s thick, toxic sewage of immigrant slander, culture war attacks on queer people, and the demonization of brown and black-skinned human beings, America reached its saturation point. For the first time in far too long, it feels like compassion may be trending again here; as if the wasteful hatred that’s been paraded by those in power and become fashionable to their rank-and-file might at long last be going out of style. Despite being dragged into an unrelenting cesspool of political tribalism, as a collective, it seems as though the vast majority might be feeling the same gravitational pull toward kindness, toward decency, toward truly expanding the table so the whole massive sprawling crowd who call this place home or wish to. I hope that as we head toward the coming year and lean into the promise of what a politics of love might mean for all of us, our imaginations will be reignited, that our default setting might become hope and not nihilism. My prayer is that in policy and practice, imperiled lives will be saved, suffering human beings will find relief, and people will begin to experience how much better it is when every single soul’s humanity is acknowledged. And I truly hope that as the coming months unfold, those who inexplicably are still clinging to politicians who peddle stereotypes, stoke division, and manufacture discord will also discard them like the dying dinosaurs of a disappearing age they are. I believe regardless of our political affiliations and religious worldview, Americans are exhausted from the emotional terrorism, relational fractures, and physical wear and tear that come from leaders whose only instinct is division and whose sole platform is hatred. Donald Trump and his malicious movement are rapidly losing their stranglehold on our collective psyche, and we will all see the fruit of that separation. In a wave of humanity like we haven’t seen in decades, the American people have rejected cruelty and are ready to look to their better angels. Empathy… for the win. The Beautiful Mess by John Pavlovitz is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit johnpavlovitz.substack.com/subscribe

Dear Democratic Party, Congratulations. You did it. We did it. Together, we have engineered one of the greatest political comebacks in our lifetimes. We’ve averted a hostile fascist coup, neutralized a wannabe dictator, and stabilized not just this nation but the entire planet. You deserve a great deal of credit. You placed incredible candidates, you mobilized and messaged well, and you got out of your own way. And though you may have benefitted from the abject incompetence and violent overreach of your opponents, as well as the scalding rage of the American people in response, you did what you needed to do, and there’s no way of overstating how important your landslide victory is to this nation. Now, you can’t screw this up, and we’re worried you might. Yesterday, possible Speaker Hakeem Jeffries responded to a question on MS NOW’s Morning Joe about the Democrats’ incoming agenda and the possibility of impeachment of Donald Trump by saying, “The American people don’t want us to get even.” Jeffries is already signaling that he and Chuck Schumer, and those like him in your party don’t understand why voters have handed you back the seats of power you ceded to Republicans: we want you to collectively grow a pair. We want affordability and accountability, and we should and do expect our leadership to be capable of attending to both things simultaneously. We have no desire to see you stake out some namby-pamby moral high ground of inaction that sacrifices legal reckoning on the altar of ceremonial niceness. And the fact that the GOP’s illegalities and malfeasance are precisely the cause of the economic ills we’re currently infected with seems to be something you don’t understand, but we do—and we want their feet held to the freakin’ fire. Donald Trump is a felon, serial sexual abuser, insurrectionist, and war criminal. He has repeatedly and unrepentantly committed the highest offenses against this nation while in office. He has weaponized ICE, the Military, and the Department of Justice against the people in the United States and around the world; a trail of bombs and beatings and premature deaths. He and his henchmen are responsible for the extermination of untold numbers of human beings throughout this planet, as well as the needless suffering, starvation, and sorrow of hundreds of millions more. And if your position is that the American people’s desire for legal accountability for all of this amounts to some misplaced and wasteful desire for revenge, you’re gonna lose the influence you’ve been gifted with in a few Scaramuccis. We aren’t looking for our pound of flesh here; we’re demanding justice, and if you can’t discern the difference or you aren’t willing to engage the pushback that will come from the very party who’ve been aiding and abetting this felonious, traitorous mobster, you’re not gonna survive another election cycle. We have entrusted you with this golden moment, and we don’t want you to screw this up, so let us lay it out for you: You’ll screw this up by treating Donald Trump and his murderous collaborators with kid gloves and not prosecuting them.You’ll screw this up by making Chuck Schumer Majority Leader and Hakeem Jeffries Speaker, men clearly not up for the moment voters have given you.You’ll screw this up by not divesting from Israel and its genocide.You’ll screw this up by not bringing every Epstein predator to justice.You’ll screw this up by not dismantling ICE.You’ll screw this up by not prioritizing free healthcare for everyone.You’ll screw this up by responding to war crimes with strongly-worded letters.You’ll screw this up by retreating to polite decorum and bipartisan niceties and the business-as-usual banality that lost you this platform to begin with. We’re not naive or stupid. We know Trump and the Republican Party are leaving you with a trail of corruption, destruction, and political malpractice that will take decades to fully reverse. We don’t expect you to perform miracles, but you damn well better know that we expect you to get your hands dirty, to make sure this cadre of criminals pays for the bloodshed and death they’ve trafficked in, and to do the will of the people who’ve handed you back the keys to a kingdom you’ve largely squandered for decades. The biggest mistake you can make right now is underestimating how bold and creative and pissed off the American people are telling you they are. We’ve been brutalized and gaslit and robbed blind by our elected leaders. We’re exhausted and weary—and yeah, we’re greedy, and we want it all. We want affordable groceries, and we want masked thugs off our streets.We want a living wage, and we want to be free from tyrants and domestic terrorists.We want clean drinking water, and we want to see traitors rot in prison. We want food that doesn’t poison us, and we want war tribunals. We want our taxes to fund healthcare and education, not ethnic cleansing and concentration camps.We want to go to the hospital without having to default on our mortgages.We want human and civil rights for everyone.We want foreign governments and militaries out of our own. We deserve all of this, and you owe it to us to make sure we have it. Throughout this nation this week, voters have shown that they are capable of evolution, of electing people who don’t look or sound like them, and are willing to give you another chance to govern unimpeded by thugs and grifters and Christian nationalists. Please meet the moment and listen to your constituents, all of them. Have courage, show strength, do the difficult things. You’ve been entrusted with America, Dems. Don’t screw it up. Sincerely but seriously, The American People The Beautiful Mess by John Pavlovitz is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit johnpavlovitz.substack.com/subscribe

The night has a way of fooling you. Though it is a temporary condition, it can convince you it is a permanent state: that it will always be this dark, this terrifying, this lightless. It tries to take away your will. When you are in its grip, the darkness has a way of making you believe that the sun will never rise again, that you will always feel this way, that you should abandon hope for good. The key is in staying awake, in not surrendering to the real nightmare visions and the fearful false stories, in persevering long enough to see the light begin to break through, to witness the dawn arriving. Because it always comes, it will not be denied. Do you see it? Do you feel the changing of the light in the room today? Do you feel the warmth upon your face? That is morning breaking through. It is time to greet it. This is a victorious shout into the wind. An overdue megaphone blast of long-postponed joy. It is a clarion call from those whose hearts could take no further breaking. Today is the beginning of the end of a long, brutal, losing war with the night. It is the dawn announcing itself in radiant, unapologetic fire. For a while we may have forgotten what it feels like to be so hopefully ablaze in this way. The fight will do that to you. It will wear you out. It will drain you. It will suffocate and extinguish all that is lightness within you. We’d grown so weary and bitter and tired from all of it that we’d almost forfeited the very best of us. We almost conceded defeat. We almost resigned ourselves to the bleakest of fates. We almost consented to the brutality around us. We almost relinquished our dreams. We almost abandoned hope. Almost. But morning is here. We are being made new again. We are a people turning and returning—a revolution in real-time. We are boldly declaring our independence from the black nihilism the fearmongers have trafficked in. Today is an audacious treason of sorts, a daring defection from the homeland of our recent days. It is a place that no longer merits our allegiance, and so we run from it joyfully. We are running toward somewhere better, building something greater. We’ve seen too much suffering, bound-up too many wounds, buried too many before their time. We’ve grown exhausted by the violence of venomous words and the destruction it so easily speaks into being. We are seeking the words and ways that give life. Today is rebirth, renewal, and resurrection, exploding all around like a Spring of every living thing. In this blinding and beautiful daylight, we are beginning to rescue something precious that we’d lost. We’ve seen our nation hijacked by hatred and we have resisted together. We are reclaiming this place from the hands of the hurtful and restoring to it the brilliant luster that comes only when everyone gets to grab hold of it. We are ready to begin the difficult, messy, but necessary work of this day, to craft the America that could be but has never yet been. We are a people reminding one another of who we are: family formed not by homeland border or religious affiliation or political lines or any other distinction or demarcation, but by the sacred kinship of our shared humanity. Our very blood testifies to the one life that all we walk together in. And this is the DNA of our joy today. This is the reason for our expectant hearts, so fully affixed to our sleeves. This is the reason we will strain to never go back to the dark places and to the hateful words and to the dead-end tombs of the past. The morning once again reminds us. This is the truth that overcomes. This is the love that has the last, loudest word. This is why we once again find strength and passion and resolve. This is our manifesto of Hope. Hope is indeed alive. It resides within us. We are that hope, together. We have always been. Come alive. Rise. Shine. The morning is coming. The mourning is ending. Let’s run together to the dawn. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit johnpavlovitz.substack.com/subscribe

Both political parties are the same.Seriously, are we still doing this? Inexplicably, some of you are still out here trying to both-sides the rest of us into thinking that the abject hellscape we're in the middle of would be happening under Democratic control of the presidency and Congress. As if ICE would still be assassinating people with impunity. As if we'd still have seen decades of civil and human rights progress erased. As if we'd still be kidnapping people off of the street? As if we'd still have decimated SNAP and USAID and healthcare subsidies for the disabled and for veterans and the poor. As if we'd be spending every waking hour trying to defend ourselves from a sitting president… This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit johnpavlovitz.substack.com/subscribe

Friends in America, we will soon say goodbye to something. One way or another, this year will end with a farewell. It will either close with a glorious, triumphant blast of freedom—or with the sickening death knell of a flawed but promising nation, gone for good. Either America will part ways with the Republican Party, or we will part ways with democracy. Those are the two choices here. There is no third option. This moment is about each of us choosing which of those two things we’re committed to losing and which we want to keep. It is about deciding whether we will choose the side of this unrepentant sociopath and his complicit henchmen or stand as descendants of the disparate, sprawling We The People who have shaped and defined and co-created this nation for nearly two hundred and fifty years. As a child, I grew up being taught that the beauty of America was found in the personal liberties it promised for every human being without condition or caveat, the strength of the system that protected those liberties, and the people of integrity placed in positions of power that defended us against attacks on those liberties, whether they came from within or without. The very bedrock of who we have been and would be (I was told) was the power of the collective voice of the people to determine our fate together: of our individual wills tethered together like a sail that would steer us through the tempest of adversity toward where we dreamed of heading as a country. I believed much of that story, and it was one I largely had great confidence in, until fairly recently. That story is now on the brink of becoming permanent fiction. In these days, our interdependent destinies are being written. I wonder if we are up to meeting the moment. I wonder what History will record about us. I wonder if we are prepared to do what is required to demand that our will be done, both in the voting booth and the streets if necessary. The stakes simply could not be higher, and as a result we are being called upon to bring the best of ourselves to bear on these days: whatever convictions we hold, whatever faith we harbor, whatever hope we kindle, whatever we treasure in the deepest recesses of our hearts need to be what propels us into the fray. This has nothing to do with a politician or a political party; it is about guarding the elemental core of America, about expanding it, making space for everyone; about beating back the traitors and insurrectionists from the lofty places they do not deserve to occupy. If moving forward, every vote does not count, if each voice no longer matters, if elections are now going to be academic, if our courts will forever be compromised, we are no longer who the songs and anthems declare we are. We will cease to embody the words chiseled into monuments announcing ourselves as a compassionate refuge for tired, huddled masses who long to breathe deeply in the winds of liberty. We will no longer be a place worthy of the flag or the people who have defended it and died for it. If we decide to cede this place to people with such contempt for it, we will have severed our last ties to everything that made us a brilliant beacon of light to this world. We will have co-written the epitaph of this nation in this moment. So, American friends: Republicans, Democrats, and Independents; people of deep faith and of no religious affiliation; people of every pigmentation, orientation, and kind; those of every corner of this country that has given them a home—we need to decide who or what we will say goodbye to this year. We either say goodbye to him: a small, hateful, ugly human being who is so far beneath the privilege of leading America and to his enablers, protectors, and foot soldiers—or we say goodbye to America as we have known it or wish to know it. Those are the options in front of us. Our farewell in these days will define us forever. I pray we’re not ready to say goodbye to America just yet. I think our nation’s best years can still be ahead of us; we just need to make sure it lives long enough to see them. So, let’s say goodbye to something vile and grotesque that needs to be left behind for good. The Beautiful Mess by John Pavlovitz is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit johnpavlovitz.substack.com/subscribe

Boy, MAGA men are so damn weak… As I watch men on the Right arguing against the release of the Jeffrey Epstein files or ignoring them altogether, I am reminded again how weak they all are, what a pathetic joke MAGA manhood is as an idea. Despite all their performative Don’t Tread on Me bluster, they are morally impotent in the moments that truly matter. When the opportunity arrives for them to put their money where their mouths are and make a courageous stand, they’re suddenly struck by performance anxiety. Given the choice between exposing reprehensible men who have committed unspeakable violence against children and young women, or protecting a guy they voted for and find identity in, they are choosing the latter. Guys who never shut up about protecting girls from harm immediately fold when called upon to step up and actually advocate for them. Self-identified alpha males, fully aware that women, not unlike their wives, partners, sisters, and friends, were trafficked and assaulted, shrink back into the shadows. Supposed faithful Christian men, knowing girls just like their daughters and nieces have been brutalized, fall silent, their religious convictions proving powerless. For all their showy, chest-beating tough-guy bravado, when the rubber meets the road, MAGA men lack the guts to demand that Epstein and his partnering abusers and sexual predators be made accountable, for fear that it will reveal the object of their emotional allegiance is a monster. And if that were to happen, they’d be faced with a moment of real toughness that they know they aren’t up to. I hear guys on the Right constantly waving the flag for “real manhood.” I don’t know what the hell that means, and I don’t think they do either. I prefer to aspire to be a decent human being who happens to be male, but hey, I’m just a soy boy, cuck, beta male who believes perverts and predators should be outed and condemned regardless of their political parties. Here’s what I do know about strong men:There is nothing strong about turning your head from the trauma of women.There is nothing strong about falling in line to avoid conflicts with your tribe.There is nothing strong about being so emotionally tethered to a politician that you would sacrifice survivors of assault on the altar of your adulation.There is nothing strong about saying nothing when speaking is the right thing.There is nothing strong about harboring rapists. The sad irony here is how terrified the quivering coward who professes to lead this nation is: how much he hides behind a phone screen, how he abdicates accountability, the way he runs from reporters, how he uses our military as a shield; his complete inability to stand in the raking light of criticism without withering like a tiny orange flower in the scorching midday sun. He is a man fully lacking humanity, absent of strength, and devoid of decency. Sadder still is that a generation of American men who’ve so placed their identity in him that they have lost the ability to criticize him or oppose him, men who cannot stand up for their loved ones or strangers, men who are so enamored with this fraudulent man-child that they will do anything to defend him, even allow criminals to avoid justice. I’d love to see a massive move of Conservative men stand up and demand that Jeffrey Epstein’s collaborators all be dragged into the light of full accountability, but the bottom line is, they’re just not strong enough. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit johnpavlovitz.substack.com/subscribe

There’s a fairly wild development over the past few years within the White Evangelical ecosystem in America: a complete rejection of Jesus. Labeling empathy toxic and declaring kindness woke, they’ve pivoted hard from his commands to love their disparate neighbors as themselves, rebranding the faith as a cruel, violent, exclusionary white supremacist theocratic behemoth that brutalizes the poor, excludes the immigrant, and preys upon the vulnerable. Ironically, White American Evangelicals are the people least likely to embody the compassionate, loving namesake of their religious tradition. Nearly everyone I know is cool with Jesus. My Atheist and Agnostic friends are,My Muslim friends and Jewish friends are, too.My Buddhist and Hindu friends,my backsliding, formerly Christian friends,my unapologetically heathen friends,and my “I’m definitely going to Hell” friends. Whether deeply religious, decidedly undecided, or passionately anti-religion, they invariably find resonance in the ideas of loving their neighbor, caring for the poor, defending the oppressed, resisting violence, and welcoming the outcast and foreigner—the bedrock of his teachings. They all get Jesus in the ways that matter. Not in slick ad campaigns, flowery prayers, effusive social media posts, or showy Sunday sermons; not in brazen bumper stickers, self-righteous public protests, or finger-wagging table-side lectures—but in their very lives. Where the rubber meets the road, in the sacred spaces of their ordinary, they all seem to understand what he was talking about. Many wouldn’t claim Jesus as divine (and some would contend that as a historical figure he never existed), but when it comes to living the actual values attributed to him in the Gospels; to centering empathy, to incarnating his gentlemess and goodness, and to daily making the world he preached about here—they seem to have far more respect and use for Jesus than most white Evangelicals I know. Decent people of every worldview have his soft heart for the hungry and hurting “least of these”, while the self-identified saints have boundless contempt for them.They strive to set a table of hospitality that is open to every human being, instead of erecting guarded walls around a gated community of cloistered privilege.Christian or not, so many embody Jesus the Great Physician, believing every human being deserves access to health and healing, refusing to callously hoard care from the most vulnerable as so many of his self-identified disciples now do.They honor the planet and the diverse life upon it, while the professed Christians show such frequent disregard for it.No matter their religious worldview, most people understand that any God worthy of the title would love the entire world and have no allegiance to a nation or a pigmentation.They share Jesus’ respect for women, instead of nurturing a toxic misogyny that sees them as less-than and then passing the buck of the disparity to a fragile male God. The lion’s share of people I know and meet have a working morality that is far less pliable than the Evangelicals who’ve thrown their adoration and their loyalty behind an unrepentant narcissist who is completely antithetical to the life of Christ described in the Scriptures. As a lifelong Christian and longtime pastor, I am least comfortable around White Evangelicals because we now have the least in common. I feel far more at home in the company of disparate, like-hearted, mutually respectful people who don’t need to preach Jesus, wear Jesus, claim Jesus, or peddle Jesus to reflect him. The people who most trumpet their Christian faith here in America are the most resistant to doing what he told his followers to do. They have either been raised in a polluted and perverted religion so long that they can’t recognize him anymore—or out of political survival, selfishness, or self-preservation, willfully choose not to ignore him. At this point, I have no desire to align with people who claim faith in a Christ they clearly have no interest in being inconvenienced by. I have no interest in self-proclaimed Evangelicals who have no “good news” or empathy available for anyone who isn’t straight, white, and Republican. I’d rather stand alongside the vast multitude of people who simply preach with their lives, the merciful, compassionate, barrier-breaking love Christ made his life’s work. I’ll stay here with the heathens, the unbelievers, the sinners, and the backsliders, who choose to take care of every neighbor. I want to be with people who do something White Evangelicals no longer do: show me Jesus. The Beautiful Mess by John Pavlovitz is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit johnpavlovitz.substack.com/subscribe

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit johnpavlovitz.substack.com

I am a person of profound privilege. As a White, cisgender-heterosexual man born in America and raised in the Christian faith, I have been afforded every benefit this nation offers: education, opportunity, freedom, options (the kind most will never experience), while having very little required from me other than to show up. I have never known marginalization of any kind, never been oppressed by any measure, never had to alter anything about myself to be welcomed or feel safe or find success. I’ve never needed to read a room, be aware of my surroundings, or watch my tone. And among the legion of things this privilege has bestowed upon me, perhaps the most instructive has been unlimited access to others like me; those whose pigmentation, gender, orientation, and birthplace have also made them the greatest beneficiaries of this nation’s vast, unearned riches. I know what White people say when cloistered in whiteness; when they no longer feel bound by decorum or social mores, when they imagine themselves free to reveal the ugliness they harbor in their hearts without accountability; in locker rooms, church meetings, neighborhood picnics, and holiday tables. And as someone who served as a pastor for nearly three decades in largely white churches in the South, I know what far too many White Evangelicals truly see as the objective of their collective presence here. It has very little to do with the non-white, non-American, compassionate Jesus at the heart of their faith tradition. (Honestly, most of them despise Jesus, whether they can admit it or not.) All this to say, I know firsthand what the majority of white Conservatives in America want: an America made of only white Conservatives. This may not seem at all revelatory to you, but what you may not understand is how committed they are to self-preservation. There is no law enforcement violation of people of color, no weaponizing of the Government against brown-skinned immigrants, and no legislative assault on trans people too alarming, grotesque, or illegal to detach them from this President and his collaborators. They passionately worship a 34-count felon and court-adjudicated rapist who has never had a noble impulse in his life, because he is a vulgar, ignorant means to an end, one which results in their continued dominance over a place they perceive as their birthright. Brainwashed for years, sometimes decades, in the dehumanizing rhetoric of Sunday sermons, partisan talk show monologues, political stump speeches, and their granddaddy’s racist kitchen table diatribes, they have lost the value of human lives whose pigmentation, gender, orientation, and birthplace do not match their own. They lament the supposed rampant crime across American cities, warn of dangers lurking at the border and in public bathrooms, condemn the moral decay of wokeness, and decry the existential threat of socialism—and it’s all gaslighting and dog whistles to signal other fear-addled straight white Christians that they must eradicate difference here at any cost. I refuse to allow this to happen. I’m a White person who doesn’t want to live in a nation made up of nothing but White people. I have no interest in seeing us become a gated community of inbred, entitled supremacy that cuts itself off from an expansive world it believes itself superior to. I have no desire to spend the rest of my days in a nation that is devoid of diversity, absent of empathy, and culturally whitewashed. I don’t want to perpetuate Christian nationalism, systemic racism, and toxic masculinity; I want to see them dismantled—and I want to be an active participant in the demolition. Trump’s America (which is Stephen Miller’s America, which is Franklin Graham’s America, which is the Proud Boys’ America) is something I will oppose with every word, dollar, and moment that I have at my disposal. I hope enough White people here are willing to make the same declaration in the face of this vile, corrupt Administration and its monstrous designs on America, that we will not allow it to be purged of the variety and plurality that have made it a flawed but still radiant beacon for the world. We need to leverage our privilege and disrupt our circles of influence and do all we can to partner with the rest of the diverse humanity here, to ensure that this nation does not become a White Evangelical fever dream. That is the last thing this world needs. The Beautiful Mess by John Pavlovitz is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit johnpavlovitz.substack.com/subscribe

An estimated 89 million registered voters did not vote in the 2024 general election. I know many of them. They are family members, friends, neighbors, and people I meet in passing at high school football games, in checkout lines, and at the gym. I meet hundreds more of them every day on social media. And despite the abject chaos we find ourselves immersed in, a terrifying number of them are promising to stay home again this year.Whether these people are apathetic, disheartened, or furious, they almost always say that they believe they are sending a message; that they are making a statement by abstaining. They tell themselves a story that their lack of action is a form of activism, conscientious objection in a war between two similar sides they choose to exempt themselves from. Maybe you’re one of these people. If so, I’m going to say this as plainly, kindly, and with as much compassion as I can: this won’t help anyone. Though you may sincerely believe it, not voting is not a bold statement of virtue.It is not a brave ethical stance.It is not a strong message to a corrupt system.Not voting is rendering yourself invisible.It’s silencing your own voice.It is an act of self-marginalization.It’s allowing your future to be determined by other people and pretending that’s a moral victory. Since no one in power knows why you didn’t vote, whatever your motivations might be, your abstinence becomes an empty, hollow gesture that accomplishes nothing beyond guaranteeing that you are erased from the equation. Whatever message you imagine you’re sending by opting out never reaches your intended recipients, and you end up saying nothing. It is a passionate protest made into the ether. Not voting essentially gives strangers a blank they get to fill in on your behalf—since you aren’t present to tell anyone exactly what your values are, what boils your blood and breaks your heart and keeps you up at night. You willfully abdicate your own autonomy, and by doing so, you discard the courageous multitudes who came before you. Generations of people spent their entire lives here unseen and voiceless, never having the opportunity to be heard, let alone the luxury of squandering that opportunity. Hundreds of millions of our predecessors braved bruises and bullets and death for the right for us to speak, a right that we have been handed upon arrival here and you now so casually decline. It’s staggering to consider where we might be right now as a nation if even a fraction of those 89 million Americans had decided two years ago to make the smallest effort to help carry the collective at the polls: the lives that could have been saved, the wars we might have avoided, the suffering that could have been prevented, the sociopaths who might never have been sworn in. The only question right now is how much of the future are you willing to relinquish to the authors of this current brutality. Participating in the electoral process is one of the greatest responsibilities one has as a citizen in a democracy, and to simply opt out speaks to a fiction that believes you are not affected by your own silence. But you are. We all are. Those more vulnerable than you surely are. Look, I’m under no illusions about America. I’m aware of the brokenness of our system, the need to expand the available party choices, and the corruption of special interests and dark money, and I’m as exasperated as you are. But here’s what I know: White nationalists will be voting.ICE defenders will be voting.Pedophile protectors will be voting.Phobic Christians will be voting.Insurrectionists will be voting.Genocide supporters will be voting.Book banners will be.Climate change deniers will be.Anti-vaxxers will be.People who believe Fox News is gospel truth will be.People who think Trump was sent by God will be. The people who infuriate and terrify you, those you are frustrated with and disgusted by: the hateful and the small-minded and the cruel who drive you to tears and to hopelessness? They will be voting. They will be explicit. They will not allow someone else to interpret what their silence means. They will speak clearly and loudly, and unless you cast your vote—you will offer no dissenting opinion in a time when it is desperately needed. In that way you will be a willing accomplice to them. Please don’t relinquish the microphone to the bigots and the fear mongers and the predatory preachers. I don’t know what twists you up inside or grieves your heart. I don’t know the dreams you hold or the future you hope to see. I don’t know what you want your life to say, and no one else will unless you actually say it: explicitly, clearly, loudly. Make a statement that truly counts right now because it will be counted. Please, vote. The Beautiful Mess by John Pavlovitz is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscrib This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit johnpavlovitz.substack.com/subscribe

Most morally compromised men of faith don’t sell their souls all at once. Sometimes it happens in a billion tiny moral transactions; a series of infinitesimal compromises over time that are invisible to them, but not to others. They can’t see from the inside what is so apparent from a distance. Moment by moment and choice by choice, they begin to slowly drift from their calling, and no one close to them ever tells them while they’re still humble and amenable enough to listen. The power they accrue begins to gradually silence dissent or to remove it from their orbits altogether. These men end up spending their entire lives breathing solely in the intoxicating air of sycophants’ praises; never protected from their own hubris, never cautioned against their recklessness, never alerted to the ways they’ve lost the plot or begun leasing off large sections of their credibility for worldly rewards. Surrounded by genuflecting yes-men and women lacking the intestinal fortitude to push back against the toxic sludge pouring from their lips, they begin to feel increasingly comfortable and even emboldened in it. As they do, the teachings and the words of Jesus become less and less helpful because they begin to testify loudly against them, voicing their opposition—and so they begin to discard them, too. They learn instead to bask in the easy applause of the salivating multitude, who gladly amen their every bitter word, no matter how reckless or incendiary. As the hateful choir cheers their ramblings, they grow more and more delusional, more and more comfortable bowing before the golden idols of their ego and ambition. With each day they slide further down the slope that leads to whatever Hell is, distracted by the buzzing noise of the crowds and unaware of the flames licking their heels. And then one day, these professed men of God find themselves campaigning for a predator, defending ethic cleansing, celebrating the expulsion of refugees, and vilifying an entire religious tradition. They end up justifying the separation of families, going to battle for the NRA, and passionately defending an endless parade of lies from a pedophile President—all the while still imagining themselves righteous and still cosplaying as Christians. These are such days for men like Franklin Graham and the ministers who emulate them. This is how far they have drifted, and it’s going to be almost impossible for them to make their way back, because to do that, they would have to do something they have proven unwilling or unable to do: own their mistakes, admit their failings, cop to their poor alliances, and confess their present sins in the ascension of this malignant narcissist President. Franklin Graham and the White Evangelical Church need Jesus.They need repentance.They need to have the scales fall from their eyes, and to accurately see the horrors they’ve manufactured against so many people made in the image of God.They need to own and confess the ways they’ve denied Jesus, the millions of millstones they’ve tied around the necks of their followers.They need to lament becoming beholden to Donald Trump and the Republican Party and Fox News, and to the supremacists and bigots who now compromise the lion’s share of their ever-shrinking but increasingly militant white racist base.They need to deeply grieve over the LGBTQ men and women whose bullying they’ve defended and blessed, the xenophobic social media rants against Muslims they’ve birthed, and the trauma to the sick and the poor regularly assaulted by a serial predator they have proudly hoisted upon their shoulders as good and Godly.They need to see the irreparable damage they’ve done to the Christian Church and to the name of Jesus. But it’s likely that none of this will happen, because practically speaking, the God they fall prostrate before is the person they see in the mirror. In many ways, it’s little surprise that Franklin Graham found affinity with Donald Trump, as they are frighteningly similar animals; men cradled from birth in wealth, position, and privilege; buffeted heavily by the deep coffers of others, and handed riches and influence most people will never possess, rarely, if ever, considering that they may not be worthy of it. Though Trump hasn’t read the Bible, let alone studied it enough to politically weaponize it the way Graham has, in many ways the reverend is a man cut from the same cloth as this President. Though benefiting from every conceivable blessing and advantage this planet has to offer, they are fueled by a narrative of their unceasing persecution, believing that they are being continually assailed by the very people whose backs they’ve been standing on the whole time: the marginalized, the oppressed, the underserved—the least of these,” Jesus speaks of incarnating him. Franklin Graham speaks with a convincing religiosity; a shiny veneer of down-home, America First religion that makes him impervious to accountability in the eyes of the suggestible multitudes who buy the ever angrier, ever more alarmist, ever more exclusionary gospel they now sell. And it’s up to the rest of us to condemn and to oppose them; the Christians and the non-Christians, who know that human beings who pervert religion and leverage God in order to marginalize already marginalized people or stockpile power are the very thing that most turned the stomach of Jesus. They are the salivating wolves in lily-white sheepskins preying upon the most vulnerable. They are the descendants of the religious zealots of Jesus’ day, who too betrayed their greatest calling because the enticing aroma of limitless power was too strong to withstand. History is recording the Evangelical Right’s abomination of a marriage with this godless President, and though there were what surely felt like short-term wins, the lasting damage to the Church will be irreparable. People outside Christianity suspecting that religious people are all hypocritical frauds are being given plenty of evidence for it. Franklin Graham and the multitude of lesser-known spiritually compromised leaders need the barrier-breaking, wall-obliterating Jesus whose name they invoke, even as they praise a President who is completely antithetical to him. They need the knees-in-the-dirt penitence they so demand of the world, so that they can admit culpability in the violence of these days and push back against the walls and the bans and the barriers. They need to embrace the coming of a Jesus who said that among men like them, there would be weeping and gnashing of teeth, and to break the tethers between themselves and Donald Trump. Sadly, I don’t see that happening. They have too much of this world to gain, even if it costs them their souls. The Beautiful Mess by John Pavlovitz is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit johnpavlovitz.substack.com/subscribe

We are a people in peril. The damage our Republic has sustained over the past two years is incalculable. There is no way to accurately quantify the irreparable harm done to the connective tissue of this nation, to our systems of support, to our electoral processes, to our safeguards against foreign and domestic threats, and perhaps, most of all, to the relational tethers we have to one another. Everything is fractured, nothing has been spared. He and they have poisoned the collective so completely that we’re almost better off not even attempting to fathom it, lest the grief fully paralyze us and render us hopeless. As of this writing, we are less than two weeks away from an election that is so much more than that. The choices we make in November are far more consequential than merely altering the balance of power in Congress, flipping key seats, or ousting incumbents committing malpractice. This is a life-or-death proposition; a rescue mission. It is a rescue mission for our nation, one final chance to rip our destinies from the hands of an extremist death cult whose love for both God and country is nonexistent; an unashamedly sadistic cadre of morally defective beings. It is a rescue mission for the lives of tens of millions of human beings here who are and will continue to be brutalized by their own government; those penalized for their pigmentation and punished for their poverty. It is a rescue mission for the sick, for the poor, for the foreigner, for the black and the brown and the queer and the disabled and the different who will be legislated into oblivion. It is a rescue mission for hope; a desperate grasping for a better future that we’ve been steadily bleeding out week after week as we have witnessed the brutality of a mad despot, his sycophantic disciples, and a high court who’ve abandoned any obligation to the Law. I love this country, or at least, I love the country I thought we had a chance of being just a few short years ago, before we allowed such a parasitic, ugly hatred to get, first a foothold and then a stranglehold here. And as heartbreaking as it’s been seeing us mark our 250th year of existence with such lunacy at the helm and with such wasteful, ubiquitous violence everywhere we look, my greater fear is that we somehow have not realized how urgent the next 12 days are, and what is in the balance between now and November 3rd. But if you’re reading this, I think you realize it. I don’t think I need to share any alarming anecdotes about his cognitive deterioration, or subject you to another breaking news story about their efforts to poison the electoral process, or bombard your already battered psyche by detailing ICE’s brutality. I don’t have to convince you of the gravity of these moments. But you might be able to convince someone else who I can’t reach; someone in your circle of influence who has checked out because they’re exhausted, someone who feels their vote doesn’t matter, someone who’s bought into the dangerous fiction that the choices amount to the lesser of two evils. Over the next 12 days, you might still have a chance to rouse someone you know out of the haze of apathy or to extricate them from the nihilistic resignation that would render them silent when their voices hold such promise and carry such weight. If you can do nothing else between now and November 3rd, you can help the people around you understand that this isn’t about politics; it’s about seeing tens of millions of imperiled human beings standing at the very precipice of staying alive—and doing the smallest thing we can do to save them. Remind them of the tangible ripples of this election on hungry children, on immigrant families, on every woman they know, on their neighbors with disabilities, on people needing cancer treatment, on their elderly family members, on sexual assault survivors, on fathers in domestic concentration camps, on gay teenagers. Help your people to understand that this isn’t a vote, it’s an act of heroism. The apathetic, grieving, war-weary people around you may not be interested in winning a political battle, but there’s a good chance they’d jump at the chance to pull someone from the jaws of death or to spare them unimaginable suffering, which is, without hyperbole, what we’re doing here. Speak to the people you share this life with, whether up close or in passing. Remind them of the very human stakes of November 3rd. Tell them you’re on a rescue mission and ask them to join you. May we be lifesavers in these days. The Beautiful Mess by John Pavlovitz is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit johnpavlovitz.substack.com/subscribe

I am a semi-retired optimist. I used to believe that things would always be okay: that no matter how bad circumstances seemed in the world, I trusted that people would eventually do the right thing, that goodness would prevail, that the rational center would hold. I used to believe that our Constitutional checks and balances would protect us from overreaching parties and mentally unstable presidents and political leaders lacking a working moral compass and complete perversions of our systems of justice. I used to believe that most people were basically decent, and that this decency would win the day because our shared humanity was something we were all equally interested in protecting. I no longer fully believe those things. I no longer believe that our leaders will choose country over party, because over and over, I’ve watched them pollute the system and disregard the rules to hold power, steal elections, and gain Federal judges and Supreme Court Seats. I no longer believe that the truth matters to everyone, because I’ve witnessed too many powerful people ransom it off to the highest bidder—and too many people I know and love grow violently allergic to facts, data, and objective reality. I no longer believe that the American Church is a source of moral leadership, because I’ve witnessed far too many Evangelical leaders sink deeper and deeper into the putrid moral cesspool of their political bed-making. And I have zero confidence in those presently leading us to do anything to defend the common good: They are not going to protect the air we breathe or the waterways that sustain us or the diverse ecosystems that hold life together, when there’s so much money to be made off them. They are not interested in stopping gun violence or mass shootings, because they profit from both the guns that create the carnage—and the fear it generates among their voting base. They have no intention of protecting marginalized and vulnerable communities from discrimination, when they can use those very communities as props to terrify the privileged into bans and walls and wars and rally cries of “send them back” and “America first.” They have no interest in stewarding the full diversity of America, only leveraging and weaponizing some fairy tale nationalistic nostalgia to keep uneducated white people more focused on anthems and flags than on the disparate humanity they’re supposed to be providing refuge for. And I know that because there is no integrity or nobility left in the people currently leading us, that things are not going to be okay as long as good people are bullied into silence and numbed into inaction and content to merely feel bad and do nothing else. No, the only way things are going to be okay is if good people make them okay: If Christians and Atheists and Muslims and Jews and Agnostics and Sikhs and Hindus and Buddhists and Pagans and Humanists who are all committed to the common good realize that their strength is in their combined power and their unified voice. If political progressives, moderates, and reasonable Conservatives realize that hashtag campaigns and one-day marches aren’t substitutes for sustained engagement in the political process and showing up en masse and in unison. If compassionate people of faith stop ceding the conversation about religion to the bigots, grow louder about their religious convictions, and push back hard against the supremacy and misogyny and nationalism of the Evangelical Right. If straight, white people decide that the rights of migrant families and gay teenagers and Muslim communities are worth them pissing off their friends and neighbors and pastors and families to defend. These are unprecedented days in our nation and in the world. Simply believing that our leaders will do what is right is irresponsible now. Trusting that everything will work out simply because it always tended to work out in the past is a fool’s delusion. Having blind faith in the system when the system is so badly broken is willfully consenting to our demise. We’re going to need to leverage our economic resources, our relational capital, and our collective influence to renovate the system so that it serves the people. No, positivity alone is not enough anymore; only positivity and moving with clarity and force are. I want to come out of retirement and be fully optimistic again, but it will be a whole lot easier if a whole lot more people will discard the naive hope that the arc of the moral universe will invariably bend toward justice—and decide to be the courageous arc-benders themselves. I hope people of faith and morality and conscience all decide that they won’t leave the future to chance, that they will not be found waiting for someone else to rescue them. No, America, things will not be okay unless we wake up and work and vote and fight like hell—and make them okay. The Beautiful Mess by John Pavlovitz is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit johnpavlovitz.substack.com/subscribe

They say God works in mysterious ways. I’m gonna co-sign that sentiment. Our decidedly purple North Carolina town recently held its third Pride festival. The first two incarnations were, by any metric, glorious successes, with residents pouring in for a celebration of diversity, inclusion, and community. Thousands of people supported local businesses, enjoyed amazing entertainment, and met their neighbors. But as joyous as they were, the events were both marred by a predictable, now ubiquitous ugliness… A group of the usual “Christian” suspects descended on the gathering: a bullhorn-wielding, sign-waving, joyless mob drafted from local Evangelical churches, the nearby Southern Baptist seminary, and outside agitators from neighboring towns. As with all such assemblies of these miserable self-appointed soldiers in the army of a homophobic Lord, they came with the sole intent of harassing, condemning, and intimidating the LGBTQIA+ community—and we were having none of it. Those first two years, dozens of us counterprotested passionately, confronting them with the very scriptures they weaponized; we overpowered their instigative hymns with Lady Gaga singalongs; we drowned out their condescending shouts with a thunderous drum line. It was an effective, albeit cacophonous response, and we felt we’d succeeded in neutralizing their intrusive presence. This year, however, as Pride grew closer, my heart said something else was called for; something requiring no such volume, something that was not a refutation of a grotesque thing but a declaration of something beautiful. An idea floated into my consciousness, something that I had neither expected nor initially took seriously. It said, " In the presence of unloving people bastardizing the namesake of my faith tradition, I could incarnate it… I could literally be Jesus.” Yes, initially the alarms of blasphemy and heresy clanged like midday steeple bells in my head, and the muscle memory of a thousand brimstone sermons forecasted certain lightning strikes and eternal damnation, but then I thought, “To hell with that.” The more I sat with the idea, the better it felt in my spirit. This was the right way to go: I would literally stand between those self-righteous bullies and the disparate assembly of humanity whose space and safety they sought to invade. I would be a physical barrier to the self-sanctified stone-throwers. I would embody the love for my neighbors at the center of the faith story I was raised in and make it visible. I would make a rebuttal of their hateful exclusion with an expression of effusive welcome. In a matter of seconds, a quick Google search and a handful of clicks, and my costume was on its way… I arrived at the festival, ran into a nearby restaurant, and excitedly changed into a robe, beard, and wig, augmented with rainbow leis and sunglasses, just to make my affiliations clear and avoid triggering attendees with post-Church PTSD. I grabbed the signs I’d made to denounce the protestors:I’m not with them.Ignore Them. Enjoy Pride.This Ain’t Loving Your Neighbor, Kids.And the ones affirming attendees:God Is Proud of You.You Are Loved As You Are.My Dad Things You’re Beautiful. And from the very second I stepped out into the street, I knew I’d made an inspired, perhaps even anointed choice. “Jesus!” two teenage girls shouted almost immediately, running toward me, their eyes beaming. “Can we take a selfie?!” They asked. Of course, I obliged. They fist-bumped me and left cheering, “Way to go, Jesus!”This happened hundreds of times during the day, and sure, some were responding to what they saw as the kitsch factor, others relishing the chance to reclaim some measure of joy from a tradition that has harmed them. But so many of them were like a middle-aged woman with a thick Southern drawl, who curled the back of my neck with her hand and pulled me close enough to whisper in my ear, “Thank you for representing the Jesus I grew up believing in, but never found in my church.” When she pulled away, she smiled widely, tears streaming down her face. A group of high school students asked if they could stand with me, holding signs, and handing out leis, and they were nearby most of the day, as were scores of moms, grandparents, teachers, business owners, and progressive ministers whose churches had come to be visible allies. Over the next six hours, thousands of people passed by and smiled involuntarily, threw me a peace sign, or nodded in approval. Then there were the protestors, who, as I hoped, were brought to a kind of stunned silence, seeing a physical manifestation of a “Jesus” whose tangible love for his neighbors spoke louder than any shame-throwing histrionics or finger-wagging judgement they came armed with.They tried to hurl hellfire and damnation at me, but the optics of screaming at their boss in front of the gays clearly made them uncomfortable, and most of them ended up crestfallen and defeated—and the beautiful part is that I didn’t have to make a sound. One of them did approach me, saying with mocking concern, “Can I give you a Gospel tract?””No thanks,” I replied, smiling. “…I wrote it.” I swear that asphalt was holy ground. I was a local church pastor for nearly thirty years, and I’ve spent over a decade serving as virtual pastor to people all over the country. Along the way, I’ve been blessed with countless moments when I felt I was in the sweet spot of my calling; caring for people, advocating for those under duress, and standing against the scripture-wielding bullies. But it’s been a long time since I had a day like this, doing my best to step figuratively and literally step into the feet of Jesus and remind people that they are loved without caveat or condition. It was one of the best sermons I’ve ever preached—and I didn’t have to say a word. I’m sure this will give the Bible-thumpers and stone-throwers fits, and they’ll double down on predictions of my scalding, torturous eternity, but I think my and Jesus are cool. I think this is right where he’d be. And I think I was pretty chill, all things considered. I mean, it’s not like I turned tables over or anything… The Beautiful Mess by John Pavlovitz is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit johnpavlovitz.substack.com/subscribe

No King’s Day Episode 4 went off pretty much as predicted. Cities all over America were filled with a massive, ebullient mob of families, schoolteachers, ministers, parents, grocery store clerks, college students, business owners, grandparents, and toddlers on shoulders. Highways and overpasses were lined with exuberant, sign-waving throngs of joyfully defiant human beings loudly declaring their shared disdain for a wannabe dictator. Local parks exploded in a kaleidoscopic display of disparate humanity, converging to declare their solidarity and their collective rejection of authoritarianism. Republican lawmakers’ offices were surrounded by a spirited show of resistance from pissed-off, fed-up constituents demanding accountability. The vibes were positive. The chants were spirited. The dance lines were jubilant. The sign game was strong. And it was all, well… really nice. We gathered together. We made some noise. We gave speeches. We raised our fists. We encouraged one another. We put the Republican Party on notice. And when it was over, we all felt the emotional intoxication that events like these usually yield. But if we’re honest with ourselves, was it all the equivalent of a strongly-worded letter to powerful, corrupt people who threw it directly in the trash the moment it arrived? Here we are after the fourth of these gatherings. The Constitutional crises are still piling up.We’re still immersed in an unnecessary, unwinnable war halfway across the world.This Administration’s disregard for legality and morality is still escalating.The complete Epstein files are still concealed, the monsters within them still evading their reckoning.ICE is still ravaging our communities with impunity and with taxpayer funding.Our traitorous, cognitively-decimated, sociopathic Predator-In-Chief is still unstable and violent.We’re still a hair’s breadth from full-on fascism. And in the aftermath of Saturday’s protests, the United States is less than three weeks away from a nation-altering election that the current Administration is clearly doing everything to rig and disrupt, and one it has no intention of honoring, should the votes of the people not be in their favor. Regardless of the results at the polls, we are almost certainly going to be thrust into chaos by this sitting president; one that we have never experienced in our 250-year-history. I wonder if we have it in us to do what we might be required to do to ensure the will of the voters is honored, and the directives of the Constitution are followed. Though I want more than anything to be wrong, as I look at the fierce, fiery protests that have shut down France and those we’ve seen in Spain and Italy and elsewhere, I’m terribly worried that Americans may be too soft and too polite to meet the moment that is likely coming. The last three No Kings Day protests didn’t stave off the chaos that is now here, and it won’t prevent what this regime has planned. We’re going to need a mass display of sustained civil disobedience that we haven’t seen since the 1960s, and that isn’t something we seem capable of. The painful truth is that fascist dictators are rarely voted out, and monstrous authoritarian regimes don’t leave simply because they’re politely asked to. Practically speaking, as meaningful and uplifting as our collective efforts on Saturday were to us, they didn’t matter even a little bit to Trump and his sycophantic gaggle of ghouls. Like so many times before, they allowed us to have an afternoon where we all felt a false sense of power, blew off steam, and then largely returned to our lives currently in progress, while they continued to dismantle our Republic largely unabated. Yes, we rallied people to vote, we equipped them with the tools to make their voices heard, and we implored them to show up in numbers too big to manipulate, at least in theory—and those are all important things. But what happens if we wake up on November 4th and we find ourselves with a presidential administration that refuses to release the stranglehold on this nation that it has? I’m not advocating for violence or inciting wide-scale property damage, but I sure as hell know that if the American people are the only thing standing between our Republic and a cadre of lawless, violent, deranged traitors who show every sign that they’re not leaving voluntarily, signs and chants aren’t gonna cut it. We need to remember that transformative activism is found in sustained and forceful movements, not in soothing moments, and unless we actually strike fear into the oppressors and oligarchs, we may get the very king we claimed for four times in two years that we’d never tolerate. I really want your honest thoughts on all of this. Do you share the same concerns that I have about our willingness to make a more sustained and disruptive response should this Administration do what has been unthinkable? Do you worry that we are too passive and polite a people to push back the way that people in Europe and Central and South America have?Is a post-election No King’s Day going to need to be different, and are we capable of it?Let me know in the comments. The Beautiful Mess by John Pavlovitz is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit johnpavlovitz.substack.com/subscribe