“Paranoia strikes deep. Into your life it will creep. It starts when you’re always afraid. Step out of line the man come and take you away.” — Stephen Stills

I don’t know how much I have for you today. Most of the late evening and morning has been like walking through a fog. I keep telling myself just to put one foot in front of the other and keep going. Allow me to tell you a little story I think most of you already know.

In the immediate aftermath when Jesus was crucified, his followers were despondent. Their leader had been executed. They went to his tomb three days later and it seemed that someone had stolen the body. In the immediate intervening years following the crucifixion it was illegal to be a Christian in Rome. So, Christians got by through symbols so they could reveal their intentions without anyone knowing about.

Masses were celebrated in homes at the kitchen table. That tradition in almost exacting detail was replicated through the early 1960s when the second Vatican council changed how the eucharistic prayer and the mass would be said. It wasn’t until Constantine that Christians in Rome felt safe. Most of the apostles were later martyred including Peter (the first pope) who refused to be crucified standing up. He wanted to be upside down because he had denied Jesus during his passion.

I’m not saying that the Roman soldiers are coming to round us up, but many of us will be a lot less boisterous than we used to be. I’ve never felt scared before following an election. I’ve been disappointed. I’ve been angry. I’ve been utterly depressed, but I have never felt quite like I did when I woke up this morning.

There will be time to ask those nagging Monday morning quarterback questions we always ask in these moments. Was Kamala the right candidate? Was there something wrong with her message? Was she hurt by the lack of transition plan from Joe Biden to her? Would the Democrats have been better off having a clean primary process without Joe Biden? Was the “garbage” thing a clear gaffe at the end that cost her a couple of key percentage points?

I don’t have answers to those questions right now and while we should ask them in due time, I am going to ask everyone to take a step back and take a deep breath. This is collectively who we are now. It really is a matter of a few percentage points shifting one way and not an avalanche. I know it must feel like one.

There are still decent and loving people in this world. Perhaps we can develop some sort of signal to find each other in a sea of divisiveness and hate. It is okay to be sad. It is okay to be angry. It is okay to be depressed. I’m not sure which one is winning out in me right now. It might be confusion more than anything else. I still don’t know how we got here yet.

Last night, our parish decided to add a prayer to the list of prayers we say at every mass. This prayer was for us to give us wisdom to choose the candidate that would best bring about the kingdom of God. They added a bit about choosing the candidates that would serve the needs of the people and not look to be served.

I was struck by two things there. First, none of the candidates were mentioned by name. No parties were mentioned as the preferred party. That was obviously left up to us. Secondly, I know some candidates immediately came to mind and that is particularly true when the idea of serving vs. being served was mentioned. I also know that everyone else in the congregation had the same amount of certainty, but their certainty might be different than mine.

This brings us to the real topic of the day. What do we do on November 6th? Obviously, we can assume that the results will not be known immediately because right wing activists won’t allow the results to be clear by that point. I hate to sound like a partisan hack, but the right is the only group claiming the elections are rigged and fighting the results.

We are scared. We are frightened. We want to figure out how to defend ourselves. Some of us will likely flee to another country. Some will buy a firearm or some other tool to defend their home in the worst of cases. Others may attempt to move off the grid to protect their family.

We do this because we are scared. We are scared because of the rampant disinformation that we see about everything. I’ve gone over that too. If you constantly are bombarded with bullshit it is hard not to get activated by it. One of two things is bound to happen. Either you start to believe it or you know it is wrong and hearing it repeated makes you more and more angry.

When I go through confirmation classes I usually read something called “The Missing Piece” by Shel Silverstein. Essentially, the idea is that each of us is broken in some way. We aren’t quite whole. However, that brokenness comes with advantages in the story. You are able to stop and smell the roses or talk to a bug. When you are complete you can’t do those things.

Yet, the moral to the story is that this brokenness only gets healed when we find the missing piece. That missing piece is other people. The hardest lesson to learn and the most important lesson to learn is that there are truly very few bad people in this world. Most of them are just not a fit for us in that moment. Being unfit for us doesn’t make them bad. It just means they are a better fit for someone else.

Good leaders understand this basic principle. We are flawed when we separate ourselves and isolate ourselves. We are perfect when we work together. The tragedy of the last decade is that we have allowed someone to divide us and isolate us. We each carry some responsibility for putting ourselves in this predicament and we each carry some responsibility to get ourselves out of this hole.

It starts by hopefully moving on from this period on November 6th. As I sit here, I don’t know what the end result will be. Either we will start putting the pieces back together or we will find our missing pieces somewhere else. This current America cannot stand. It will not stand. We will be different on November 6th. Whether it is for the best or not remains to be seen.

It has admittedly been awhile. I am doing my writing elsewhere on my own page. I won’t broadcast that here, but some people know where that is. However, I felt the need to address a group called “StopHoustonmurders.com”. They have set their sight on Democratic judges locally and have run a whole litany of ads. These ads tend to find themselves on what I affectionately call “old people television.” I encountered probably 40 of them in the span of an hour when watching “Mr. Smith Goes to Washington.”

When I say 40 I am not exaggerating. The general course is run about five or six of these ads back to back even having them interrupt other ads for other products. The setup is the same. You see a bunch of people holding up posters of dead loved ones with the voiceover focusing on one of those. It tells you that their loved one was killed by a criminal that a “bad judge” had released. These bad judges are “all Democrats” so we should vote them out to help protect our community.

With all apologies to momma, my bullshit detector was going off and it was screaming at me. Immediately we begin to ask the questions everyone should ask. Are we supposed to take your word for it that all of these judges are Democrats? What were the circumstances of these cases where they “released a criminal”? Did they serve their full sentence? Did a parole board grant their parole? Were they convicted of a violent felony or were they nonviolent offenders that suddenly committed a violent offense?

Tip O’Neill once said that all politics is local. You don’t get any more local than the home. Someone that is out of work or can’t afford to make ends meet doesn’t care how well the economy is doing. Someone that has had a loved one murdered doesn’t care about crime rates. I think we all get that. However, most of us don’t have a loved one that was murdered. So, those crime rates matter and it matters in particular if you are going to question the policy of judges and other elected law enforcement officials.

I know everyone is going to be shocked to hear this, but the rates of violent crime in both the United States and Houston are down. For Houston, it went down from 2022 to 2023. So, it would seem that is little empirical evidence to suggest that the policies of these so-called Democrat judges are making things worse. Again, I know you are shocked.

Instead what we have is yet another example of right wing political groups ratcheting up fear and hatred in order to score political points. More insidiously, they are using real victims to put forth this manufactured issue. It is not dissimilar to the Trump campaign using “data” that shows that two thirds of voters are worried about the economy. When you do nothing but tell people how bad the economy is then is it any wonder that people suddenly think the economy is bad?

Similarly, if you tell people that America is becoming a lawless hellscape then is it any wonder that many people assume that crime rates are out of control? It is all they have at this point. By all means, don’t provide any context. Just bombard people with imagery of Gotham and crime that is out of control. Make sure to imply that it is “the other” that is usually committing these crimes. You alone can fix it by throwing them in jail and throwing away the key. That will do the trick.

The secret to all demagogues is fear. That shouldn’t be a revelation. Fear is a powerful motivator. There are a number of people that are afraid of any number of things. It usually comes down to an us versus them situation. The them just changes depending on who you are talking to. It could be all of the immigrants pouring over the border with drugs, mayhem, and the ability to work for cheaper wages. It could be the LGTBQ+ community as it seems to grow by the minute. It could be racial or ethnic minorities that seem to want more and more things. It could be women and their desire for bodily autonomy and equal rights. It could be the so-called woke mob that seems to want to indoctrinate our kids with whatever nonsense they have. I could go on and on.

When we see terms like liberty and freedom being misappropriated we see this and exactly this going on. People are afraid THEIR freedom will go away because more of THEM are appearing in their lives. When you are being bombarded daily about invasions and mobs of woke people then you think your rights and your freedoms are being threatened. Therefore, it becomes paramount that you pass laws that protect your way of life by limiting those other ways of life.

This is how demagoguery works. Someone takes those fears and absorbs them like some kind of evil antibacterial cream they can rub into the body politic. They rail against those people. They hate those people. They promise to fight for you and your values. They promise that those other people (whoever they may be) will never succeed in changing your way of life.

So, we get to the part of constructive suggestions. I’ve said this before, but it bears repeating. The lunatic fringe has 35-40 percent fairly entrenched and ready to vote based on their fear. Trying to convince them otherwise is a waste of time. It is important to understand where they are coming from if only to navigate our relationships with them. If you know the motivation then you can tiptoe through conversations and family gatherings without too much incident. That is of course unless you enjoy the fireworks.

The key group is not the right or the left. The key group are the people we might label as the “I don’t cares.” I’m not calling them undecided voters anymore. They rarely vote because they don’t see the relevance to them. They are unengaged by their own choice. They see this as a both sides are corrupt kind of deal. So, the key thing is making them see the distinct difference between what both sides view as freedom. How do we define freedom? What realistic limits do we set on freedom and why? Most importantly, how does it impact you?

The key is in identifying who these folks are and targeting them with repeated messaging. It is about bodily autonomy and not just abortion. It is about what they want to censure next and not just a few books in the library. It is about what will happen to you if THEY deem you as unfit. Are these fear tactics? Sure they are. We should be afraid and we need to make sure everyone sees what it at stake.

The funny thing about fear is that it is all a part of the same conversation. Women are afraid that their rights will be taken away after 48 years and that is the big news item of the day. Protesters from the summer and before were finally standing up to rogue law enforcement forcing people of color to live in fear of their lives when they encounter law enforcement. The fear I’m thinking of today is a lot closer to home.

It’s sad when you see that fear first hand. It’s heartbreaking when you see it in your own children. Our daughter’s school had a couple of days of bomb threats this week. Social media is doing what it does and managed to spread all kinds of rumors about what might happen. So, more than half the school decided to stay home yesterday. The principal said those absences would be excused. She obviously understood the impulse.

My wife and I sat there as our daughter cried when we discussed her coming to school today. We left it up to her. Forcing her to go seemed somehow cruel. Yet, she talked a long time about the guilt of avoiding a possible event. It didn’t make sense and yet it made perfect sense. She decided to go and yet the fear she is feeling is unavoidable. We can only hope it dissipates before it becomes a permanent thing.

The source of this fear is the same. The abortion ban, Rittenhouse, our hometown domestic terrorist, rogue law enforcement, and isolated gun nuts all look the same. They are all virtually the same. None of them look like the people they want you to fear. They all look like the people pointing the finger. Funny how that all works out. No one knows the identity of the kid making threats at the school, but the good money says it’s a white male. It almost always is.

Animal behavior can teach us a lot. We have a 100 pound Rottweiler, 16 pound ginger cat, and a ten pound tabby cat at home. The tabby cat has an overactive sense of fear. She somehow channels that fear and turns it into rage as she lashes out at the other two. The dog doesn’t want to be within ten feet of her. Here is this huge and physically imposing animal cowering in fear of something one-tenth his size. I’m sure there’s a metaphor in there somewhere.

Perhaps it’s personification instead. A relatively small group of people are so activated by fear that they induce real terror in the rest of us. We often expect them to look in the mirror and attack the reflection. The opportunists among them somehow manage to take a fear they created and turn around and offer protection from it. When you see it happening in general it makes you angry. When you see it happening to your own family it breaks your heart. When you see a little jackass using the exact same tactics as one of the two major political parties it makes you incredibly sad. The monsters are indeed hiding under the bed and they are pointing the fingers at everyone else. I guess it’s time to sleep with the light on.