This is a lot of words about the election. You’ve been warned. You don’t have to read them. Just don’t shame me for writing so much.

Aside from a joke or two, over the last several years, I’ve mostly chosen to sit out the political conversation on social media, facebook in particular. There are multiple reasons for that:

I’ve mostly spent that season being quieter in general.

I pulled back from social media in particular.

Frankly, I was tired of Trump-shaped political and cultural discourse, and I was glad to have what I knew would be a short period of relief from that. (It may be hard to remember now, but we did get less of that for a couple of years). That reflects some of my bias, of course, but many of the people I know who voted for Trump once or twice felt the same by early 2021.

I no longer had the energy for the fighting.

As I surveyed the over-discussed, under-addressed polarization that is increasingly defining this era, I wanted to work harder to listen and understand.

So, that’s where I’ve been, at least for the sake of this post. And I’m not back to yell or rant. I’m also not back to offer another toothless, “both sides” appeal to put our votes under our pillow and wait for the unity fairy to come. I’ll get to my (pretty strong) views of this election. But I don’t know how to do that without addressing some dynamics that transcend any one election or explaining some of the route I’ve taken toward this particular election.

As I spent more time listening and reading than talking or writing, I was increasingly grossed out by how much we’ve come to rely on shame and ridicule as a way to communicate. Most of us are convinced that what’s at stake is elemental to our lives and the country. That’s fine, but it too often motivates us to make people feel ashamed for being unconvinced of or threatening what we value.

So, I get it and admit my own guilt, but shame is both destructive and an ineffective way to persuade. It’s also autogenic: shame replicates itself and goes viral in a hurry. In that environment, it’s inevitable that we collectively start abandoning good faith efforts to persuade – a bedrock value of a free society – and slouching toward derision and coercion. We are living in that inevitability.

I’m not entirely sure how we rewire the machine, but I am convinced it’s going to take a willingness for people to spend less time reloading in their foxholes and more time sitting around tables. I’m not talking about some magical, mythical unity where we all hold hands and agree on a particular worldview or political party or presidential candidate. We have serious disagreements, and I still believe that’s (mostly) good. My notion that everyone should agree with me was mercilessly gutted years ago.

Healthy conflict is one way we continue to create and recreate something better than the inevitable errors and tyrannies of any one political, religious, or cultural ideology. And yes, every existing point of view has errors that, when infused with certainty (our current mixer of choice), become tyrannies. The way out is neither zealously doubling down on what we’re sure everyone else is missing until our side wins nor pining for an unattainable zenified oneness. The way out is a willingness to engage one another, even in our differences, in ways that are more human and more American.

I write all that because I believe it, but I lead with it partly to hold myself to something like that standard as I communicate my current point of view. And so:

I’m back here, years removed from being a reliable Republican voter and still not a Democrat, writing about the 2024 election because, as someone who has had plenty to say since 2016, it makes sense to me to be open about where I’ve settled on the eve of an event seems likely to push us further into the abyss of enemy-making. And while I’m no one’s guru and don’t hold any particular position of influence or authority, people still ask me how I’m processing this political moment. I don’t presume there are hundreds or even tens of others with that same curiosity, so I have no illusions or delusions about audience. I certainly have no interest in telling anyone how to vote. But if only for giving myself something to look back at in a few years or decades – and giving some of you something to scoff or laugh at – here we go.

I’m going to do a few things here:

• Share what I’ve learned,
• Clearly articulate how I voted and explain why,
• Tell you why I don’t think you have to vote either the way or for the reasons we’re often told to vote. Or, more particularly, I’ll try to make a case for a nuanced view of voting that has been helpful to me as someone who hasn’t been wild about either party or candidate in a long time.

I have made no secret of my view of Donald Trump over the last eight years. I also freely confess my capacity to follow my own advice in listening, understanding, and engaging differences with curiosity has been uniquely challenged by the Trump phenomenon. I own that, and it has changed the way I’ve engaged with this election cycle. I have listened better. I have read and watched Trump-leaning and Trump-loyal news and commentary. I have worked to understand the underlying motivations of Trump supporters and reluctant Trump voters.

I’ve done the same for the other side. I’ve sought more neutral sources of news, recognizing that true neutrality is scarce. I’ve tried to distill the primary external criticisms of both sides. I’ve worked to synthesize all of that with as much fairness as I can offer. I’m a human. I don’t claim total objectivity (and neither should you). My methodology is highly unscientific, and I claim no universal applications beyond my own trip to the battle* box. Having imbued you with that confidence, here is some of what I’ve learned along the way:

• I have seen more clearly how much actual news is obscured from people who, intentionally or not, function in an echo chamber of information filtered through right- or left-leaning news sources. I was passively aware of this before, but I’ve been surprised by how significant it is and how many people don’t realize they are missing big pieces of the story. This is very real in both directions, particularly when it comes to distortion bias. That said, and with all my biases noted, I’ve encountered the most problematic versions of this in media that is either right-leaning or explicitly driven by right/Trump ideology. There are valid stories and important facts that are totally ignored in those spaces. They aren’t presented with a slant; they simply don’t exist there. If you find yourself balking at that conclusion, I think it’s fair to challenge you to do your own deep dive and decide for yourself. I am not your enemy or trying to score points for the left, a group to which I don’t belong well. This is just what I’ve experienced and what I’ve found is validated by reliable research.well. This is just what I’ve experienced and what I’ve discovered is validated by reliable research.

• I have increasingly learned to look for and evaluate the frequency and validity of the internal critics on both sides. Who within the movement, party, or campaign is willing and free to acknowledge the problems, and what do they say? Who has left the team, how much are they sharing about their experience out of personal grievance, and how credible is their criticism? What does the apparent freedom (or lack of freedom) to disagree or criticize within any particular group reflect about the values and trustworthiness of that group and its leader(s)?

• Most importantly, I have been more conscious of staying in touch with the humanity of everyone involved, including Donald Trump. I don’t think I ever slipped into actively dehumanizing people I disagreed with, but I needed to reckon with the passive ways I have oversimplified people and ideas I don’t understand. Acknowledging and changing this tendency hasn’t always changed my opinions (though, in some cases, it has), but it probably matters more than my opinions.

My quote of choice about this isn’t from MLK or Ronald Reagan or Barack Obama. It’s from Alan Alda, who probably would get my vote as either Hawkeye Pierce or Arnold Vinick. Odd as the source may seem, he captures the posture I’m increasingly trying to take, not just politically, but in how I see and treat humans:

The difference between listening and pretending to listen, I discovered, is enormous. One is fluid, the other is rigid. One is alive, the other is stuffed. Eventually, I found a radical way of thinking about listening. Real listening is a willingness to let the other person change you. When I’m willing to let them change me, something happens between us that’s more interesting than a pair of dueling monologues.

If I’m still clinging to convictions I developed a decade more or ago, it’s worth asking how much I’ve even considered the possibility that I might be wrong. Have I truly been open to other people and possibilities? If our beliefs are sound, they can withstand challenge, and we can put away the instinct to resist, reject, and ridicule that American politics has gladly and self-servingly normalized. In almost all cases, healthy understanding of other points of view will lead us to even more solid ground, either because that understanding strengthens our existing values or offers us more informed, more aware ways of thinking and living. Often, it does both. That’s because essentially every issue we fight about is more complex than the bullet point beliefs we’re fed by people with microphones and keyboards as the beginning and end of any conversation about those issues.

And let’s be clear: All of the political machinery – all of it – along with most power-based organizations and movements, are designed to tap into and petrify whatever assumptions and beliefs you have that will make you loyal to that particular machine. Trump, Harris, Republican Party, Democratic Party, conservative, liberal, libertarian…they are not primarily concerned with your discernment or you being guided by truth. They are invested in you believing (or continuing to believe) what they want you to believe so that you will be a brick in the wall they’re building around power.

I hope that’s the most cynical sentence I write here, and I don’t mean to minimize the will any particular candidate has for the common good. I’m just convinced that partisan loyalties in this climate are virtually certain to not only harden our beliefs but also harden us against one another. This inevitably makes us less open to finding truth (and consequently less likely to be right) and less open to actually seeing and valuing one another. More than at any time in my five decades, we are determining how much we value other humans based on beliefs that have been passed down to us or turned into relational deal-breakers by people *we absolutely do not know* whose primary interest is maintaining their own power.

There’s more that I’ve learned, but I’m going to max out the attention span of everyone who’s still here, so I’ll move on. In short, I’ve tried to be fair.

All of that has again convinced me with both big picture and granular clarity that Donald Trump is uniquely unfit to be president. Trying to explain why is both simple and exhaustingly difficult. Steve Bannon, one of the chief architects of Trump-the-politician and Trump’s policy agenda, distills the difficulty of this well in describing the primary Trump strategy: “The real opposition is the media. And the way to deal with them is to flood the zone with shit. This is not about persuasion: This is about disorientation.”

Whatever you think about his characterization of the media, the impact on you and me is the same. We know what we know through some mix of media. Unless you’re hanging out with the former president in person, you’re on the receiving end of a constant flood of shit the Trump team creates, and it’s designed neither to inform nor persuade you; it’s designed to disorient you.

Ironically, Bannon became a victim of the Trump-run universe he helped create. He was ejected from Trump’s inner circle not for stepping out of line on policy or strategy but for criticizing the then-president’s children. Then he was criminally charged with defrauding Trump supporters, eventually pardoned by Trump, and ultimately convicted of Contempt of (a Republican) Congress and sent to prison.

Bannon’s case is one small illustration of the chaos that constantly and intentionally swirls around Donald Trump. Even today, with half the country voting tomorrow, people close to him on his team describe his appetite for chaos and confusion as insatiable.

This is at the heart of my assessment of Donald Trump: It would be hard for someone to do more than Trump has done to continually demonstrate less interest in the well-being of Americans or America and more interest in his own power and protection than what this man has done over the last eight years. He has shown a unique ability to stoke the worst instincts in supporters and opponents alike. We’re all responsible for how we deal with those instincts, but I’ll always unapologetically insist that not being energized by activating the worst in Americans is an absurdly low bar to ask someone to clear on their way to the White House.

Those kinds of statements are now regularly dismissed by Trump and many of his supporters as deranged or deluded without a willingness to deal honestly with the ever-growing list of examples that support them. This is because the greatest success of Trump and his team is executing the Bannon strategy. The zone is so flooded with shit that it is easier to dismiss criticisms as enemies projecting media-driven hysteria onto Trump than to offer an account for his actual words and actions.

But the flood strategy cuts both ways. By any rational standard, Trump’s record is now so flooded with shit that it defies believability to insist Trump is innocent of all or even most of the consequential matters. Of course, the media is guilty of fanning the flames just as Bannon hoped they would, but to assume Trump didn’t start the fire (and a dozen others) requires an imagination that I cannot conjure.

The ability to dismiss or minimize the warnings of so many people of otherwise high reputation – 253 retired Admirals and Generals, 10 Cabinet and Military Secretaries, 49 Senior Enlisted, 164 current or former U.S. Ambassadors, the most Republican Vice President in all of ever, Trump’s own former VP, and dozens of people who worked with and for Trump – exceeds my ability to understand. A party and movement that professes such admiration for the military have proven willing to accept Trump’s bizarre denigration of hundreds of proven patriots whose precipitating sin, in every case, is not dishonorable service, but displeasing or refusing to show unqualified loyalty to a man with no record of patriotic service.

The list of people who now aren’t just refusing to support Trump but are actively warning that he has no regard for the Constitution, craves authoritarian power, and will do real damage to America and Americans is heavily populated by people he told us were, in his judgment, “the best people” and by people who conservative (many of them Christian) supporters insisted would keep him on the right track. That list never stops growing as people find themselves out of favor with him. We also are seeing a slew of lifelong Republicans who will not vote for him and even are actively campaigning for the Democratic candidate in numbers we’ve never seen in modern American politics.

Again, the reflexive dismissal of all of these people as RINOs or squishy conservatives sounds and reads like an over-obvious textbook example of about a half dozen different logical fallacies. It also requires a belief in the superiority of either the character or virtuous utility of Donald Trump, all while he daily tells us he’s the best president in U.S. history and shameless lies about everything from the impact of tariffs to his insistence that “there isn’t a single empty seat” at rallies that are half-empty. I mean, who actually cares except him, but his self-aggrandizement so distorts his judgment that his attention is constantly diverted to inane, weird things. *Squirrel!*

I also cannot swallow the utilitarian case for Trump that essentially makes him a useful fool. The presidency demands both more and less than that: more than a fool at the wheel, less proven foolishness and malice at the desk. Even if it didn’t, it’s hard for me to imagine anyone having confidence in Trump’s utility at this point. Most obviously, he has not merely hedged but backtracked on the issue most often used to defend his usefulness. He is only reliable in his unreliability. This is not generic slander. The record is clear. He is all over the place on key issues, apparently guided by his own whims and interests.

One of my biggest questions about conservative support for Trump in 2016 has become, for me, a certainty: He is not a conservative. He has embraced and helped the conservative cause when he sensed it was useful. Still, he is nowtelling us more clearly than ever that he is not guided by or particularly interested in conservative principles. If you take solace in the fact that his current illiberal (a word I use in the classical sense related to restriction of liberty), non-conservative impulses are mostly aimed at people you don’t like and disagree with, consider the bigger picture. He predictably shifts his targets toward those who he perceives to be a threat to his ego or his power. With new authority and fewer grownups in the room who are more interested in the Constitution and civil liberties than in conspiracies and enlarging their platforms, your particular freedoms will be as secure as his mood on any given day. As ever, you are exactly as free as your enemies. Trump’s record, repeated promises, and supporting cast are as big a threat to your liberty as to the ones he currently wants to silence, deport, and imprison.

He also shows open contempt for conservative fiscal and business values. Trump has an uninterrupted, decades-long history of screwing people he does business with by just deciding not to pay them for their work or honor his agreements. How this alone hasn’t cost him the vote in Texas baffles me. He has had to find new rally venues in one city after another because he never paid for his 2020 rallies, stiffing both American businesses and taxpayer-owned facilities. I’ve lost count of how many of these have been documented as he dodges his financial responsibilities to Americans and American cities while campaigning to be America’s president. But that’s just the tip of his bad-faith iceberg. He is widely known for ripping off a boatload of everyday Americans who run businesses who did the work he hired them to do and never got paid.

Trump is guided by allegiance to Trump and his interests. In this election, he is making no secret of his determination to both root out anyone in the government or military who hasn’t shown him the loyalty he demands and to surround himself with and empower people who are demonstrably not principled conservatives (or libertarians if that’s your jam). Pop/podcast conservatism is not conservatism. Alt-right conservatism is not conservatism. I don’t, by default, dismiss any and all conspiracy theories, but promoting conspiracy theories about political enemies, Trump’s or anyone else’s, is not the definition of or qualification for conservatism. In too many cases, that has become enough to earn a place of influence within the GOP, and Trump’s world is crowded with the evidence.

Yes, there are many on the left or among conservative Never Trumpers who are also uninterested in persuasion when it comes to any of Trump’s positive characteristics or accomplishments. Please trust that I grant that argument and then hear me say: This thing is too far gone for that to matter. We can find good things to say about virtually anyone, but Trump has drained any power normally available in the “what abouts?” and “both sides.” The balance is so far in the red on Trump’s credibility that believing he’s not all bad or that he has done some good things hardly registers anymore in my evaluation of him.

For this context, I’m mostly limiting that evaluation to my particular wide-angle conclusions. I’m choosing not to explore in detail his actions and promises that demonstrate his low regard for the Constitution and American liberties, his contempt for veterans and the military and clear desire to manipulate them for his own purposes, his admiration for the anti-democratic leaders who pose the greatest threat to our country and his eagerness to earn their approval (nothing has unified Russia, North Korea, and China more than the idea of Trump back in Washington), his documented track record of lies, his personal history that would have disqualified any presidential candidate before him and likely any other current candidate, his utter disregard for women (including his own wives), the facade of financial wisdom that is so easily disproven and has been laughed at in his home city for decades, his vindictive nature, his painful lack of self-control, the sheer absurdity of so much of what he says (and why it matters and can’t just be dismissed by “you have to understand what he means, not what he says”), and…you get it. I mean, the fact that we’re exhausted by and prone to start skipping over this list is evidence both of how thoroughly he’s disqualified himself and of the ways the flood has inoculated us against the gravity of things that actually do still matter.

It’s been nearly a decade, and I really am disoriented, less by Donald Trump and more by the spell he has cast that enables him to freely defy so many basic American values without more electoral consequence.

So, it’s no mystery at this point, but I voted for Kamala Harris. It wasn’t a hard decision, but that’s only true because I’ve been processing the key questions involved for a long time and have had eight years to observe who Donald Trump is. I would be voting for any sane candidate opposing all of the above, but I voted for Harris because it registers as the most emphatic rejection of Trump and Trumpism available this year.

There is plenty I don’t like about Harris and her agenda, but I’ve worked through those issues (most of them over the course of about 35 years), and none of them tips the scales given what I view as the stakes of this election. So many of the arguments being made against her are fine enough for a normal election, but few register with sufficient weight to counter the downsides of empowering a Donald Trump who is older than Joe Biden was when we were told he was too old to be president and who has left no doubt about his personal and political character.

I recognize and respect that you can choose not to vote for Trump and still be unable to feel good about voting for Harris. I’m not here to persuade anyone to do so. I am happy to try to persuade whoever is listening not to vote for Trump, but choosing how you actually use your vote is an entirely different conversation. My approach evolves depending on the nature of a given election. I voted for Harris largely because she is a better/less bad option than Trump. I know Texas remains red, but the symbolism still matters to me. I regularly vote against Ted Cruz over political disagreements, but I would vote against him even if I liked his politics because I won’t use my ballot to high-five a guy who epitomizes false Texas swagger while bowing a knee to a dude who insulted his wife and parents, who is so creepy, and who has been such bad luck for my Texas Aggies when he shows up at games.

A note as a Christian and former pastor: I haven’t given any attention here to the particular ways professing Christians have merged their identity (individually and collectively) with Trump and Trumpism, but it’s not out of indifference. In so many ways, that phenomenon has grievously distorted the message and way of Jesus. I just want to give primary attention in this space to a wider conversation around human values that transcend religion. I’m also not interested in suggesting that, “You can’t be a Christian and vote for ____.” I understand seeing an explicit disconnect between what we believe are obvious Christian values and one candidate or another, but that kind of language is rooted in shame and control. It’s also closer to the line of adding to the Gospel than I care to go.

Also, too be clear, I don’t hate Donald Trump. I don’t trust him. I believe he is obsessed with himself in ways that are dangerous for all of us. I think he has proven in word and deed that his malice is ambivalent to principle or conviction. But I don’t hate him. In the end, I feel sad for him. But feeling sad and feeling sorry for him aren’t the same, and I can refuse to hate him and see through the bluster to his humanity while still making sober judgments about whether it’s wise to join an effort to give him immense power.

Anyway, I made my decision about my presidential vote based on a number of factors, but these three are primary for me in this election:

• Who will do the least harm? I believe Trump represents a clear danger for all kinds of people, most notably vulnerable groups. Whether or not I feel personally threatened, I’m voting for some minimal amount of solidarity with people I love (and people I don’t) who aren’t white, who are queer, who are women, who are immigrants and asylum seekers, who are disabled, and who generally already face enough neglect or real harm that I’d like to help them avoid the added burdens of new threatening policies and a leader who seems to have virtually no capacity for empathy. The primary hang-up for many when I discuss harm reduction is abortion, and I get that. I do. My perspective has changed on abortion and healthcare for women in a few ways, but the tipping point for me is the actual numbers. Fewer women have abortions in the wake of Democratic policies than Republican policies (I’d be happy for that to change, by the way), and that trend has continued even after the Dobbs decision. This one can and will be debated until long after we all die, and I’m not interested in litigating it on facebook. Again, my invitation is simply to do the research (if you haven’t) and know it’s not sinful to consider the possibility that always voting for Republicans isn’t necessarily the most pro-life way to vote.
  

• A rejection of lowering our standards to the Trump level. I don’t live in a fantasy world of idealized politicians. Even some of my favorites did really terrible things. I camp most comfortably in the Christian nonviolence space (though I know it doesn’t answer every meaningful question), and my list of personal heroes doesn’t include any former presidents. I’m also something of a realist, so I know we’re electing a president, not a pastor. I know heavy is the crown and we “have not a clue what terrors kings must do” (I see you Ross King). I still think it matters who is handed that power. It matters symbolically, and it matters in a pile of life-and-death ways. I’m not interested in looking my daughters in the eye and telling them I think someone like Trump is fit to be given the most power currently available to a human, but I’m also not interested in communicating that to my son. I’m not willing to use my words or my vote to say that the character of those shaping policy (and therefore our lives) matters less than policy. That shift in conservative and Christian political ethics is a clear capitulation to moral relativism and utilitarianism. I’ve read and heard all the protests to that assertion, and they all leave me less persuaded than before and, maybe worse, they leave me sad.
  

Finally and more broadly, I want to use what small power I’m still afforded to say ‘no’ to what I view as a drift into deeply flawed anthropology and theology. I see in the phenomenon of Trump’s support a sort of continuum. On one end are people who actually feed on what is, at best, deeply problematic and, at worst, evil in what Trump says and does. On the other end are people who have chosen – or who feel powerless to do anything but choose – to compartmentalize who Trump is from how they vote. To be clear, I empathize with the struggle of the latter group in many ways. I spent years there.

I just don’t think it’s the only option available to Christians, conservatives, or anyone else, and I’m no longer convinced it’s the best option. Instead, to borrow from the title of Leif Enger’s latest novel, we can “cheerfully refuse” to participate in any act or offer our endorsement, however small and tacit, to any leader who we can’t imagine prioritizing human flourishing in their use of power or who _____ (add your own priorities here).

Yes, that includes Kamala Harris and whoever the Democrats and Republicans serve up next. My values aren’t about party and aren’t only about ideology. They are, above all, about personal and communal values.

And yes, I think our refusal can be cheerful even when we don’t feel cheerful about any candidate on our ballot. Whatever effort we make toward the common good is an embodiment of our created purpose, so be of good cheer when you do what you were made to do. It’s not up to you to save the world, but you do get to live in active hope.

I’ll finish with a story:

In November of 2016, for the first time, all three of our kids were old enough to be engaged in a presidential election. I took my girls with me to vote (non-Trump Republican that year; J.D. Vance and I voted the same for what I assume was the last time ever). Later, they decorated a split Trump/Clinton magazine cover in a way that was flattering to neither face. They were all three annoyed when we sent them to bed that night before there was a result, so they negotiated a deal whereby we’d slide a note with the outcome under their doors. As they headed to bed, Ella said, “Well, whatever happens, it’s sure to be a bitter disappointment.” No overpaid pundit articulated a better summation of that political moment than my 11-year-old daughter.

Eight years later, so many still feel this way. And while I have a clear desired outcome for this election, Ella’s words accurately describe my honest expectations about where we’ll be as a group of 346 million people, all living in the wake of the outcome. I can’t fix that, but I’m trying to do the best with what’s available to me to look toward a more hopeful way of voting, living with grace and goodwill among people whose votes don’t make sense to me.

*However I vote, I’m not interested in giving up the jokes.

Also, I still don’t have the energy for the fighting. Good-faith replies are welcome, but I make no promises about responding (I already gave more time to this than I care to tell my wife), and I’m not shy about deleting comments that aren’t productive.