God Help Us...

I had planned on working on my weekly sermon some yesterday afternoon, but got sucked into the news watching the train wreck unfolding in Washington.  Even this morning eighteen hours later, I find that I cannot put mental energy into a sermon without first putting together some comments about yesterday.  On January 6, congress meets to count the electoral votes in an action that is largely ceremonial.  Any idea that congress is a final arbiter of presidential elections is misguided.  Every four years they meet on January 6, count the electoral votes, and nobody even knows or notices.  That congressional proceedings from yesterday were even being shown on every cable news network is a sign that things are "going off the rails" so to speak.

Technically we live in a republic rather than a democracy, meaning that  we elect people who will form a government and represent us in said government.  Our practices for how that works are spelled out partially in our constitution, partially in statute, and partially in unwritten tradition.  After general elections state governments certify their electoral results, the electoral votes for the state are assigned to the presidential candidate who won said state.  The electoral college officially meets on December 14 to vote for the president.  In some states electors are bound by statute to follow the will of the popular vote, in others they are bound  by unwritten tradition.  In a joint session of congress in January 6, the results are read out and formally counted.  This year, our system broke down.  It is complicated and cumbersome to be sure, but it has served us well until 2020 when it broke.  

What happened this year?  Our society is more divided than at any time in recent memory due in lage part to the influence of social media and the broader media culture.  Facebook and Twitter divide us and fan flames of passion and hatred.  If you are a left-leaning Democrat you watch MSNBC or CNN.  If you are a right-leaning Republican you watch Fox News.  If those media outlets don't tell you what you want to hear or spin things how you want to hear it, you find a media outlet even further to the margins.  What we have lost is any set of common facts or knowledge.  We don't all watch Walter Cronkite, John Chancellor, David Brinkley, etc. on the nightly news at 6:30 so that we don't even have a common truth.  In this climate conspiracy theories can spread and flourish like kudzu.

Yesterday as congress met for its ceremonial function (after all, do we really want congress acting as some sort of national board of elections??) large crowds of people gathered expecting something that was not going to happen and could not happen.  Congress has no authority over elections except in the rather rare event of an electoral college tie, in which case the House of Representatives determines the winner.  Occasionally there is an objection raised in the tallying of a vote, but it is dealt with in short debate and the whole matter is over.  Upset because they thought that an election had been "stolen," the crowds gathered around the capitol and even broke into the capitol itself.  The result was a spectacle like what one would expect in a "banana republic" than in what is to be a bastion of democracy.  Speaking to the large crowd yesterday Rudy Giuliani said that there would be "trial by combat."  Words mean things, words have consequences, and in this case four people died because of it, more were hurt, and scores of people were arrested.

Yesterday's events horrified everyone because we simply don't solve our electoral disputes by violence.  The important thing is where do we go from here?  To begin, it is imperative that we as a society listen to each other and scale back our rhetoric.  The labels we toss around mean things- Republicans aren't all ignorant and hateful,  Democrats aren't all Marxists.  On social media don't post memes (they are misleading or inaccurate 75% of the time anyway) and fact check what you do post.   For the sake of the republic we need to be more informed and conversant by and with the person next door than with Joe Scarborough, Sean Hannity, Anderson Cooper, Tucker Carlson, etc. Watching yesterday, don't fall into the temptation to equate it to rioting in major cities last summer.  Both happened, both are wrong, but one happening does not excuse the other.  One side shouldn't feel morally superior to another.  The brokenness of our society is national not partisan, we all share in it.  To the extent we point fingers self-righteously at "those people" on Facebook we are part of the problem.  

The tumultuous election of 2020 is over.  Each state government has certified results, the electoral college has met, congress has counted votes.  What does remain is that millions of people in the country have lost faith in the electoral process.  "Stop the Steal" shouted enough times and widening conspiracy theories about a stolen election, can have long-term damaging effects on the republic.  Even though no evidence has been found to indicate any level of fraud great enough to alter the election results, the perception that perception that the electoral system cannot be trusted will cause people to be less likely to participate in it.  Further, it could even make it more likely that some would resort to arms and violence to get their way politically, as we saw so tragically yesterday.  Because state governments run and set electoral procedures, states should review their processes and be open about doing so to reinforce confidence in their electoral procedures and systems.  There is no such thing as a perfect election, but there should be a level of confidence great enough to encourage people to participate.  The broad populace should feel confident that everyone who is legally qualified to vote has the opportunity to do so, and likewise that there are safeguards to prevent fraudulent votes (multiple voting, ballot harvesting, and the "cemetery vote" for example.)   More importantly, we have a wounded national conscience and psyche.  Traditions that have served us well for generations have been shaken.  We need desperately to heal.  May the incoming president and the new congress being seated should take their cue from President Lincoln's second inaugural address when he promised to have "malice toward none, and charity for all."