Harry Reid - Secular Provocateur and the Anti-Trump "Protests"

Harry Reid referred to Donald Trump as “a sexual predator who lost the popular vote,” and further claimed, “White nationalists, Vladimir Putin and ISIS are celebrating Donald Trump’s victory, while innocent, law-abiding Americans are wracked with fear.”

This is the same Harry Reid, who on the floor of the Senate of the United States, no less, claimed Mitt Romney had not paid taxes when it was absolutely false. 

Reid’s response when Romney’s released tax returns proved that he lied?  “Romney didn’t win, did he?”  Washington Post - Reid Not Sorry He Lied .  

Why, then, does anyone even bother listening to Harry Reid, let alone publish anything he says?  Moreover, are things like shutting down interstate highways, vandalizing cars and buildings, setting fires, and getting into fights the acts of “innocent, law abiding Americans?”  How is that showing they are “wracked  with fear?”  Looks more to me like these folks lack fear and are willing to do whatever they want, regardless of the law.

Harry Reid proves what is absolutely wrong with the many so-called Anti-Trump protests.  These folks have been taught to believe, as Harry Reid does, that the ends justify the means.  In fact, we are seeing a whole language being developed that is downright Orwellian and feeds into this phenomenon. 

I previously posted about a Duke Ph.D. student who explained my “white fragility” and how I was a racist because I don’t accept nonsense like “white privilege” and that words are “violent.”  When you begin to accept, as many of these foolish people have, that words which upset you are “violence” against you, then it becomes very easy to rationalize actual physical violence in return.  People like Harry Reid are frighteningly evil because they have turned things upside down.  Donald Trump is a racist, misogynist, xenophobic, homophobic, etc. etc. etc. bad guy, and his rhetoric is hateful to blacks, Hispanics, and other minorities, women, immigrants, LGBTQ and anyone else who takes offense at things Trump has said.  Therefore, Trump, according to Harry Reid, is “unleashing hate” which is a form of violence in the current parlance.  Pushing back against this verbal “violence” is not only acceptable but proper and morally necessary, even if it means using actual violence.

In fact, it becomes easy to even argue for actual physical violence in advance of such verbal violence as a way of stopping it before it begins.  (Sounds an awful lot like the hated Bush-era notion of preemptive war – which is incredibly ironic, given that people like Harry Reid claimed what Bush was doing was improper and immoral).

So the protesters aren’t interested in democracy (as they allegedly claim), nor are they interested in any kind of peaceful determination of what they want.  We just had a peaceful election and Mrs. Clinton lost.  These folks, I suppose, are even taking the election results as some kind of  “violence,” because they assume every person who voted for Trump is, by definition, all the things they believe Trump to be.  One sign I saw from an anti-Trump protester said “Your Vote is a Hate Crime.”  Never mind that many Trump voters held their noses and voted for him out of distrust of Hillary Clinton or out of a desire to keep the Supreme Court from becoming just another form of “protest” and not out of love for Trump.  These protesters seem unaware that such a thing as rational behavior even exists.  So they just assume Trump voters are nasty, vile, contemptible human beings who don’t really even deserve to share the same land as the pleasant, virtuous, agreeable human beings that make up Hillary Clinton supporters and protesters.

These protesters are simply pawns in a game they don’t even understand.  People like Harry Reid use them because they are disposable and fungible.  Do they think Harry Reid actually cares about them?  Do they really think Hillary Clinton cares about them?  Should it not dawn on them that any man who will blatantly lie, then gleefully point out his lie got him what he wanted, will turn on them just as quickly?  Has it dawned on them that Hillary Clinton, who has clearly proven herself equally mendacious, would do the same?

Protesting is fine.  But what’s going on here isn’t just protesting.  What’s happening is an entire shift in how we talk about events.  What’s real simply doesn’t matter; it’s only what people feel that matters.  So people “feel” violated and “feel” that the way Trump talked during the campaign was “violent.”  As a result, they feel free to react violently because they have determined it’s morally acceptable.  What’s worse is that the more protests that occur and the more violence that breaks out around these protests, the more police will become involved and the more the protesters will claim they need more violence to offset the “violence” of police being called to keep things under control.  After all, they’ll “feel” scared because police are there, so that gives them a moral right to then react violently, since they have a right to “feel” safe and secure while they’re committing violent protest in the name of stopping the verbal violence unleashed by Donald Trump.

After all, the ends justify the means.  Feels good, right, Harry?

An Historical Footnote for the Anti-Trump Protesters (Updated)

You are aware (of course they are!) that Bill Clinton won the presidency with 43% of the popular vote in 1992.  This means 57% of voters did NOT want Bill Clinton to be the President.  In 1996 he managed 49% but still less than a majority.

So how is it Bill Clinton managed to become president, then stay president? HMMMMMMMMMMMMM.

THE ELECTORAL COLLEGE.  

He got 370 electoral votes by winning 32 states and DC.  George H.W. Bush got 168.  Ross Perot, although he got almost 20 million popular votes, got 0 electoral votes.

Whoops.

A Small Bit of Reality for the Anti Trump Protesters

To all the protesters who are claiming Hillary Clinton won the popular vote:  one itty bitty tiny little chunk of reality for you here:  Gary Johnson and Jill Stein got about 5,000,000 votes between them, meaning Hillary Clinton DID NOT win the popular vote.  Over 65 million people voted against her, while only about 61 million voted for her.

Maybe you should actually look before you leap?

What if Trump Won by 10,000,000 Votes and Lost the Electoral College?

People claiming the electoral college should be abandoned have no earthly clue what they’re saying.  They see that Hillary Clinton won the popular vote by a scant 500,000 or so (as of my writing this) and think that should mean she wins the presidency.  However, when you look at  the numbers more closely, what you find is that she won California and New York by a combined 4,000,000 votes (it will probably be 5,000,000 when California finally finishes counting).  Note this means across the other 48 states Trump won by over 3,500,000 votes.  Those who want to abolish the electoral college are essentially saying they want California and New York to determine the presidency every four years.  In addition, Mrs. Clinton won only 20 states and the District of Columbia.  Does it not strike any of these folks that it’s a bit odd to imagine a candidate who can’t win more than 40% of the states becoming President?   Moreover, do they not understand that all Mrs. Clinton needed in 2016 was to win Florida and Wisconsin in addition to the states she did win and she’d be President (with a razor thin 271 electoral votes)?

This is the genius of the electoral college and the reason it makes sense.  It gives each state a proportional share in deciding the presidency, rather than making it a simple popularity contest.  Every candidate knows this, which is why it matters who wins Ohio and Florida as well as Iowa and West Virginia and Montana.

What’s even more ironic about the whining is that Mrs. Clinton started the day with 185 electoral votes in her back pocket because the Northeastern states (excluding New Hampshire), Washington D.C., Illinois, the West Coast states and Hawaii are inevitably Democratic strongholds. (I don't count Pennsylvania as a Northeastern state).  She won every one of these states by a 10% margin or more.  She only needed to capture 85 more electoral votes – Florida and Wisconsin representing 39, are over half of what she needed.  Toss in Pennsylvania and Ohio and she would have had another 38, leaving her 8 short.  Given Virginia’s recent turn toward the Democrats there’s 13 putting her well over the top by just winning 19 states and D.C.!  In other words, she only needed five states beyond the 14 she had in the bag before the day started.  But she couldn’t do it. 

The electoral college insures that a president gathers votes not just where it’s easy, but also where it takes some convincing.  Shouldn’t we want the person who is president to convince people across the country that he or she is the best person for the job?  Does the vote of a farmer in Kansas or waitress in Alabama matter less than the vote of some sophisticate in New York City or some movie actor in Los Angeles?  If we get rid of the electoral college, that’s what we’re saying. 

The United States has always been a representative democracy and never a direct democracy.  Why?  Because the founders knew that direct democracy can result in what Alan Dershowitz calls the “tyranny of the majority.”  That’s exactly what the silly protesters demanding the end of the electoral college are seeking – mob rule.  Fortunately, the founders of our country put the electoral college in place to quell that impulse and provide broader and more even handed representation of all.

As I have noted on this blog many times, people who behave this way don’t think it through.  Do they not understand that if we really did get rid of the electoral college, the result might be even worse next time?  The law of unintended consequences will kick in and who knows what kind of person might become president.  Trump is bad enough, but without the electoral college, the chances some out of control demagogue could win are significantly higher.  Hitler rose to power through DEMOCRATIC  means.  Moreover, what happens when the popular vote doesn’t go your way?  What kind of stupid mantras will you come up with then?  You would have no one but yourself to blame.

Most of this protesting will quiet down within a few days because it’s not going to matter and those who are protesting will run out of energy and steam.  Much like the so-called Occupy movement from several years ago.  The petulant foot stompers who are saying “not my president” are, simply put, wrong. 

The final nail in the coffin, though, as always, is the simplest one.  Would the protesters be complaining if Trump crushed Hillary by 10,000,000 votes nationwide, and won 31 states, but she won those 19 states (and DC) and won the electoral college and, thus, the presidency?  Hmmm.  We all know the answer.

Time Lost is Time Lost - But, ah, the Time Ahead

On my desk at home are various pictures of my family in different stages of our life. 

The interesting thing is the pictures are somewhat random moments in my family’s life  - one “selfie” of my wife and me before we knew to call it a selfie (we had been married about 4 ½ months).  Others show my sons at different ages and one shows me and my four sisters on my 40^th birthday.

Why these particular pictures?  No idea.   But they got me thinking that, wow, life moves awfully quickly.  They also got me thinking about how often I waste time on the unimportant, the trivial, the silly, the downright nonsensical.  For instance, I’ve played 2239 games of Solitaire since I bought my current laptop about three years ago.  Granted, each game takes only about a minute and a half – still that adds up to 3358.50 minutes – over 56 hours – two days and 8 hours for what?  Moments of pleasure?  Sheer escapism?  Pathetic.

Imagine if I had spent 56 hours in prayer – what might have happened?  Might my prayers have been the reason someone other than The Donald and Hillary are the nominees for president?  Maybe not, but who knows?  Jesus made some pretty extravagant promises about what God would do in response to our prayers . . .  Closer to home, might those prayers have helped draw my sons closer to Christ?  How about my wife?  Me?

On the other side of the coin, I’ve been preaching through the book of Mark at a local assisted living center and have accumulated 5166 minutes on my sermon outlines  That’s 510 minutes on each chapter, or about 8 ½ hours per chapter.  That doesn’t include outside reading, prayer, and contemplation – that’s just editing time for sermon outlines.  So, I suppose, one might say it balances out.

But that’s not true, is it?  I don’t get to say to God – look bud, I’ve got almost 2000 more minutes in my review of Mark than I have in Solitaire, so don’t judge me, man!  The time is gone, whatever I’ve done with it.  Yet, don’t we tend toward that view in our Christian life?  Maybe you don’t – but I do.  I put things on scales of my own making, then try to justify my less than admirable (or downright sinful and awful) conduct with my good works.  However, God simply doesn’t work that way.  He didn’t have to give the Israelites the promised land, but he did.  He didn’t have to give them a human king, but he did.  He didn’t have to bring them back to the promised land after their extended stay in Babylon, but he did.  He didn’t have to send his Son as the promised Messiah, who would come to take the punishment for the sins of all he came to save, but he did.  He doesn’t have to return to take the faithful to heaven, but he will.

God doesn’t owe us a thing.  He isn’t obligated to balance things on the scales of justice.  We are his creation.  This blog post doesn’t get to ask me for justice.  I created it; I get to post it or not; I get to edit it or not; I get to delete it or not.  I owe it nothing.  The analogy isn’t perfect, but the point remains.  We are God’s to do with as he chooses – he is sovereign, so we don’t have any right to any justice except that which he provides to us. 

Yet, yet, yet, and this is the glorious part of it, God often graces us with mercy rather than justice.  Like with the Israelites – they didn’t deserve any of the good things they got.  The scales, if properly balanced, would have worked out against them.  Nonetheless, God put his thumb on those scales and, instead of finding the Israelites wanting, granted them grace they didn't merit. 

So, even though I’ve wasted too much time on solitaire (and other nonsense) it doesn’t mean I have to keep doing so.  Moreover, I don’t have to constantly bash myself for my stupidity.

Paul put it rightly: “but one thing I do, forgetting what lies behind and straining forward to what lies ahead, I press on toward the goal for the prize of the upward call of God in Jesus Christ.”  Philippians 3:13 – 14.

The time lost is time lost.

But, ah, the time ahead – the prize of the upward call of God in Jesus Christ – that’s a time to anticipate and savor.  And since God has put his thumb on the scale for me by sending Jesus, I’m going to take advantage of his good grace and “press on toward the goal.”

I don’t know exactly what this means going forward, but it has to mean that I spend my time more wisely.  I can pray more; I can read my Bible more; I can witness more; I can be kinder more; I can spend more time with my family.  This doesn’t tip the scale any more than God already has, but I’ll never have to look back again and count up hours wasted.

Twenty years from now (if I have that much time), maybe I’ll see a picture on my desk and they’ll show a grizzled 53 year old at his keyboard, and I’ll say, thank God for those 3358.50 minutes in prayer.