Lewis Carroll once wrote about a topsy-turvy world called “Wonderland,” where critical thinking, sanity, societal norms and human decency were in short supply. Alice was a young, naive, impressionable girl who one fine day curiously followed a strangely adorned white rabbit down its hole and from that point on, she seemed completely disoriented and lost her bearings. There, in Wonderland, she met such strange creatures as the Mad Hatter, the Queen of Hearts and Tweedle Dee and Tweedle Dum.
She also encountered a grinning, talking Cheshire Cat and entered into a conversation with it:
“’Cheshire Puss,’ she began, rather timidly, as she did not at all know whether it would like the name: however, it only grinned a little wider. ‘Come, it’s pleased so far,‘ thought Alice, and she went on. ‘Would you tell me, please, which way I ought to go from here?‘
‘That depends a good deal on where you want to get to,’ said the Cat.
‘I don’t much care where—‘ said Alice.
‘Then it doesn’t matter which way you go,‘ said the Cat.
‘—so long as I get somewhere,‘Alice added as an explanation.
‘Oh, you’re sure to do that,’ said the Cat, ‘if you only walk long enough.‘
Alice felt that this could not be denied, so she tried another question. ‘What sort of people live about here?‘
‘In that direction,’ the Cat said, waving its right paw round, ‘lives a Hatter: and in that direction,’ waving the other paw, ‘lives a March Hare. Visit either you like: they’re both mad.‘
‘But I don’t want to go among mad people,’ Alice remarked.
‘Oh, you can’t help that,’ said the Cat: ‘we’re all mad here. I’m mad. You’re mad.‘
‘How do you know I’m mad?’ said Alice.
‘You must be,’ said the Cat, ‘or you wouldn’t have come here.‘”
https://www.gutenberg.org/files/11/11-h/11-h.htm
Now, after a two-year sense of stability following the insurrection where there was a real possibility that Donald Trump would not leave the White House peacefully following his loss to Joe Biden in the November 2020 election, the White Rabbit is back, trying to coax anyone who will listen to tumble once again down it’s rabbit hole for some misguided foolishness.
The aging 45th President of the U.S. addressed his modest crowd of admirers. There was nothing new in his remarks. The same sort of misinformation and disinformation was presented (e.g. Mr. Trump proclaimed that the Republicans had officially captured the house an hour before he began speaking when, in fact, the day after his announcement FoxNews, CNN and AP had not called the House election at all. At some some point the House will likely go Republican, but the point is, more than a week after the election, it is still undecided, much to the chagrin of the Republicans.)
Mr. Trump claimed credit for the largest tax break in history while that honor more properly rests with Ronald Reagan. He ridiculed President Biden’s creeping senescence and confusion of time and place while not daring to mention outlandish statements of his own in the past, such as George Washington’s proported air superiority over the British during the American War of Independence almost a century before the Wright Brothers were born. That Mr. Trump was not a history major was apparent to any eight grader because in this same address he confused the Reveloutionary War with the War of 1812.
I’m a believer in balanced government and checks and balances. While I often vote Democrat (and occasionally Republican), it is hard for me to have any deep satisfactions in the results of this election. As Mr. Trump, Fox, and friends point out, there are serious issues confronting this country, our culture and our future that the Democrats cannot or will not address. But that does not mean that the Republicans are automatically the answer, or that we would fare better as a nation under their rule. Both parties love to add to the debt, whether by proposing student loan forgiveness or yet another unfunded tax break for the wealthy, I mean (ahem), middle class. The Democrats wish to permanently codify the practice of aborting unborn children, while the Republicans which see themselves as the pro-life party eagerly support the death penality for capital crimes and enact policies that consign children and families to such miserable lives and circumstances as Rousseau long ago foresaw (and warned us about.)
As a student of political science and international affairs, I see another four years of Trump leading to the destruction of NATO and the subjugation of Ukraine under Russian boots. I don’t know why Mr. Trump speaks with such admiration for Vladimir Putin, but such admiration in light of the atrocities of war is certainly misplaced. Can he not see that? Can you not see that?
Some might say that Trump and the Republicans are the “less of two evils,” but as a Christian, I wonder why we should have to choose evil at all? Perhaps Christians offer their political support too cheaply? Before they portray Democrats as being in league with the devil, they might remember this, themselves. Christians who are Republicans say that “except for this” and “this” and “that” and “that” and “that,” Mr. Trump is God’s man of the hour. They should wonder whether they are themselves mad.
The hope for America can only be found in repentance and in the forgiveness of God though Christ Jesus. It cannot be forced on people, and there is no other name under heaven given among men by which we must be saved. Not Biden, not DeSantis, and certainly not Trump. Not again. We need a healing, not a wedge.
This next election, like the election of 2020, should fill us with trepidation. Starting now.
“I believe that when you and I come to lie down for the last time, if only we can keep firm hold of the great truths Christ taught us—our own utter worthlessness and His infinite worth; and that He has brought us back to our one Father, and made us His brethren, and so brethren to one another—we shall have all we need to guide us through the shadows. Most assuredly I accept to the full the doctrines you refer to—that Christ died to save us, that we have no other way of salvation open to us but through His death, and that it is by faith in Him, and through no merit of ours, that we are reconciled to God; and most assuredly I can cordially say, ‘I owe all to Him who loved me, and died on the Cross of Calvary.'”
— Carroll (1897)
