Where Are The 'Values Voters'?

When Winning Is Everything, All Else Is Lost.

It’s been a little while since I posted. And longer still since I weighed in on Politics. I’ve had my hands pretty full, piecing my life back together. Moving twice within the course of a single month would have been unsettling enough. But doing so because your whole town had been reduced to rubble, really hobbled my ability to think about much else.

But nobody could have missed how rapidly California Democrats have shed their ‘Kamala Joy’, and replaced it with the more familiar Trump-inspired fear and loathing. Everybody I know out here in SoCal, is suffering a sort of emotional whiplash. The outpouring of kindness toward fire-victims, that I’ve written about here, was as real as it gets.

But so is the anger that’s welled up and overflowed in the weeks since Donald Trump began swinging his scythe of retribution. Liberal Trump-hate is back in full measure. But now it’s confused and diluted by an almost equal disgust for Elon Musk. This second part is particularly painful in deep-blue Los Angeles. This was Elon’s promised land. A place where two years ago, one of every eight new-car sales was a Tesla. At an average price of around $60k.

His defection to the forces of MAGA is not just a political outrage, it’s personal. He was a HERO out on L.A.’s West Side. And to say that Angelinos were invested in him is not a figure of speech. Now they’re taking their losses. I mean, you can pick up a low mileage 2022 Tesla Model 3 for under twenty grand. (Trust me, this guy will take $15k, and be glad to get it)

Donald Trump and Elon Musk, whatever else each has done, have one thing in common. They are both attention-craving internet trolls. During his first term, Donald Trump tweeted over 25,000 times. That’s an average of 17 times a day. Gee, that hardly leaves room for watching Fox News.

But that’s nothing compared to Elon Musk. In the first two weeks of Trump’s second term, Musk tweeted almost a hundred times a day. How can a person run three large corporations, care for 13 children, and still have time to send thousands of Americans to the unemployment office? Especially while pausing 8 or 10 times an hour to service his MAGA mob in the cyber-cesspit of misinformation that used to be Twitter.

I’m not even sure that Ketamine with a side of Adderall, explains this kind of mania. But something is clearly not right with either of these men.

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We used to talk a lot about ‘Values Voters’. Especially in regard to Republicans. Groups like James Dobson’s Focus On The Family have been instrumental in the melding of conservative values and religious values. One might wonder what these values are, from a Christian perspective. Let’s ask their website. In the section called Our Core Values, here’s what Focus On The Family wants us to know about them.

Sounds like a nice bunch of folks. Let’s zoom in on Core Values Four & Five.

Core Value Four: Respond With a Personal Touch
“People will make decisions about who Jesus is in response to the way we treat them and the way we treat each other. Therefore, our responses will be personal, gracious, timely and generous.”

Core Value Five: Live With Integrity
”Because we serve an all-seeing God and are also subject to public scrutiny, we attempt to be above reproach in the operation of this ministry by holding ourselves to the highest standards of accountability. We want to be worthy of the trust that has been placed in us by our friends.”

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I myself don’t identify as a Christian, because I don’t believe that Jesus was/is a deity who’s still around today, watching over us. Responding to us with a ‘personal touch’, and holding us to ‘the highest standards of accountability’. I just don’t believe that.

But I do think that - whether he actually existed or not - the example set by him in the Jesus stories drilled into me in parochial school, is pretty solid stuff. This was a guy who cared as much, or more, about the poorest beggar, as he did about the wealthiest merchant or rabbi or king.

This was a guy so immune to the advantages bestowed by power, that one of the last things he did on Earth was to wash the feet of his disciples. As a show of humility. Even the feet of Judas. This was a man so determined to forgive, that he called out to his heavenly father, on behalf of those who had tortured him and were now in the act of murdering him. Kinda hard to square that with Trump’s ethos of ‘get even’.

And one does have to marvel at the fealty shown by evangelicals toward the forty-seventh president, and now equally toward Elon Musk. How far from the example of Christ have you drifted by the time you find yourself cheering on pampered billionaires as they dismantle an organization like USAID?

Who will hold the MAGA army to the ‘highest standards of accountability’? Should we forgive them, Lord, because they know not what they do?

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I wrote the previous three posts from the chilly front porch of Alexia’s Pasadena home. This one comes to you from the snug bedroom of my 2005 Fleetwood Jamboree. It’s warming up nicely, but still I’m luxuriating under two of the three woolen Pendleton throws bequeathed to me by the elderly couple who owned this RV before I did. I’m propped with pillows behind my back, and a hot cup of coffee within easy reach.

Outside I hear the gentle voice of my landlord as he feeds the small scruffy tribe of feral cats that he cares for. Out on the street blue collar workers have been leaving for work since before dawn. And more of them sail by every few minutes, atop the trestle that carries the Gold Line train across the arroyo … women mostly, heading off to jobs as maids and nannies.

Now a roofing crew is in full swing a few doors down from the property where I’m parked until Altadena is habitable again.

Spring will soon be here, and then a typical hot California summer. And never for more than a day at a time will the immigrants here from Mexico, Honduras, Guatemala, and El Salvador rest. They will continue to do the work most of us are afraid to do. Even while the president of the country they’ve come to serve, scapegoats them as criminals.

What would Jesus do if he were alive today? I imagine that he’d be a carpenter.

What has James Dobson done with his own ‘values vote’ and all of the values votes that hang on his opinion? He’s fully endorsed Donald Trump. Just as he did in 2016. This is a partial list of what he told his people would happen if Kamala Harris won.

Tens of thousands of churches will have nowhere to meet after public schools ban them.

Christian schools and adoption agencies will shut down.

Secular bookstores will ban books from evangelical publishers.

Christian stations won’t be able to preach the Bible, and conservative talk stations will go belly up or switch to country or gospel music.

Homeschooling will be outlawed and public school students will receive mandatory gender identity training in first grade. The Boy Scouts will no longer exist. Citizens will lose their guns. Christian nonprofits will be threatened, gas will cost $7 a gallon, public school teachers will no longer lead students in the Pledge of Allegiance, and Russia will hit Israel with a nuclear bomb.

That’s how much worse Harris would have been than say - Barrack Obama. It’s not for me to judge Pastor Dobson. But one might expect that - at the age of 88 - he’s wondering just a little bit about what that great tally-book in the sky will say when St. Peter turns to his page.

Anyway, there’s an awful lot to say about Trump’s newfound determination to reshape our government and our place in the world. But right now I’m watching to see how much of what Trump and Musk are up to is real … and how much is just more ‘flooding the zone’ and owning the libs.

I’ll be weighing in from time to time. A few times a month I suppose. But I don’t want my own peace-of-mind - or yours - to go into the dumper. Life is short, and getting shorter all the time.

Thanks for reading, and especially to those of you who’ve upgraded to a paid subscription. Very much appreciated.

Have a great week, Dave