To the Deplorables

Your anxieties and difficulties are worthy of respect. NOT your politics.

We have a racist, autocratic president and a once respectable political party whose professional class has rolled over and died to cling to his coattails and a cable network that has basically become state TV on his behalf.

The ARE deplorable.

As for just plain folks who enable that apparatus, they are ALSO deplorable by association, albeit to different degrees and in different domains.

There are those ATTRACTED by his racism and autocratic disregard for the Constitution and a cult-like attachment to Trump as a person that makes issues of true and false, right and wrong irrelevant. We'll call them the CORE deplorables. (Or, as I term them, the 5th Ave. Club.)

There are those who like his policies on immigration, federal judges, taxes, trade, etc. and will do a Paul Ryan shrug to the rest. We'll call them the TOLERANT deplorables: racism and autocracy off-putting but, so long as they get what they want, they'll tolerate it.

And then there are those who are just plain too occupied with trying to keep their heads above water to spend any time even casually investigating what Trump is actually doing and considering its moral implications. The ones who would vote for Jack the Ripper if he had an (R) next to his name on a ballot.

I am empowered by God in Christ to love these people but I cannot respect their politics because ALL the deplorables have one thing in common: racism, ideology, and / or self-interest HAVE PUT THEM OUTSIDE THE ARENA OF RATIONAL DISCOURSE.