Author: John Pavlovitz

America, we will soon say goodbye to something. One way or another, this year will end with a farewell. It will either close with a glorious, triumphant blast of freedom — or with the sickening death knell of a once – great nation, gone for good. Either America will part ways with this president or we will part ways with democracy. Those are the choices here. This moment is about each of us choosing which we’re committed to losing. It is about deciding whether we will fight for this person, or for the disparate, multitudinous We The People who...

Unity. That’s the word I hear a lot right now. In the wake of an election that is still being inexplicably contested by this president (one clearly won by President-Elect Joe Biden and Vice President-Elect Kamala Harris), I am being asked to show unity with his supporters; to extend some instant olive branch of understanding that magically bridges that cavernous gap between us — ones he revealed and is still actively cultivating. I’m sorry, but that isn’t something I’m willing to offer unconditionally and without caveat. We’ve been at this for five years. It isn’t as though I haven’t...

President Trump, I wonder how much pain you’re willing to cause America. Apparently, more than you already have. It isn’t enough that you have spent every waking moment of the past four years manufacturing urgency for this nation, that you have continually appealed to the very worst nature of your followers; weaponizing them against their neighbors, friends, family members, and strangers. It isn’t enough that you have perpetually trafficked in lies, when the truth would have been much simpler and much less fraught with suffering and sickness; that you were almost habitually allergic to honesty even when honesty would...

“This presidential election is like a gender reveal party, but for racism.” – Kyle Joseph Schmidt After the election as votes were counted, it turns out that the results are secondary to what we already know now: we were wrong about America. The fact that it was even close, the fact that more people voted for him a second time, the fact that a higher number of white women inexplicably affirmed him — it is all confirmation that whether we remove the very visible, unsightly symptom or not, the pervasive disease is still horribly afflicting us. Numbed by a...

We’re all worried about Tuesday, America. It is the place our minds and hearts are solely fixed on. Right now our energies are understandably marshaled and our hopes pinned to this singular day ahead, as if at the end of it we will have some resolution, some sense of closure — as if healing and rest will finally come. But what if things don’t go that way? What if the news is bad? At a recent tour stop, a visibly exasperated woman asked me, through a breaking voice, “What if everything goes wrong on Tuesday? What do we do...