Author: John Pavlovitz

The predictable tragedy of Club Q: When intolerant Conservatives lament the hate crimes they help create

The mass shooting at a Colorado Springs nightclub on the eve of Transgender Day of Remembrance that killed five people and left dozens clinging to life or permanently disfigured and traumatized, is not a surprise. Worse, it is entirely predictable. It is the rotten, putrid fruit of MAGA America and all it stands for and aspires to—and yet its rank-and-file seems accidentally or intentionally oblivious. In the wake of the murders at Club Q, as usual Republican politicians have lined up to once feign disbelief and pretend to care and to dole out phony expressions of abject shock and...

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The Bad News: The American Church is dying. The Good News: The American Church is dying

Dear American Church, I have some good news and some bad news. The bad news is — you are slowly dying. If you are paying attention, you probably realize that. Your buildings are slowly clearing, your pews gradually emptying, your congregations visibly aging away, your voice carrying less resonance than it used to. There are many complicated and interconnected reasons for this, but here are a few broad strokes: You are dying because of your hypocrisy. People see the ever-widening chasm between who you say you are and what they regularly experience in your presence. They see the great...

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The Cost of Silence: People who avoided voting in 2018 can use a ballot today to kick out hateful politicians

To the 100 million-plus Americans who didn’t vote in 2018, I don’t think about you all that often. I’m usually too busy. Like many people, I’ve spent most of the waking moments over the past four years fighting. I’ve occupied much of my days in battle, pushing back, against: relentless assaults on healthcare, legislative attacks on the rights of women, the gutting of environmental protections, the proliferation of high-powered weapons, emboldened nazis and racists, White Nationalists in Congress, vanishing LGBTQ protections, evangelists and preachers defending rapists, a burgeoning Theocracy of Bible-sanctioned bigotry, and on and on and on. The...

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A Broken America: Trump did not fracture the nation, he revealed our split and damaged soul

America is broken. I am not sure that is up for debate at this point. But we should be clear about something: Donald Trump did not break it. He did not create anything. Not the unmasked racism so proudly parading itself down crowded main streets, in school board meetings, and on neighborhood message boards; not the antagonistic, gun-loving bravado still opposing sensible safeguards designed to protect our most vulnerable; not the white-washed nationalistic fervor screaming its start-spangled supremacy into the ether; not the strident, anti-Science, conspiratorial arrogance refusing to take any measures to preserve life from an insidious virus,...

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Divided by purity politics: Why squabbling among progressives is pushing democracy into the Abyss

This should be easy. We have just endured the most corrupt, inept, and relentlessly predatory presidential administration in our history. We have witnessed a willfully and tragically mismanaged public health crisis and a coordinated insurrection designed to overturn an election and install a despot. We have watched an extremist minority commandeer the highest court in our nation and mount an unprecedented repeal of the rights of women, of environmental protections, of voting rights. The coming election should be the slam dunk of the century, but it isn’t. We should be easily coalescing around our collective values, but we aren’t....

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A Supreme Coup: High Court’s moral perversion continues to pave way for Trump’s fascist ideology

It is a real shame that school children are not guns.When the law fails you, where do you go? When the highest court in a nation is compromised to the point that it disregards the law and becomes becomes predatory toward its people, what recourse do those people have? What happens when a small minority weaponizes the very systems designed to protect its citizenry? America is about to find out. Despite he and his party’s relentless efforts, Donald Trump could not quite successfully manage a bloodless or bloody coup in the wake of the 2020 Presidential election, but it...

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