Last week I was downstairs in my office, speaking for a virtual event in California. When I came back upstairs, I noticed the back door was slightly open and cold winter air was blowing into the great room.  Right before I had gone downstairs, I had filled the basin in the waterfall feature in the backyard.  Therefore, when I saw the open door, I immediately thought, “Someone with nefarious motives has come into our little neighborhood of 72 houses up a canyon in a virtually crime-free town and crept into my backyard, waiting for just the right moment to come through my back door and steal all my valuables.  You know, like my vinyl records of the Advocates, my vocal band from the 70s.” I immediately ran from the house screaming to everyone in the neighborhood that a vinyl burglar was in my house.

Either that, or when I saw the open back door, I thought I must not have shut the door tightly enough and the wind blew it open. So, I went over and shut the door.

Occam’s Razor is a scientific and philosophical rule that says that the simplest of competing theories should always be preferred to the more complex theory.  Occam’s Razor would assume I had not closed the door tightly.  But what if I was incapable of admitting to any mistakes, ever, including leaving a door unlatched?  What if my ego structure was so weak that if I admitted to the tiniest of failures, it would bring my entire house of cards tumbling down?  If that were the case, I would have called the police to root out the burglar. And when they couldn’t find any burglar, I would have assumed he escaped.  And when I couldn’t find any missing valuables, I would have assumed I must have interrupted him before he had a chance to steal anything.

Narcissistic Personality Disorder, as defined in the DSM V– the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders 301.81, is a pervasive pattern of grandiosity, need for admiration, and lack of empathy, beginning by early adulthood and present in a variety of contexts. It includes a sense of entitlement, being interpersonally exploitative, seeing others as little more than an extension of one’s self, showing arrogant behaviors or attitudes, and never admitting to any kind of wrongdoing.

So, about the election. It is technically possible that there was a vast incredibly complicated conspiracy that occurred only in swing states that was so cleverly contrived that its nefarious nature was not visible to the naked eye.  That would explain why every court presented with lawsuits related to said conspiracy would not be able to find any evidence worthy of consideration.  The judges were not clever enough to see into the dark complex web of deceit that had been perpetrated upon the American people.

Either that, or Donald Trump is a narcissist who cannot admit defeat. So, rather than admit he lost the election by 7 million votes, he has to believe the election was rigged.  Which brings us back to Occam’s Razor – the simplest of competing theories should be preferred to the more complex theory.  Yeah, you get the idea.

Now that we have that out of the way, we can move on to the bigger issue.  How can 68 percent of Republicans, part of the 74 million people who voted for Donald Trump, prefer a ridiculously implausible explanation to an obvious one? How can they rally in opposition to Occam’s Razor? Now, that is a puzzle without a simple solution.

I will start with what I believe is the most convincing explanation.  It is not okay to admit you see Black and Brown people as inferior to you.  If you cannot admit that but it is a significant element of your worldview, you’ll do anything to keep the president in office who obviously, if not publicly, agrees with you.  He vicariously holds your worldview. It’s awfully suspicious that the vast majority of those who believe that the election was stolen are White. I believe a part of their willingness to say the election was rigged was because they want to deny the reality of systemic racism.  I mean, any way you put it, 74 million people voted for someone who would not denounce White supremacists. That means something.

A second explanation is that if you are not college educated and resent the intellectual elites on the coasts who you believe have tilted the world against you, you will find a way to initiate a class warfare with those elites. If educated elites say the sky is blue, you’ll say it is bright red just because you’re not about to agree to anything those coastal elites or Hollywood types say.  You’ll even vote against your own interests and elect people who change the tax law to screw you while increasing the wealth of the one percenters.  You’ll do it out of spite, because that is how much you hate the elites who opposed the changes to the tax code. And you’ll say the election was stolen just because it’s satisfying to watch the reaction of your exasperated opponents.

A third explanation is that there is a vast difference between where college graduates and non-college graduates get their news.  Right wing media pedals a steady stream of disinformation.  Many who consume a steady diet of right wing media have never been taught to compare news sources to discern objectivity, because no matter how objective news sources try or do not try to be, they all get it wrong at least occasionally.  Comparing sources to discern which ones usually get it right is critically important. I have personal experience with biased news media.

I was the secondary news subject of a Fox News story about a Pennsylvania university student. Mainstream media looked at the story and realized it was bogus, never giving it traction.  Fox News, on the other hand, wrote exactly twenty-five words related to me, eight of which were completely inaccurate.  No one reached out to me to verify what they wrote.  On the other hand, in 2017 the New York Times wrote a 3,000 word feature-article about Jonathan and me and they fact-checked so carefully that when they made one single tiny error, they corrected it immediately. It matters where you get your news.

I’m not sure what to do about all of this, because each of my three observations will feel like threats to half of our population.  My thoughts will seem condescending and will be dismissed out of hand.  We know that humans do not take in new information unless it comes to them in a non-threatening way.  No one wants to be told that their Trump support is hidden racism, or being on the hard side of class warfare, or because they haven’t been taught how to discern the objectivity of news sources. This column would just make them angry. But they already aren’t reading my blog, because they don’t like LGBTQ+ people. My very identity makes me their enemy.

It’s probably obvious by now that for the past few posts I have been trying to work out what is happening in our nation right now, and what I can do about it.  I have to work through what I might and might not be able to do to close the gap between us.  The future of our democracy is hanging in the balance.  We all need to do what we can.

Nice thoughts for Christmas week, don’t you think?  Well, it is 2020.  What’d you expect?

As you know, I do a lot of corporate speaking on gender inequity.  For the most part I write fresh talks for each keynote speech, and unfortunately, I never have to look far for new instances of gender inequity and misogyny.  It is always easy to find examples. Sometimes, all you have to do is look at the editorial pages of the Wall Street Journal.

Should we be surprised when a WSJ editorial last week suggested that Dr. Jill Biden should stop using the honorific “doctor” before her name?  This is the same editorial page that routinely aggravates its news division with its choice of op-eds.  This is the same editorial page that published an op-ed from Paul McHugh, the psychiatrist who, much to the chagrin of his colleagues, has actively and ignorantly worked against transgender rights. When I am looking for examples of male privilege, I can count on the Wall Street Journal editorial page.

There are at least four things wrong with Joseph Epstein’s editorial.  First, the author has no advanced degrees, which means he has no personal experience with the amount of work it takes to complete a doctorate.  Which apparently, according to the WSJ editorial committee, qualifies Epstein as just the sort of person who should be writing an op-ed on the subject.  The logic of that decision escapes me.

Second, after a weekend of being skewered by half of America, instead of apologizing for their misguided op-ed, the WSJ editorial page doubled down on Epstein’s article, accusing those who complained about it as having embraced cancel culture.  Seriously?  Let’s examine what it means to have an earned doctorate.

Doctorates are terminal degrees within their respective professional fields.  An individual who is a doctor of medicine, doctor of education, doctor of ministry, doctor of psychology, or doctor of social work is a person who has earned the top degree attainable within their field.  A doctor of philosophy degree is different in that it is focused on original research and is therefore the desired degree for university professors.  All earned doctoral degrees include the option, if not expectation, that in formal settings the recipient of the degree will be referred to as doctor. Acknowledging that truth in opposition to the op-ed is just using facts to right the wrong done by the op-ed.  Calling it cancel culture is a cheap shot.

The third problem with the op-ed is that it was written by a man writing dismissively about a woman, as if we don’t have enough of that already.  I have a doctor of ministry degree, and as an ordained minister, when I was a man I was routinely introduced as Reverend Doctor Williams.  (The “reverend” honorific always precedes any other.)  As a woman, I am rarely introduced that way.  Unless it is on a curriculum vitae, resume, or business card, I do not use honorifics.  But that does not mean I should not be asked whether or not I’d like to be introduced with the proper honorific.  It is but one more example of the subtle and not so subtle ways in which a woman is assumed to be less than a man.

The fourth problem with the editorial is its timing.  Last Friday was the day in which the nation was waiting to see whether or not the Supreme Court was going to agree to hear a ridiculous lawsuit that over 100 Republican Congressional lawmakers had joined that would have subverted our democracy in favor of minority rule.  It was the most egregiously inappropriate action in opposition to our democracy since the Civil War.  Thank goodness our judicial branch held strong where our executive and legislative branches did not. With their unanimous decision to dismiss the case, the Supreme Court saved our democracy.  But we did not know that early on Friday.  So, while the world was waiting to see whether we are a democratic society or not, the editorial board of the Wall Street Journal decided it was the perfect time to question Dr. Jill Biden’s use of an honorific.  Go figure.

If this year’s election has shown us anything, it is how much systemic racism and misogyny are baked into the fabric of our nation.  We are making progress, but it is painfully slow.  But hey, at least democracy was saved – this time.  And kudos to the Wall Street Journal for focusing on what really matters – the use of an earned doctorate as an honorific.  You can’t make this stuff up.

 

This week Jupiter and Saturn will appear as one in the sky, the first time that has happened in 800 years.  When I heard this celestial event is called the Big Conjunction, I thought of the dilemma currently facing large evangelical churches in America.  When it comes to the big conjunction of Donald Trump and Covid-19, these churches are lost in the cosmos.

Megachurches are America’s great religious influencers.  There are more megachurches (churches that average over 2,000 in weekend attendance) in Nashville today than there were in the entire nation just twenty years ago.  The influence of these churches is huge, and their decisions make news.  Flatirons Church, the largest church here in Boulder County, recently held an outdoor service (pictured above) in which mask wearing and social distancing were obviously negotiable.  The event created quite a ruckus in our Covid-compliant region.  It was not the first time the church has made news in a negative way.  They horribly mismanaged their relationship with a transgender member and have not been honest about their position on LGBTQ+ relationships.  It is my opinion that their leadership is not adequately educated about many of the most salient social issues of our age.  Unfortunately, Flatirons is not an outlier among evangelical megachurches.  It is but one example among thousands of similar churches struggling with their role in American culture.

The last four years illustrate the conundrum for America’s megachurches.  One of the clear convictions of almost every megachurch is its focus on salvation, not politics.  Over 95 percent of these churches are evangelical in theology.  As evangelicals, they teach that people must be born again to get into heaven.  Personal salvation is the church’s major focus.  Theirs is a transactional faith.  You give Jesus your devotion and Jesus will stop his father from sending you to hell.  That simplistic faith is inadequate in today’s complicated and polarized world.

As purveyors of salvation, megachurches pride themselves on not being political.  I do not know of a megachurch outside of the deep south willing to take a political stand for or against Donald Trump.  They try to remain neutral.  Most of the guys I know (and yes, megachurch lead pastors are all guys) do not like Trump, but they know at least 76 percent of their members voted for him and a sizeable number adore him.  They are not willing to challenge that adoration.

Take Georgia for instance, where Donald Trump wants to subvert a legal election.  The two Republican Senators have shown no willingness to support their Republican Governor or Secretary of State, while Trump asks the Governor to overturn the election, with no evidence of voter fraud.  It is exactly what I would expect of Donald Trump and Senators Perdue and Loeffler.  But where is Andy Stanley, the lead pastor of the largest church in the state?  We haven’t heard from Stanley since a Time Magazine column written before the election in which he said we should all love one another regardless of the election outcome, and an Atlantic article in which he acknowledged that these are tough times for large church pastors.  Hardly a clarion call on behalf of justice and democracy.

When the person in the White House is a narcissistic purveyor of lies who refuses speak out against White supremacy, staying silent is no longer a moral option.  When a pandemic is politicized, and people are dying because of their refusal to do something as basic as mask wearing and social distancing, it is not the time to refuse to take a stand.  Flatirons Church’s leaders refused to exercise the most basic of human responsibilities – keeping humans safe.  To not enforce mask-wearing and social distancing at a large service, even if it is outdoors, is unconscionable.  These pastors say they don’t want to wade into politics.  Since when is saving the lives of living and breathing humans political?  They certainly have no problem arguing for the lives of unborn children.

When I was Paul, I never was a politically active pastor.  Like most pastors, I stayed out of politics, not just to stop from endangering our 501c3 status, but because I never saw it as a priority.  That changed when I transitioned.  I never saw it as a priority because as a powerful White male, I did not see the injustice that actually exists in the world.  I understood it theoretically, but I had never experienced it.  Now I know.  People suffer.  Lives are lost.  Remaining silent is not an option.  I wish I had understood that before.  Privilege is blinding.

You cannot remain silent when wholesale lies are broadcast by the President and across media platforms that have no regard for the truth.  You cannot remain silent when a narcissist does what narcissists do – devour everything and everyone in their path.  You cannot stay silent with a pandemic is raging out of control, and something as simple as mask wearing and social distancing could save hundreds of thousands of lives.  Maybe our politicians have no moral standards and think only of retaining their power, but I would expect more from our evangelical large church pastors. This is not the time for silence.  It is time to boldly speak the truth.  Yes, you will lose people and money, but at least you won’t lose your own soul.