Wicked! Part 1

The 2024 U.S. presidential election is long over, and Donald Trump won it decisively. I can move on and accept the outcome of the election as validly undertaken and the people have spoken. Most voters wanted a future with Donald Trump leading the charge and so they got one. VP Harris conceded the race, and her speech was thematic of the very things she represented during a brief campaign: peace, love, working together, kindness, and self-control.

What I could not accept is the attendant misogyny and the large number of Catholics, Filipinos included, who believed Trump lies and hedged their bets. For that matter, the evangelicals went all in. How could they ignore a 34-count criminal conviction that include sexual assault? How could they ignore Trump’s threat of mass deportation on Day 1, and to prosecute and jail what he called “enemies from within?”

The election was a battle of ideas, about the future, about reality. VP Kamala Harris painted a way forward, making a case for saving democracy and fighting for freedom from a would-be dictator, authoritarian, and a cult leader. Donald Trump called it dark with his mantra of “Making America Great Again (MAGA)” by demonizing immigrants, dehumanizing his opponent as somebody who was less than human.

He lied numerous times about immigrants and made threats about going after political enemies including putting crosshairs on some anti-Trump Republicans. His acolytes promised to get rid of the Administrative State (federal employees), do away or trimmed programs for the poor (food stamps, Medicaid), for Women, Infants, Children (WIC) and kept repeating the mantra that “The Democrats broke it (meaning immigration, economy), and Trump will fix it!”

Pope Francis who tried to stay away from the hullabaloo and to not comment on the election, did when cornered by reporters in the papal plane. He called the U.S. election as a choice between “the lesser of two evils.” He was vague but his statement clearly pointed to Harris as the lesser evil in the pope’s book. Well, she lost therefore the greater evil prevailed.

In the movie “Wicked,” Glinda, the Good Witch of Oz, asks a question: “Are people born wicked? Or do they have wickedness thrust upon them?” It is a good and timeless question for Christians to ponder in the context of good and evil. How do you answer this considering Christian men who preferred the macho candidate? Similarly for Christian women, how could they ignore Trump’s own history of misogyny towards women?

Misogyny, according to Wikipedia, “is hatred of, contempt for, or prejudice against women or girls. It is a form of sexism that can keep women at a lower social status than men, thus maintaining the social roles of patriarchy.” Especially for men who feel more superior than women in society, workplace, and at home; misogyny is their craft.

Men are clearly conflicted when it comes to women. And why not. In the beginning the Christians were made to believe in biblical passages that described women being inferior. The Garden of Eden story of Abrahamic religions depicts Eve as having been pulled from Adam’s rib.

Paradise was lost because Satan picked Eve versus Adam for the apple temptation. As the genesis of humankind, the Garden story depicts women as being weak, vulnerable, and cannot be trusted. Many biblical passages amplify this message that women are subordinates to men, that women cannot teach men, that they can be raped and molested to expand the family tree.

Society created stereotypes or expectations that men are tough, strong, and do not cry. That boys will be boys who cannot control their sexual urges. Most importantly, men are breadwinners (patriarchs) who rule the household while women stay at home to do domestic chores. Religions, governments, and Hollywood reinforced such stereotypes.

Misogyny spawns undesirable outcomes such as domestic violence, sexism, prostitution, forced marriages, racism, and violence. Furthermore, those who classify themselves as other than men or women are ostracized and demonized as being immoral. What is immoral is perpetuating the same church teaching that women, other than the Virgin Mary, are inferior human beings compared to men.

This moral failure is reflected in the votes that catapulted Donald Trump to a second term not only by evangelicals but Catholics in large numbers. Filipino Catholics who voted for Trump got hooked by the massive disinformation that engulfed the election and made them believe that a different parallel universe’s version of the truth exists.

Truth always confounds us, but how does one discern the truth? In America, many conservative clergy led the faithful to believe that President Joe Biden and VP Kamala Harris were the evil ones because of their support for abortion. To them, Democrats who supported abortion were “baby killers” and what could be more important, they thought, than that in an election year?

Well, I have news for them. Pope Francis said that abortion is indeed immoral, but that Catholics should not only use abortion to show their moral stand on church teachings because equally important are ways where human dignity is assaulted. In Dignitatis Humanae, the pope encourages the faithful to see social issues through the lenses of human dignity in “poverty, war, travails of migrants, human trafficking, sexual abuse, violence against women, marginalization of the disabled”.

Many Catholics believed that the Biden administration opened the border for illegal aliens and that such action threatened their personal security. People forget that President Biden was a good Catholic who allowed asylum seekers in, treated them humanely, so they can quickly be processed and adjudicated, if they qualify. Biden and former president Barack Obama have the highest number of deportations on record for those who did not qualify.

The truth, however, was distorted by disinformation and outright demagoguery. Which brings us to that moment when Pontius Pilate questioned Jesus, as told by St. John. “What is truth?” It is a question that we continue to ask and struggle with to give meaning to our lives. Jesus did not respond to Pilate but told his disciples, ““I am the Way, the Truth, and the Life!” There, Jesus Christ is truth!

This election has shown us that man continues to struggle with the truth. As Catholics, we keep saying we believe in God, the Holy Trinity; and yet we fail to discern the objective truth from reality. We choose to live by moral principles wholly constructed based on our version of reality, or by the broader society, and in this case, on Trump’s parallel universe.

In a democracy, we follow societal norms grounded on freedom. Religion, speech, health care, and abode are among the many choices we hold of paramount importance. Freedom means choices to chart our own path in life. For half-a-century abortion was a choice, no-fault divorce was a choice, adultery was a choice, and change to one’s identity was a choice. (To be continued)