The State of the People

I should know better than to log onto social media the morning after a State of the Union address.

I didn’t watch it. I don’t need to. I’ve learned that for my own nervous system, reading a thoughtful synopsis from trusted journalists is enough. I can gather the information without absorbing the spectacle.

And yet.

Every time I am somehow still unprepared for the morning after.

The celebration.

The mockery.

The clips.

The comment sections.

The casual cruelty.

What disorients me isn’t even the politics anymore. It’s the comfort with which people speak about other human beings. The ease. The jokes. The memes. The applause at rhetoric that reduces entire groups of people to threats, punchlines, or problems to be solved.

I am raising children here.

Children who are watching.

Children who are listening.

Children who are learning what adults normalize.

And what I saw this morning - not just from politicians, but from neighbors, church members, parents - is a normalization of language that strips people of dignity.

We cannot keep pretending words don’t shape worlds.

Racism does not have to be shouted to be real. Hatred does not have to wear a hood to be active. Dehumanization does not have to use slurs to be corrosive.

It just has to be tolerated.

And what unsettles me most is not that politicians posture. That is as old as politics itself.

It is that so many who loudly claim the name of Christ seem unbothered by cruelty.

The Jesus I read about in Scripture did not mock the vulnerable. He did not build power by humiliating outsiders. He did not measure human worth by nationality, skin color, or usefulness to an economy.

He moved toward the margins.

He told uncomfortable truths.

He reserved his sharpest words not for the powerless - but for the religious leaders who mistook dominance for righteousness.

If your faith makes you less compassionate, less curious, less tender toward people who are different from you - I am not sure what gospel you are preaching, but it is not the one I recognize.

This is not about partisan loyalty.

This is about moral formation.

It is about what kind of country we are becoming when cruelty trends.

When empathy is mocked.

When “loving your neighbor” comes with footnotes and exceptions.

I am tired of being told that this is just politics.

It is not just politics when children hear adults cheer at the suffering of others.

It is not just politics when policies are framed in language that suggests some lives matter less.

It is not just politics when racism is rebranded as patriotism and exclusion is baptized as faithfulness.

I do actually love this country.

But love is not blind allegiance.

Love tells the truth.

Love demands better.

Love refuses to pretend that harm is holy.

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To the country I am raising my children in:

Do better.

Speak better.

Be braver than your algorithms.

Remember that every policy impacts a real body. Every joke lands somewhere. Every applause line teaches something.

History is watching. Our children are watching. And some of us are still praying that we remember who we are capable of being.

Not powerful.

Not dominant.

Not louder.

But good.