The Battle For America’s Soul

Friday, August 7, 2026

With the election of Abdul El-Sayed as the Democratic candidate for U.S. Senate in Michigan things just turned existential.  Yes, candidates like El-Sayed and his apparent brother-in-arms Hasan Piker are a direct threat to our constitutional government.  When two commentators like the host and Jim Geraghty agree that more than a mere Senate seat is in the dock in Michigan this November that simply must be the case. I personally think there is more than merely our constitutional order at stake.

My first hints came when I encountered this clip.  It is simply a profane rant.  Look, I am no shrinking violet that cowers at the sound of profanity.  I actually think it useful in certain, limited situations.  But when it becomes the norm, not the exception, it is indicative of a problem.  However, it was Geraghty’s analysis that really solidified my thoughts.

Geraghty begins his analysis this way:

For the foreseeable future, any Republican president will be, at minimum, deeply disliked by most Democrats, and any Democratic president will be, at minimum, deeply disliked by most Republicans. The grassroots of the opposition party will outright hate and detest the president….It hasn’t always been like this. …When you outright hate the president, it’s a short step to outright hating the people who voted for him.

He then goes on to analyze the corrosive effects of the burgeoning hatred to our body politic – and they are significant.  But it is the conclusion that really got me thinking:

…what the Democrats are offering is not a course correction to the pre-Trump status quo. They want to toss out and replace large swaths of the U.S. Constitution, because in their minds, any constitution that allows the election of Donald Trump twice must be a failure.

He is saying something I have been contending for a long time now – hatred corrodes reason.  Only hatred could lead to such an errant conclusion with its implied corollary that all those that voted for him are also failures.

But more importantly, and more dangerously – hatred corrodes your very soul.  Hatred turns our virtue to vice.  Said Screwtape:

“But hatred is best combined with Fear. Cowardice, alone of all the vices, is purely painful–horrible to anticipate, horrible to feal, horrible to remember; Hatred has its pleasures. It is therefore often the compensation by which a frightened man reimburses himself for the miseries of Fear. The more he fears, the more he will hate. And Hatred is also a great anodyne for shame. To make a deep wound in his charity, you should therefore first defeat his courage.”

The hatred that indulges this nation right now is quite likely born as compensation for some failure.  Perhaps it is the fear of stepping out that was so deeply engrained in a couple of generations by covid?  I honestly don’t know.  But what I do know is that it is a testing, not just of our politics or our constitution, but of our souls.  The compensations of hatred are how evil gains traction in our hearts.

Michigan obviously needs to be flooded with Republican volunteers.  But I think more importantly it needs to be flooded with the Word of God.  The battle is quite literally spiritual.  Losing it will cost us far more than merely a system of government.