“Do you know how bad of a president you have to be for Texas to turn Blue?”
This was a question posed to me this morning as I was settling in for work. Hey! My name is Sarie, and I’m outside with the election results from last night.
For those who don’t know, Texas is a state in the United States that has been majorly Republican-led for 32 straight years. Texas hasn’t elected a Democrat senator in over three decades and the last Democrat to serve as governor of Texas was Ann Richards who was defeated by George W. Bush in 1994. That’s a long time and a lot of history.
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And yet, in a stunning victory/defeat, Texas elected Gina Hinojosa (D) to be its governor and James Talarico (D) to be its senator. In fact, every statewide office in Texas is set to be occupied by a Democrat. Wow!
Some blame Trump. My co-worker, as quoted above, insinuated that the leadership from the Oval Office is why so many were willing to go Blue this election season (because Texas isn’t the only conservative state to ditch the Red for something different). I think it may be a bit more than that.
There’s this thing called listening that humans fail to do. People told their representatives they weren’t doing a very good job of representing the wishes of citizens. They expressed exhaustion in electing people who seemed to only look out for the wealthy. Maybe those in office didn’t do a great job of listening to the concerns and needs of the people who elected them. And so maybe, just maybe, those people decided to pick someone else.
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Christian Nationalism is both a blessing and curse. To be a Christian Nationalist is to say, “I appreciate what I perceive to be Christian values and would like those values to dictate governing roles and practices.” There is nothing wrong with being a Christian Nationalist as this is a person’s right in the United States. There is something very wrong with calling the term “made up” and claiming it to be slander used to try to “silence” conservative voices. This is especially true, the silencing part, when the candidate of your choice doesn’t live according to the scriptures. Maybe, just maybe, people got tired of the hypocrisy this term.
The United States is becoming more secular. This sort of goes along with the Christian Nationalist thing. When you are trained to believe that voting is a spiritual act that can determine whether or not you have a ticket to Heaven, you tend to carry out the practice in fear. You are afraid of choosing “the other side” and forfeiting your spot in paradise. Therefore, you automatically vote for the person on the “right side” of “righteousness” in hopes of staying in God’s good graces.
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But when you start to deconstruct your faith, you begin to ask questions. For some, these questions have led to more questions with fewer answers, which ultimately led to the big question of, “What am I doing?” And then, they walked away. Perhaps, as questions lead to more faith deconstructions, individuals once tied to the “vote Republican or go to hell” rhetoric will find freedom in knowing their vote is not aligned with eternal salvation/damnation.
Will Texas remain Blue for many years to come? Who knows? What is certain is that all humans want to be seen and heard. Alright, I’m going back inside now.
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