Opening a recent edition of Gettysburg Times, I was pleased to see a photo of last Saturday’s rally on the Square protesting the Trump administration. But in the caption under the photo, I was surprised to find the rally described as a Rage Against the Regime Rally.
Locally, Saturday after Saturday, our leadership has always described our rally as a Rally for the People and reminded potential participants that we are family-friendly and do not want obscenity on our signs or megaphones in our midst. We have had a small town brand that fits—you guessed it—a small town and a surrounding rural county. So I was surprised that the local paper—rather than take time to actually talk to local organizers—seems to have simply grabbed a label from a national news feed and stuck it on our local effort.
What’s the big deal, you may well ask? Well, those of us who have questioned Donald Trump’s behavior, his sometimes wild misstatements of fact or apparently unconstitutional actions, are often asked by his supporters why we spend our whole lives hating the man. We are often accused, in fact, of suffering from “Trump Derangement Syndrome.”
Friends, there is a struggle going on over what it means to oppose Donald Trump. For a taste of what I’m talking about, simply turn to page four of Wednesday’s Gettysburg Times and take a look at “Hail to the CEO” by Michael Reagan. “It doesn’t matter how much Trump does to help America become great again,” Reagan begins. “Democrats will instantly go negative and blast him for hurting someone….” All we get, Reagan asserts, are “the usual howls of negativity and Trump hatred.”
In fact, of course, it’s love of country and our constitution and an understanding of the importance of the rule of law that’s driving most of us to speak up. It’s love, not hatred that brings us to the Square on Saturdays, and grounded in love is where we need to be to build the coalition we will need to get our country back on track. Anger may come naturally enough at times, but love is what we need to build on.
