I admit I had started to wonder what was going to happen to pseudo-Christian left-wing activists like writer John Pavlovitz now that the Trump years were over. The grift was good for John, as he turned out virtually the same column each week for those four years, saying what the itching ears of Trump-hating legions on the left wanted to hear: Trump is the devil, people who voted for him are demons, and anyone who doesn't share progressive politics is evil and dooming America.
There was a time in my life when Pavlovitz was my guilty pleasure – I would read his takes because I found his overwrought hysterics amusing, even as I wondered how many people truly believed some of the silly things he would write. But after composing a biblical rebuttal to his endorsement of sin in the name of Jesus, John blocked me from viewing his latest offerings – exposure to Scripture apparently wasn't his cup of tea.
Four months after Trump left office, curiosity got the better of me, and I ventured to John's website to see if he would at least be in a better mood. Imagine my surprise to find him still writing the same column.
Apparently those who don't share John's progressive politics are still dooming America, Trump is still the devil and his supporters are still demonic. One such demon provoked Pavlovitz by criticizing Joe Biden's startling lack of charisma, comparing the glaring affection gap between the current and former presidents.
Demonstrating how well he handles menial differences of opinion in stride, the anti-Trump activist Pavlovitz wrote an entire column answering the claim with the righteous indignation of a scorned junior high girl.
"It has nothing to do with politics and everything to do with adulthood," Pavlovitz began, before adding, "81 million of us elected a president; we didn't erect a golden calf.
"I voted for Joe Biden because I wanted an intelligent, qualified, compassionate adult making important decisions for me about complicated issues – not because I lacked a cult leader to define me and give me purpose and fill in the holes in my existence."
I can only pray that I have surrounded myself with enough friends and honest associates that if I ever slip into such a preposterous deficiency of self-awareness, they will physically restrain me from publishing something so personally humiliating. Somehow his seething hatred of all things Trump, Republican, and conservative have driven from Pavlovitz's mind any recollection of his own behavior during the presidency of Barack Obama.
A man who gleefully joined the legions of those weeping and fainting at Obama speeches – swooning to his messianic pretensions, embracing the "we are the ones we've been waiting for" hopey-changey claptrap as something substantially meaningful – has the temerity to point the finger at others for deifying politicians?
The same guy who fangirled Obama, once analogizing him to "the sun gradually coming up and burning away the morning dew," now boasts about not being a "a mindless sycophant" to politicians?
The same guy who once worshipped Obama's "nobility, compassion, good humor, and steadfast, unapologetic conviction," that allowed the 44th president to "live the grace" and "absorb a billion body blows… brutal words that run far deeper than policy or platform," now condescends that he is "a rational adult human being who doesn't need a stranger to give me my identity"?
It seems impossible that Pavlovitz – whose own lips were so thoroughly fused to Barack Obama's backside for eight years that a crowbar was needed to pry them loose – could write of he and his fellow ideologues, "politics is not our religion… we find meaning in our own existence." Yet he did.
The only thing that's worse is the likelihood that he and his comrades actually believe it.
