![\"img_1490\"](\"https:\/\/www.hwireroad.org\/2016\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/11\/IMG_1490.jpg\")
<\/p>\n<\/p>\n
Somewhere in the third week of these quadrennial treks of mine, I have a melt down. \u00a0The specifics vary, but the result is a loneliness so profound as to stop me in my tracks. \u00a0It happened today as the first ominous storm was forming on the horizon. \u00a0God was clearly playing along.<\/p>\n
I believe that this is an unavoidable element\u00a0of a journey like this and the actual triggers are secondary, but I would like to share this year’s meltdown with you.<\/p>\n
It took days to digest the news and the experience of the rallies. \u00a0 Add to that, the growing concern over the sheer amount of ‘misinformation presented as fact’, I was finding\u00a0writing and interviewing increasingly difficult.<\/p>\n
My first message\u00a0today came from a man I respect very much. \u00a0Well educated and astute, he had been on the original distribution of the ‘little Shakiel’ email. \u00a0Because I had sourced Politifact in my response, he wrote to share a study that shows Politifact bias<\/a> against Republicans. \u00a0My heart sank. \u00a0Invalidating data\u00a0has become a predictable response.<\/p>\n I read it carefully and could see (kind of) how they came to their conclusions. \u00a0My less evolved\u00a0self was thinking ‘well if the Republicans would just stop shoveling so many lies, maybe they would not be targeted’ but I digress.<\/p>\n No, my melt down did not completely start until I looked more closely at the website that hosted the Politifact study. \u00a0Written by an alias, Wintery Knight aims to ‘integrate Christian Faith and Knowledge in the Public Square’. \u00a0Fair enough. \u00a0Clearly Wintery is a\u00a0devout social conservative even while claiming a libertarian foundation, but the following excerpt caught my eye. \u00a0Titled\u00a0My Marriage Plan<\/a> and under a photograph of a man instructing a woman on proper handgun marksmanship,<\/p>\n Men are created different than women. And man\u2019s priorities, deep in his very being, are very different from the woman\u2019s priorities.<\/p>\n The family was created to be an institution, and that institution has a\u00a0purpose\u00a0and\u00a0function\u00a0in God\u2019s order for the things: to expand the dominion of God\u2019s people over the whole world (Gen. 1:27-28). The purpose and function were first given to the man, and he is supposed to be the chief carrier and executive of that function. And just as the woman was uniquely designed and gifted to discern and understand the issues of relationships, the man was uniquely designed and gifted to fulfill the purpose of taking dominion over the earth. The father\u2019s and the husband\u2019s position of the man is not primarily focused on relationships \u2013 that\u2019s what he was given a wife for. That responsibility is given to man to ensure that his family fulfills its purpose in the plan of God in conquering the earth. Man\u2019s very being is\u00a0outward-oriented, not inward-oriented. His interests would be in work and war, not in feelings and relationships.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n Oh dear God.<\/p>\n I will not even parse the whole ‘dominion over the earth’, let alone it’s ‘conquering’ or ‘what he was given a wife for’ but suffice it so say, this was my trigger. \u00a0Allow me to summarize: \u00a0I send data from a Pulitzer Prize winning website and was debunked by a study re-published by a man who will not even identify himself for fear of the gays<\/a>, while making a case for his Biblical dominion over the earth and his wife. \u00a0I closed my laptop and prepared to drive into the storm that had formed outside.<\/p>\n Enter Scott. \u00a0A Wyoming techie, this poor guy\u00a0had no idea what he had just walked into. \u00a0After a brief introduction, (I had every intention of of making a hasty retreat)\u00a0he made the mistake of sharing\u00a0that his biggest concern in this election was the possible manipulation of the results.<\/p>\n I’ll own this. \u00a0I snapped. \u00a0I launched a verbal tirade\u00a0on the recent proclamations of the Trump campaign and the very threat that they posed to our democracy. \u00a0I think I was eloquent, but it is equally possible that I was shrill.<\/p>\n And then this happened. \u00a0Scott asked me to listen to him. \u00a0He explained it was important, because how else could we work this out? \u00a0This guy totally stole my bit. \u00a0He proceeded to ask me questions. \u00a0What the hell? \u00a0Aside from my disappointment that he did not want to be recorded, it turned out to be a complex and in depth reasonable exchange of shared reading material, influences and very different beliefs. \u00a0Astonishing.<\/p>\n Finally, the\u00a0last message<\/a>\u00a0today came from Michael Brown. \u00a0The well spoken gentleman that I interviewed\u00a0at the Trump rally, his words marked the end of my meltdown. \u00a0It was perfect. \u00a0The storm has passed.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Somewhere in the third week of these quadrennial treks of mine, I have a melt down. \u00a0The specifics vary, but the result is a loneliness so profound as to stop me in my tracks. \u00a0It happened today as the first ominous storm was forming on the horizon. \u00a0God was clearly playing along. I believe that … Continue reading “Into the Storm”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-261","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.hwireroad.org\/2016\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/261","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.hwireroad.org\/2016\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.hwireroad.org\/2016\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.hwireroad.org\/2016\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.hwireroad.org\/2016\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=261"}],"version-history":[{"count":19,"href":"https:\/\/www.hwireroad.org\/2016\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/261\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":285,"href":"https:\/\/www.hwireroad.org\/2016\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/261\/revisions\/285"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.hwireroad.org\/2016\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=261"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.hwireroad.org\/2016\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=261"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.hwireroad.org\/2016\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=261"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}