Trump made me start a blog (gone cringe)
Rarely have I felt such a compulsion to act as when Donald Trump was inaugurated into office for his second term. Yes, I'm one of those people who don't like Trump and who are emotionally affected by it. I could go into all the reasons why, but I spend enough time and energy doing that with folks in person that I don't want to explain myself today.
The point is that after he started doing everything he has done, I knew I had to do something, but I didn't know what. What can I possibly do? It's like political activism and making my voice heard as a constituent was a muscle I never exercised. Up to now I haven't needed to. But now we find ourselves in what I believe to be a semi-authoritarian state, declining toward dictatorship as far as the Trump administration thinks it can go.
In light of that I have started a few things. I learned more about how to engage with my representatives. I try to call them once every week day with a new issue. I regularly share news stories that my community might not come across because of its conservative bias. I try to have conversations with those who express interest and I try to connect with others who are similarly concerned about what is happening in the country. Life unfortunately keeps me from taking more action, but at least I know who is organizing protests and what action they're trying to take. I'm trying to do what I can.
One thought I had, as an evolution of that action, was to start a weekly newsletter that recapped relevant news for my area. I would capture the relevant national news, state news, and local news for all things related to our political situation. There's a lot of noise that local news captures that we could cut through, and in so doing I could make it easier for pro-democracy people to organize and conservatives to see the real state we're in.
I also wanted to prepare it with a specifically Christian bent. I am a theologically conservative Christian and it blows my mind how many other believers have gone along with Trump and the alt-right craziness. Despite there being so many places where the MAGA movement contradicts what evangelicals teach at the pulpit, they have chosen to prioritize politics over being proper ambassadors of Christ. As a Christian, that frustrates me even more than what is happening in government because it is a betrayal of the gospel. So I wanted the newsletter to be at least one example of a Christian who wasn't off their rocker. That way other Christians who are seeing the same corruption could realize that they are not alone while unbelievers could begin to separate MAGA Christianity from the true gospel.
Alas, I am starting an entirely different project. This blog is hopefully the first step in the exercise to making that newsletter. I ran into too many stops and starts with life getting in the way. I also still have too many questions open around how I would present this larping magazine. And really I was putting the cart before the horse because I hadn't even proven to myself that I could write on a regular basis for anything.
Cyberpunk Christianity will be my blog for writing about whatever I want, but it will also be a proving ground. I want to write consistently here to develop the muscle that it takes to run a larger, more long term project. This blog has no fail state, but it does have a win state, and that is serving as an outlet for wanting to write.
Because that's the other big thing I'm thinking about. I've been trying to figure out what is the missing piece to this big news/writing project, but really it may just be that I want a place to write about the challenges I see us facing. This blog may get me most of the way there to understanding what it is I want to say.
Thanks for checking out my first post! If you'd like to connect, you can find me on Mastodon at @CyberpunkChristian.