Awoman, sitting behind the wheel of her car, is hollering. She’s alternating between “why, why, why,” and “no, no, no,” all at the top of her lungs while slamming her fist against the steering wheel. Another is staring defiantly at the camera, like a TikTok Joan of Arc, while a friend solemnly shaves her head. A young man is hissing at his parents, swearing that he’ll never talk to them again because they’ve now proved themselves to be bad people, unworthy of a son like him.
Ever since Donald Trump won his bid for reelection, such spectacles have become, alas, commonplace. Everywhere you turn online these days, there’s a fresh freakout awaiting, a new meltdown caught on tape and posted for posterity, showing yet another human being in the throes of a nervous breakdown.
Some of my friends on the right find these displays hysterically funny. I can’t blame them: The theatrics are so overwrought, and the decision to film and share them so baffling, that you can’t help but think there’s a chance the wailer du jour might, at any moment, break into a big smile, wink at you, and admit that it was all just a gag in good fun. But these displays of my fellow Americans’ suffering bring me no pleasure. In fact, they’re breaking my heart. They’re pointing to a problem that’s much too large for any one candidate or one party to fix, a problem that isn’t political at all but metaphysical. The wailers are wailing because they’re in deep spiritual distress.
Ignore, for a moment, the lamentable cultural convention of broadcasting every emotion—the more extreme the better—and what you’ll see in these videos are people telling the same sad story. They’re not convulsing because they’re upset with the results of a presidential election; they arrive every four years, promising the disconsolate the relief of possible change four years hence. Instead, they’re crying because they don’t see the election as an election at all: They consider it a firm rejection of all that they are and all that they have to offer. And, like Cain, this rejection is driving them past the brink of sound judgment.
Consider the numbers. A decade ago, the Barna Group, a Christian research outfit based in California, conducted a survey designed to gauge how Americans felt about family, faith, and country. Their findings were startling: Whereas 79 percent of older respondents were happy to describe themselves as Americans, only a third of Millennials felt their native country had any emotional resonance. More than half of all Boomers said their religious faith greatly shaped who they were and how they viewed the world and their place in it; among younger generations, the number was closer to a quarter. And, most alarming of all, while more than three quarters of older respondents replied that their family played a crucial role in shaping their identity, with younger respondents the number was significantly lower, closer to one half.
These polling results confirm what many of us have observed when talking to younger peers, say, or by spending a few moments on social media and sampling today’s sour-souled offerings. Truth be told, we’re raising a generation of Americans who feel rootless, untethered to anything but their own anxieties and removed from any source of light, heat, and renewable spiritual energy. They’re “floaters,” and the only thing they are encouraged to feel strongly about is politics.
To make matters worse, the politics that preoccupies so many of our fellow citizens is imagined not as a real-world pursuit, a series of mildly irritating compromises required to make communal life possible, but as a cataclysmic clash between absolute and cartoonish abstractions. A Manichean struggle of good against evil. This reductio ad absurdum serves the interests of our tech overlords—whose products require us to be in a state of perpetual isolation and atomization so that social media remain our sole avenues for socialization. And at least one political part benefits from this isolation and atomization: 72 percent of unwed women, according to the Pew Research Center, support the Democrats, while women who are married favor the Republicans.
For the rest of us, the hysterical preoccupation of cartoon character politics is a disaster.
What is to be done? We have two options. The first is to do absolutely nothing, and assume, foolishly, that those who are bawling today will tomorrow dry their tears and carry on with their lives. They won’t, because, colloquially speaking, a life is precisely what they don’t have. With no children (American birthrates having reached an all-time low in 2023), no spouses (American marriage rates having reached a fifty-year low in 2021), and no faith, those crying about Trump today won’t stop crying. Instead, it’s likely that, feeling stung by the democratic process that failed to deliver the only outcome they could imagine, they’ll seek out more satisfying—and far more extreme—ways of being in the world, ways that don’t let the opinions of the dolt next door stand in the way of redemption.
The increasing agitation of empty souls helps explain, perhaps, why the number of converts to Islam in fiercely secular France has more than doubled in the last thirty-five years. Laïcité, the constitutionally guaranteed safeguard of secularism, is no match for the comfort and courage one can find in the Qur’an. And while aloof Americans may not be rushing any time soon to recite the Shahada, the Islamic declaration of faith required of any convert, they may slouch toward loopy and extreme worldviews that make their current ululations seem quiet and dignified in comparison.
Which leads us to option number two. It’s as simple as it is stark: Intervene, right now, to curb this spiritual crisis and give those who suffer from it the life-saving treatment all humans need, a faith defibrillator, an urgent injection of hope.
How? We already have Teach For America, a non-profit that has dispatched, since its inception in 1989, tens of thousands of college graduates to schools across the nation, enriching the lives and the minds of millions of our neediest students. It’s time we give young souls the same care. Imagine, for example, an organization called Preach For America, which asked those among us who are fortunate enough to derive joy and strength from loving parents or loving children, from unwavering faith in God and tradition, from unshakable love of country, to go out there and give those bereft of such privileges a taste of their splendor. Imagine having the opportunity to take the head-shavers and the wheel-bangers and the other apoplectic mourners out for ice cream to show them that they are loved and listened to—even in an America soon to be governed by their least favorite politician. Imagine having conversations about fundamental human emotions, not transient electoral furies. This kind of ministryrequires no special qualifications and very little training. All that is needed is an outstretched arm and an open heart. The offer of friendship is a great gift.
You could, of course, be grim and argue that no outpouring of goodwill, no matter how intense or sincere, could ever undo the damage wrought by more than a decade of social media conditioning and rancorous politics. Perhaps. But we’ve no other choice. And those of us who will choose to step in and have these difficult but essential conversations will have at their disposal a whopper of an opening line. It was bequeathed to us, like so many of our finest collective treasures, by our sixteenth president, in a speech he delivered at the Illinois Republican State Convention, on June 16, 1858. It’s remembered today mainly for its powerful opening statement: “A house divided against itself, cannot stand.” But just as powerful are the words Abraham Lincoln chose to end that historical address. Recounting America’s long history of struggling with difficult questions, slavery first and foremost, he reminded his listeners that we’ve overcome much in the course of this young nation’s turbulent life. “Did we brave all then,” he concluded, “to falter now?”
There’s only one right answer, a resounding “No, never.” It’s time for us to get out there and preach the good news of faith, family, and national solidarity to anyone still willing to listen.
Liel Leibovitz is editor at large for Tablet Magazine and the cohost of its popular podcast, Unorthodox.
Image licensed by Creative Commons.
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