Have mercy.

I’m not religious. But I did (barely) successfully major in religious studies.

For better and often for worse, the history of faith and organized religion has been the backbone of human history, political science, culture, wars, sexual ethics, and more.

Subtle or not, religion and faith are most often the answer to why people do what they do, and to how we got here, even now as the west barrels towards majority secularism.

And despite, you know, everything, I’m really fine with the whole thing, as long as you’re not using it to oppress or harm others.

Which…is definitely some of the time.

“Have mercy” is religion’s version of “all men are created equal”. Easy to say or throw around or write into the bible 400 years after the fact or into, say, a constitution, but more complicated when you’re a mascot for the Crusades, abusing a million little boys, cutting young girls, splitting up the sub-continent, and/or enslaving your own children, Thomas Jefferson.

Religion, faith, politics, institutions, society, welfare, pro-life, technology, even education — these words, these ideas, are what we make them. It’s the fundamentalism, it’s the guns, it’s the greed, but it’s also the very human guardrails we know we need around these, for a lack of better angels.

As David Brooks wrote last year:

Of course it’s entirely possible to develop good character without participating in any kind of organized religion, but on the other hand, it’s also very, very interesting that one of the most forsaken tenets of most of them is to, simply, have mercy.

Trump, Elon, Mike Johnson, Dana White, and most recently, Mark Zuckerberg aren’t going to read this, because whatever their faith, they have no mercy to give.

This isn’t for them. It’s for you.

Have mercy.

Two years after The Heritage Foundation published Project 2025…

Six months after his god saved him from assassination…

Two weeks after Right Rev. Mariann Budde asked Trump to his face to pay it forward and have mercy for the scared among us, after he demanded an apology…

After he and his apostles, sycophants, and oligarchs sought to tear her down, after they immediately dominated our institutions, from the media to the Treasury, and after they immediately dismantled others, from USAID to the CDC…

After they immediately dominated culture, immediately dominated attention —

— even if they barely won the election, even if the courts have actually stepped up (so far) to stop their orders in their tracks…

— even if we — everyone else who doesn’t want this — have done little to recover ground from November.

…after all of this, I only have good news for you.