Dear friends and family who are thinking about voting for Trump anniemueller.com
(I will almost certainly regret this.)

I know posting this will probably cause you grief, but I believe in my bones that this influences people

Thanks for this. I know it’s hard to say to some audiences and I hope it hits home.

Yes! I really hope people who are considering that man are able to absorb this. (Also: cool blog title effect!)

I will never understand why this didn’t immediately disqualify him for Christians (or anyone else with a conscience). This was in 2015. If only …

This showed up in my timeline just today. I relate so much to that message. But I think every effort is futile. At least, in my case, I surrendered a long time ago. For years and years I tried to reason with my religious relatives and friends: You are right, guys, your Book has tons and tons of answers, but you are looking for them in the wrong places! See, here, and here, and here again, you are supposed to be compassionate, empathetic, generous, loving! There’s no place whatsoever for bigotry and hatred in your Book! But our beliefs are not rational (even my own aren’t rational). Our ideology is not the product of reasoning, even if we think it’s a good ideology. Everything in the end is about how and what we feel. And I grew tired of asking people to think and reason. Thanks for the good read, Annie.

@estebantxo thanks for reading. And great points, you’re absolutely right. I typically focus more on connecting with the people in my life who are still very religious, trying to create little ‘doorways’ for more openness and empathy… in the hopes this will contribute in some small ways to larger change. don’t know if it does or not. We tend to learn in spite of ourselves, since we’re so tuned into threats and so ready to defend our beliefs. As someone else said, winning an argument is not winning the person – in fact, it usually has the opposite effect.

If there is to be hope, it will be thanks to tireless people like you, so keep on trying :)