This:

Three people were indicted on federal charges that accuse them of staging a cross-burning to generate support for a Black mayoral candidate in Colorado Springs in what prosecutors described as a hate-crime hoax.

We “fight hate” a lot in this country, but the fight has not produced anything positive.  If anything, it has increased resentment, and here we see it has engendered fraud.

Here’s the problem with fighting, destroying, hate – it leaves a vacuum.  Something is going to rush in to fill it.  Fighting hate is not a bad thing, assuming there is actual hate involved, but you have to put something positive in its place.  Too often fighting hate turns into hating hate, which means hate has won the day.  You cannot beat hatred with hatred.

I travelled yesterday and while at my local airport in East Tennessee ran into a gentleman sporting a lot of LA Dodgers swag, which began a conversation.  He was in the area establishing a relationship with a realtor because he wanted out of Southern California.  He had a lot negative to say about California, as do all of us who have made the exodus do.  But he knew little about East Tennessee – he just wanted out.  I recalled moves I have made in the past that were necessary, but not sought; where the destination was necessary, but not a matter of desire.  I did not enjoy them.  One needs to go somewhere, not just leave where they are.

We spend too much time in this nation combatting the bad, but not near enough creating the good.

Our politics, on both sides of the aisle, has become consumed with battling what each side views as the wrong or evil.  But in the fight, we have lost sight of what we are fighting for; we seem only to know what we are fighting against.

Trump’s election is reactionary.  The loudest message from it is a rejection of the Biden/Harris administration and the pandemic that set it up.  Trump’s first electoral victory was likewise reactionary, primarily against Hillary Clinton.  His ascension within the party is based in no small part on his willingness to name and decry what is wrong in The Democratic Party.

Trump’s early appointments, with one notable exception, are good to excellent.  But they are, for the most part, aimed at purging the gross abuses from the government.  This is a necessary task, but it is only the beginning.  The challenge for this administration is the question of what comes after the purge?  What will they build to replace that which is purged, to ensure that the abuses do not return in the next administration?

Trump is a developer; he is used to demolition before construction.  That requires a vision.  He has successfully capitalized on the fight to regain the White House.  Now that he is there, the time has come to articulate his vision for what comes after.  I look forward to hearing about it.