Of thine adversary.

So. The election’s come and gone, half the country is celebrating, and the other half…

It’s really easy for Trump voters to gloat for a few days.  After all, both the Democratic leadership and all the talking heads called our candidate and, by extension (and sometimes explicitly), all of us “garbage,” “Nazis,” “fascists,” white supremacists”… You know the list.

But here’s the thing. Most of the people parroting that line aren’t malicious. They aren’t evil.

They’re scared.

They’ve listened too much to the ones who ARE malicious and evil; they’ve trusted too much in voices that should institutionally be trustworthy, but aren’t.

They legitimately expect this next administration to be fascist (although not one in a hundred can even define what that means), forcing women into a Handmaid’s Tale dystopia and rounding up transgenders for the gulags and threatening deportation of anyone who looks just a little bit brown.

Yes, it’s ridiculous. But they’ve been listening to that on repeat for so long that they literally can’t tell.  They’ve been brainwashed (although they turn around and call us brainwashed, because that’s what their brainwashers told them to think). And though what they fear is nonsensical and false-to-facts, the fear itself is real. It paralyzes them. It poisons them.

How do we deal with living with half of a country like that?

Remember: The footsoldiers are not your enemy.  Your neighbor or family member, crying and shrieking that you’ve just brought LITERALLY HITLER back to the White House, are not your enemy.  They think you are theirs. Don’t be.

Because I’m a believing Latter-day Saint, one of the first helps I thought of was a passage from the Book of Mormon.  But you don’t have to be a believer to see the truth in this account; if it helps, just accept it as a religious midrash and fable. The point is the principle.

In this story, the prophet Alma and his companion Amulek were preaching Jesus in a city where hearts and minds were closed to them.  Worse, the city had sicced its lawyers on them in public fora, trying to trip them up and poke holes in their words.  (Lawyers don’t get much grace in the Book of Mormon.)

Alma and Amulek ended up debating an expert lawyer named Zeezrom, who tried his darnedest to cast them as untrustworthy witnesses, and floundered because Alma and Amulek knew what he was up to.  And when one of Zeezrom’s attacks had been turned aside, Alma stepped up and took the initiative:

Now Zeezrom, seeing that thou hast been taken in thy lying and craftiness, for thou hast not lied unto men only but thou hast lied unto God; for behold, he knows all thy thoughts, and thou seest that thy thoughts are made known unto us by his Spirit;

And thou seest that we know that thy plan was a very subtle plan, as to the subtlety of the devil, for to lie and to deceive this people that thou mightest set them against us, to revile us and to cast us out—

Now this was a plan of thine adversary, and he hath exercised his power in thee. Now I would that ye should remember that what I say unto thee I say unto all. (Alma 12:3-5, emphasis mine)

Thine adversary.

Zeezrom saw himself as the enemy of Alma and Amulek.

But Alma knew that the true adversary wasn’t Zeezrom.  The real adversary to all of them — Alma, Amulek, Zeezrom, everyone in the city, everyone in the world — was the Father of Lies, who specializes in turning men against each other.  He convinces some that good is evil and evil is good, and he uses them to fight on his behalf, even though he’s just as much the sworn enemy of those blindly fighting for him as those fighting against him.

Alma and Amulek countered Zeezrom’s arguments and condemned him for his duplicity. But they knew that he was not their enemy.

And Zeezrom, seeing the snare he had tried to use on them for what it was, was shaken in his resolve. Eventually he became a great man of God, seeking to undo the damage he had done.

And Alma and Amulek welcomed him, because they knew from the beginning the Zeezrom wasn’t their real enemy.

That’s what we need to remember. Those friends and neighbors and family members who lash out at us and cut us out of our lives and call us all sorts of vile names aren’t our enemies.

They’re wrong.  They’re confused.  They have been deluded by a being who’s been doing this for millennia and has gotten really good at it.

They need to be countered, yes, but not decimated. Not “owned.”  Not treated as we were, or as we would be if the election had gone the other way.

Don’t destroy them as your enemies; destroy the enmity. Reclaim them.

It may be a process taking years, or even decades. It may never really work this side of the grave. But we have time to take the long view.