Denker: Partisan politics are so 2024. Now we’re facing something much worse.

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As we creep toward America’s 250th birthday, the national narrative has changed — and it’s time for all of us to catch up if we care about the future of our country.

A year ago after Fourth of July weekend, partisan squabbles and intraparty debates were still somewhat relevant as Democrats tried to recover from then-President Joe Biden’s disastrous debate appearance just a week before.

Everything changed a couple days later when a shooter in rural Pennsylvania attempted to assassinate then-candidate Donald Trump during a presidential campaign event. Reportedly, a bullet, or a bullet fragment, grazed his right ear. Trump, all 78 years of age himself at that time, dropped to the floor. But then, bloodied yet triumphant, he rose to his feet, his fist in the air.

“Fight! Fight! Fight!” he said, a battle cry that three days later, at the Republican National Convention in the battleground state of Wisconsin, would become a shared anthem, the hymn of a movement, a paean to a figure who’d been elevated to almost-messianic status. Speakers would tell rapt crowds that Trump had been selected by God and saved for this very moment.

While Democrats bragged about crowds at celebrity-driven, blockbuster events, and national media outlets continued their traditional “horse-race” campaign coverage, something altogether un-American was brewing underneath the surface, something that really had nothing to with either Republicans or Democrats. Trump’s campaign and his supporters were investing in a much bigger project, a plan to reshape the country according to fundamentalist Christian values, nativist immigration policy and economic policy slanted toward the wealthy few.

With the promise of an anti-vaxxer Kennedy to lead America’s public health agencies, the scrambling of partisanship ahead of November’s election was complete. Trump won, of course, with key victories in Midwestern swing states. While Democrats and national media outlets turned to the same overpaid pundits and consultants to explain what went wrong, the new administration took office in late January and immediately set to work putting into action its promised agenda, which was no secret. It was all laid out in Project 2025, a 900-page policy blueprint that is available on Amazon which, of course, Trump had claimed leading up to the election that he had not read, and did not plan to implement.

This is our past year in America, and now that we’ve reviewed it — can we finally consign the political past of 2024 to the dustbin of history?

From presidential immunity to a former Jan. 6 rioter being appointed to a position in the Justice Department — to a concentration camp for immigration detainees being advertised in the Florida Everglades, complete with merchandise for sale — the headlines of early July 2024 seem far away indeed.

Media outlets no longer need to manufacture scandal; it’s a daily affair. The idea that politicians would refrain from policies designed to enhance their own personal wealth is now considered a naive relic of some kind of faraway past, even though decades ago we had congressional inquiries and investigations over such things.

Tourism to America is declining compared to last year and to pre-pandemic levels, both in arrival numbers and reduced spending. As for our claim to be the “Mother of Exiles,” a shining city on a hill for the “huddled masses yearning to be free,” instead today’s immigrants who are here legally are afraid of arrest and detention. School districts are banning books. Secretary of Homeland Security Kristi Noem, infamous last summer for boasting of shooting her family dog, poses in full glam in front of migrants in crowded cages in El Salvador, who were sent there by the formerly beneficent United States.

At this point, some of you may be protesting: But we could no longer be the world’s charity! We cannot care for ourselves. People can’t afford rent, food and, famously, eggs. Parents can’t afford to pay for their children’s child care. Even with two working adults, most families live paycheck-to-paycheck. And still, jobs are shipped overseas.

These were all popular Trump talking points. And they’re true. But let me ask you, a week after Congress passed a bill that further cuts deep into America’s frayed social safety net, cutting health care and funding for food for poor children and elderly people, why can we no longer afford life in America?

Why does life feel so hard?

Let me tell you, in contrast to the truths that the so-called Christians in Congress and on the social media platforms want you to believe: The problem is not immigrants, or the tiny population of transgender Americans, or feminists, or Black people, or college professors.

The problem, simply, is that money is finite. In 2000, America was home to about 300 billionaires. This year, that number had grown to 902, according to Forbes. I’m sure it will increase again next year. We are talking about huge sums of money, even taking inflation into account. Our heavy-burdened economy can only support so much finite wealth. And as we’ve learned since the promises of trickle-down economics failed to come to fruition, those billionaires cost the economy money. They aren’t interested in giving it back to you or to me. Did anyone else see Jeff Bezos’ recent $50 million wedding? Democracy dies in Venice.

Let me end this by returning to an American favorite: the sports analogy. We aren’t in the first inning of this game, but neither is this the bottom of the ninth. I’d say maybe it’s the top of the 7th. There is still time, unlike our friends in authoritarian Russia, or the ignominious past of some of our shared relatives in Germany. We can turn this around.

But to do so, we have to let past narratives stay in the past. Divisions of Republican or Democrat are no longer helpful. As evidenced by the passage of the “Big, Beautiful Bill,” today’s Republicans are powerful only insofar as they enact Trump’s increasingly plutocratic, Gilded Age, Christian Nationalist agenda. And by the way, for my fellow American Christians, any lip service to this being a “Christian” agenda died when the goal became defunding aid for poor people, children and elderly people. That idea died when we decided that rather than abiding by the biblical mandate to care for the stranger and to turn the other cheek, we’d rather exile the stranger and threaten his death.

Following this somber Independence Day weekend, we can honor the best of our American ancestors by choosing instead to put aside past disagreements and hurts — and work together to defeat this violent, hate-filled movement at the ballot box. No more red states vs. blue states; liberals vs. conservatives. Those divisions are of a past era. Now is the time for Minnesotans, Texans, Missourians, Iowans, South Dakotans, Floridians, Nevadans — heck, even those pesky Wisconsinites — to work together.

After all, I spent the entire last week of June in the (now) deep red state of Missouri. As an ELCA Lutheran pastor, I’d been invited to address a crowd of Baptists at their national gathering. As I stood before this crowd of Christians from places like North Carolina, Georgia, Texas and Ohio, I realized that I never would have expected to be here.

And sure, we still don’t sing from the same hymnal or baptize in the same tanks (baptismal fonts?). But what we did share was faith in a kind, loving and gracious God — and maybe more important, faith that every single person there (and every single person who has ever existed) is a human being, worthy of life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.

This is still our country. Come and take it.