Renown spiritual writer, teacher and master of Centering Prayer, Cynthia Bourgeault offers an insightful interpretation of social realities leading to the election of Donald Trump. She makes a connection between 9/11 and voters’ motivations I’ve not heard previously:

Viewed from a slightly longer range and slightly out-of-left field perspective, I keep seeing that this election of Donald Trump in a way completes an octave that began on September 11, 2001. In the last fifteen years our country has struggled under a pervasive and growing sense of vulnerability, impotence, helplessness, of having been subjected to a collective rape which still paralyzes the resolve, the gout de vivre, as Teilhard calls it. It expresses itself across the board: in the obsession with guns and gun violence, the very real threats to life and wellbeing in marginalized communities, and in the more privileged classes with the almost hysteria around food, security, and child safety. I really believe that at a subliminal level, Trump’s slogan “Make America Great Again” speaks to that sense of releasing the paralyzed, hang-dog fear which is the only America we have come to know. It’s not really about economics. It’s about something way deeper. . . .

Bourgeault may be onto something!  You may access a her fuller reflection on the election results and where we go from here at her Center of Action and Contemplation [link]