Extreme political rhetoric stokes fear and encourages apathy. Christians can offer a productive counterpart.
This is the most important election of our lifetime.” I’ve heard this said every presidential election in my lifetime, but, this time, the stakes are being raised even higher. The 2024 election is not just the most important—the consequences of it are existential.
At a fundraiser in February, President Joe Biden called Donald Trump the “one existential threat,” and he has also written on X to constituents: “In this election, your freedom, your democracy, and America itself is at stake.” Vice President Harris said at an event this month, “This is the one. The most existential, consequential, and important election of our lifetime.”
Former president Trump has used this line of argument as well: At the Faith and Freedom Coalition last month, he said that “this will be the most important election in the history of our country” and “our one chance to save America.” Back in March, he responded to the claim that he was a “threat to democracy” with, “I’m not a threat. I’m the one that’s ending the threat to democracy.”
These talking points might be effective campaigning, but they make for a toxic political culture.
In college, I competed in policy debate tournaments—a form of debate that focuses more on detailed (and fast-paced) presentation of evidence than rhetoric or performance. We created elaborate argumentative chains, showing how one policy change (subsidies for offshore wind turbines or the legalization of online gambling) could cause a cascading chain of events that nearly always ended in global nuclear war. It was a way of beating the other team: Sure, your proposal might lower inflation or decrease …
