A nation does not have to be conquered to lose its freedom. It can surrender it willingly, one election, one institution, and one generation at a time. What we are watching is people voting to commit cultural suicide for the promise of more money in their pockets.
The November 3, 2026, midterm elections exposed a country in far deeper trouble than another disappointing Republican election cycle. Ungodly leftists were voted in, and the demonic Democrats captured the House and Senate.
Eight Democratic Socialists of America (i.e., Communists/Marxists/Socialists) won U.S. House seats in the 2026 midterms: incumbents Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Rashida Tlaib, along with newcomers Chris Rabb, Melat Kiros, Donavan McKinney, Darializa Avila-Chevalier, Claire Valdez, and Angela Gonzales-Torres. Who would ever think these types of people would be voted for in our system of government?
We saw Abdul El-Sayed, whose family is friendly with the Muslim Brotherhood, win in Michigan and become the first Muslim elected to the U.S. Senate. This brings the total to 256 Muslims in elected office throughout the United States, according to CAIR. Can you believe this? Talk about a takeover!
We saw Chris Pappas of New Hampshire win a U.S. Senate seat, becoming the first openly gay man elected to the Senate. That brings the total to 1,359 openly LGBTQ+ elected officials serving nationwide, across federal, state, and local government, according to the LGBTQ+ Victory Institute.
We saw a Christian apostate, James Talarico, win in Texas. He believes God is nonbinary, that Scripture does not establish a single Christian position against abortion or gay marriage, and that salvation is works-based, wrongly invoking the sheep and goat judgment in Matthew 25. Can it get any worse?
We watched Texas flip—the buckle of the Bible Belt handed to the Left. If that can happen in a long-time Republican and Christian stronghold, we cannot afford to take any state for granted.
Americans handed the radical Left power, and the consequences will extend well beyond what you and I can imagine.
This Is Not About Political Messaging
I am tired of hearing that every political catastrophe is merely a messaging problem. I’ve heard this from many talking heads, pundits, and podcasters. On one level, I get it. If we are just talking about politics, I understand that argument. Trump and the Republicans failed big time in explaining to people what was going on with Iran, economics, and other pertinent items. But it’s more than that. Way more.
Some Voters Simply Stayed Home; Now We All Pay the Price.
According to University of Florida election researcher Michael McDonald, 50.6% of eligible voters did not vote. Being too lazy to vote is a surrender of responsibility. If you cannot be bothered to cast a ballot, you leave others to choose the leaders, laws, and policies that will shape your life and your children’s future. The election proceeds without you, and those who vote choose the government we all must live under. Complaining about the country while refusing to participate in its elections is hollow. Staying home does not shield you from the consequences; it gives you less say in the decisions that produce them.
Furthermore, I would never sit out an election as a way of punishing Trump or the Republicans for not satisfying my economic desires, or offer a pietistic excuse that politics is simply too dirty for the heavenly minded. Look, Mr. Pietist: when you don’t vote, you leave the decision to those who do—and you still have to live with the consequences. Don’t you get it? When you don’t vote, you’re essentially giving the worst candidate your vote. You’re not punishing Trump or the Republicans as you think; your non-vote is allowing a radical to come in and dismantle America.
You’re to blame for this! Who thinks like this? Who acts like this? Oh, that’s right: people who don’t understand how our political system works, and those elections have consequences we all have to live with. So, thanks to everyone who couldn’t be bothered to vote: now we all must live with the mess your inaction helped create.
The Youth Vote: A Warning People Cannot Ignore
The preliminary youth-vote figures make this failure impossible to dismiss. The International Business Times report supplied for this article cites CIRCLE estimates showing voters ages 18–29 supporting Democratic House candidates by 71% to 25%, a staggering 46-point margin. Democratic support reached 63% among young men and 75% among young women. Compare that with the report’s cited AP VoteCast finding that 56% of young men supported Trump in 2024.
The shift extended beyond college campuses. CIRCLE estimated Democratic support at 62% among young white voters and 69% among young voters whose highest qualification was a high school diploma.
The same report cites Harvard’s October youth survey: among registered young people with at least a 50-50 chance of voting, 91% considered living costs important to their decision, and 88% said the same about corruption. Harvard’s survey showed that younger voters naively trusted Democrats more than Republicans to address the cost of living, health care expenses, and government corruption.
My criticism of their political choice remains. Flat-out ignorance, anger, resentment, or wanting a lower cost of living does not erase the consequences of empowering the Left, accepting socialism, Marxism, communism, and Islamism because they promise you “affordability.”
These voters pose a serious problem because they let personal economic concerns override principles, morals, and values. These voters are some of the most dangerous people in our country.
Was It the Economy or A Desire for Mammon?
People understand what they are voting for, and they were voting for more money in their pockets. I get it. We are all struggling with higher gas prices, inflation, and the higher cost of living. But our bad economics started long ago—with debt, inflation, the social welfare state, and entitlement programs. Biden allowed 12 million illegal aliens, consuming billions of dollars in aid. Wasteful bureaucratic government agencies needed to be cut.
DOGE cut 270,000 useless government jobs, but that was still not enough; more needs to be done. But this has been happening for decades—it’s not about Trump. Trump can’t fix decades of legislation that has passed and allowed wasteful spending in four years—there is no way. It would take 20-30 years.
But was the economy worse with Trump than Biden?
According to Victor Davis Hanson, Victor Davis Hanson podcast, several major economic indicators were stronger in 2026 than they were under Biden. Hanson pointed to a stock market roughly 20,000 points higher than during the 2022 midterms, higher GDP (Biden 2.6 in 2022 vs. Trump 3.4 in 2026), similar unemployment, and annual family income that had increased by approximately $12,880 to a record $87,460, according to the Census Bureau. “Although inflation rose again in 2026, September’s annual rate of 3.7% remained below the approximately 4.9% average of the annual inflation rates during Biden’s four years in office
But Hanson’s central point was the distinction between lower inflation and lower prices. A lower inflation rate means prices are rising more slowly; it does not mean prices have returned to where they were before. When Trump returned to office, overall consumer prices were approximately 21% higher than when Biden took office, according to federal CPI data. Trump inherited a cumulative price increase of approximately 21% from Biden. That meant Americans were already paying roughly one-fifth more before additional inflation occurred under Trump.
So, what could Trump have done? If Trump tried to force prices across the economy down by roughly 20%, he could have triggered a severe recession and widespread job losses, according to Hanson. Families would still feel the strain of past price increases, even as the economy improved. Slowing inflation could help, but it could not undo the damage overnight.
So here is my point: If you do not understand that our economy has been shaped by decades of corrupt politicians running up the debt, wasting money, and creating a deep-state swamp filled with hundreds of thousands of bureaucrats, then you are checked out of reality and don’t get it. Add entitlement programs, welfare fraud, billions poured into education like a black hole without results, and decades of funding illegal aliens.
People’s ignorance of the American economy leaves them being tossed to and fro by the next grifter who promises them scraps but cannot deliver because of these underlying problems.
So, people in America feel the pinch economically, but don’t they have any morals, values, or principles to constrain them from voting for radicals? I feel the pinch economically, but I would never vote for a socialist, communist, Marxist, or Islamist who promised to give me more money. Yes, I want things to be cheaper, but I refuse to sacrifice my biblical values and elect the most ungodly people to office so I can have a little more money in my pockets. Do you see? These kinds of people are part of the problem, and their ignorance puts dangerous people in power who threaten our way of life.
I’m sick of people acting this way, and I’m sick of watching my country be ruined by people who vote only according to their base desires, wanting more scraps thrown to them by politicians who promise the world: free health care, free education, erased college debt, universal basic income, free bus rides, and free childcare. How gullible and naïve does one have to be to believe these evil politicians? Didn’t they learn in elementary school that there are no free lunches? Someone must pay for this. Or are they just so entitled that they couldn’t care less where money comes from?
Was It the Iran War?
I understand that people do not want to get dragged into another Afghanistan or Iraq war in the Middle East. But how long do they think a war should last—a month, two months? How can the average person confidently estimate that, especially without military training at West Point or Annapolis or studying warfare? Consider Iran’s mountainous terrain and deeply buried nuclear facilities, such as those at Pickaxe Mountain, which may be extremely difficult to reach even with bunker-buster bombs.
So ignorant people want a war that lasts a month, and then it’s over? Is that what they really believe will happen? It is profoundly stupid to assume that a war of this complexity can be fought and finished in a month or two.
Also, do they understand the Iranian regime? Its leaders are grade-A liars who invoke an apocalyptic Islamic ideology centered on the Twelfth Imam while threatening Israel and America. No president until Trump has had the guts to confront this regime so directly.
Since 1979, Iran has become a leading state sponsor of terrorism, funding Hamas, Hezbollah, and the Houthis through institutions including its Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC). The Iranian regime and groups it supports have been implicated in the deaths of hundreds of Americans, with some estimates exceeding 1,000.
Iran’s nuclear ambitions pose a serious threat to America, Israel, and the broader Middle East. Preventing the regime from obtaining nuclear weapons is a matter of national security. Obama even tried to curb the Iranian regime’s nuclear ambitions by offering sanctions relief in exchange for restrictions on its nuclear program. His administration also delivered $1.7 billion in cash to Iran, but they never stopped.
These people say they want to put America first, but do they not understand that putting America first includes protecting ourselves from a nuclear-armed Iran? So they bark about spending $47.1 billion on dismantling Iran, but would they rather have a nuclear holocaust? Seriously! What are these people thinking? Preventing it from obtaining nuclear weapons is a legitimate American objective.
Do these people even know that the Federation for American Immigration Reform estimated annual federal, state, and local costs associated with illegal aliens at $182 billion in its 2023 study, including services for illegal immigrants and their U.S.-citizen children?
Israel Is Not America’s Scapegoat
These types of voters have been so brainwashed by the radical left and woke right podcasters who hate Israel and are antisemitic that they believe J.D. Vance’s statement that we need to change our relationship with our longtime friend and ally, Israel, which is the only democracy and city shining on a hill among the Islamic darkness of the Middle East.
I do not trust J.D. Vance, and I have lost respect for him. His post-election diagnosis emphasized the Iran war, the cost of living, “putting America first,” and changing America’s relationship with Israel, which was exactly what people wanted him to say instead of blaming the electorate for their ignorance. It is also dangerous because it amounts to scapegoating Israel for the moral failures of voters who have been indoctrinated to think that Socialism, Marxism, and communism are the answer to the economic woes.
When Vance says people voted for Democrats because of the cost of living and America’s relationship with Israel, he invites Americans to look at rising food prices and blame the Jewish state. Economic anxiety becomes a vehicle for scapegoating Israel, giving struggling families a convenient target for their anger instead of an honest explanation of their problems. Sound familiar?
My response is blunt: Reducing this midterm political disaster to the economy, the Iran war, and Israel is a short-sighted fool’s diagnosis and dangerous. Reporting voters’ fickle grievances is one thing; treating those grievances as a sufficient explanation of the country’s political and spiritual collapse is an abdication of judgment.
Unfairly blaming Israel will not repair what is broken in America. A vice president should be capable of examining Republican failures, economic frustration, candidate weakness, the constant back-and-forth negotiations with Iran, and ideological decay without handing the anti-Israel movement a ready-made explanation for everything.
The Iran war and Israel did not teach American children to despise their country. The Iran war and Israel did not empty American pulpits of biblical courage. The Iran war and Israel did not select weak Republican candidates or teach congressional leadership to confuse excuses with accomplishment.
When Tucker Carlson, Candace Owens, Shawn Ryan, Megyn Kelly, Joe Rogan, Joe Kent, Steve Bannon, Dave Smith, Nick Fuentes, or any other prominent commentator claims that Israel dictates American policy, they are lying to the American public. Treating American opposition to Tehran as automatic evidence of obedience to Benjamin Netanyahu insults the possibility that America has interests of its own in confronting that regime.
Yet people’s ignorance allows them to be persuaded by these voices without demanding facts to support their claims. These commentators appeal to the darkest desires of people looking for a scapegoat for their own problems—people who want accusations against Israel and the Jewish people to be true. I believe that willingness to embrace such accusations reflects a deeper, latent hostility toward God.
When the podcasters call for a policy, “America First” does not prove that it serves America’s interests. We must ask: Who benefits when America distrusts allies like Israel, abandons its commitments, and tears itself apart with internal suspicion? Islamist regimes and anti-Israel globalists stand to gain from that weakness.
Israel serves as a permanent battleship for the United States. It defends our liberty against every terrorist organization and prevents the terrorists from coming here to America. Israel also gives us 10–15 years of research and development for our weapons and employs thousands of American workers, since they buy our weapons from us. Do they not know this?
Furthermore, don’t Christians realize Israel’s prophetic significance? God’s covenant with Abraham and his descendants has not been canceled, and the Church has not replaced Israel. God promised Israel a land, a national future, and blessings through which all nations would ultimately be blessed (Genesis 12:1–3; 15:18–21). Paul affirmed that God has not cast away His people and that His gifts and calling are irrevocable (Romans 11:1, 28–29).
Israel’s national restoration, future recognition of Jesus as Messiah, and place in His coming kingdom remain central to biblical prophecy (Ezekiel 36–37; Zechariah 12:10; Romans 11:25–27).
Supporting Israel does not require approving every decision of its government, but Christians should recognize that its existence and future cannot be reduced to ordinary politics: they are bound to God’s covenant faithfulness and His revealed purposes for history.
Stop Excusing the Electorate, They Are to Blame
At some point, blaming everything on campaign strategy, the economy, the Iran war, Israel, becomes an excuse to refuse to confront the cultural decay of people’s minds.
What did we expect after surrendering the education of successive generations to institutions increasingly hostile to biblical truth? What did we expect when parents outsourced moral formation, churches avoided controversy, pastors remained silent, and entertainment became a substitute for thought?
A generation does not suddenly embrace the hard Left and Islamism on Election Day. Its assumptions were formed long before it entered the voting booth.
If young Americans have been taught that their country is fundamentally illegitimate, that economic freedom is exploitation, that Christianity is bad, that Israel is evil, and that moral boundaries are oppression, the ballot becomes an expression of that formation. Christians or conservatives cannot repair decades of ideological instruction with six weeks of campaign advertisements.
Voting for Marxism and Islamism while expecting liberty to survive is downright stupidity. Marxism subordinates economic freedom to collectivist power. Islamism seeks to subordinate civil government to religious authority. Their ultimate visions differ, but both attack individual liberty, freedom of conscience, and constitutional restraints on power.
Most people in our society have taken the broad road of destruction. We live in a society of Biblical fools when citizens use the freedoms they inherited to empower movements that would dismantle them. Calling that choice “progress” does not make it intelligent. Winning an election does not make an ideology wise, just, or compatible with liberty.
And I will put my disgust plainly: anyone who would vote for Talarico, El Sayed, or any of these Communists and Islamists has a Romans 1 mind and heart. I am tired of watching destructive politics dressed up as moral enlightenment while those who object are expected to apologize for noticing.
They have heard the arguments, seen the consequences, and decided they want more. An electorate has moral responsibility for the power it entrusts to others.
The people of this ungodly culture increasingly reward the very people and ideologies destroying it. We cannot keep diagnosing a spiritual disease as a public-relations failure.
Churches and Pastors Are to Blame Too
My deepest frustration is with pastors and churches that have mistaken reassuring people for shepherding them.
Jeremiah condemned the declaration of peace where there was no peace. Isaiah condemned calling evil good and good evil. Neither prophet received his assignment from an audience satisfaction survey.
Yet too many pulpits act as though the greatest pastoral failure would be upsetting someone by addressing the moral issues we face in our modern world. They call these issues political, but when did abortion, gay marriage, LGBTQ issues, transgenderism, or Israel become merely political? These are moral issues. Yet they conveniently reclassify them as political to avoid discussing them, confronting them, and equipping people with a biblical worldview. Difficult truths are postponed. Controversial subjects are avoided for the sake of nickels and noses. Congregations receive motivational speeches without discernment or conviction, and comfort without correction.
Then pastors wonder why their people absorb the culture’s assumptions, morals, and values.
If Christians are being discipled by social media, universities, political personalities, and entertainment while their pastors refuse to address the ideas shaping them, silence has consequences. The congregation is still receiving instruction, but someone else is providing it.
When Judgment Looks Like Getting What You Wanted
Romans 1 describes a civilization unraveling from the inside. People suppress the truth, refuse to honor God, and become darkened in their understanding. They congratulate themselves on their wisdom while becoming fools. Then the passage delivers its terrifying refrain: God gives them over.
He gives them over to their desires, their degrading passions, and finally a debased mind. Judgment takes the form of allowing rebellion to run its course.
Americans should tremble because that is what is happening.
We have treated God’s moral order as an embarrassment. We dismiss biblical conviction as ignorance; we portray moral restraint as oppression. We have taught generations to distrust the foundations of their civilization while imagining that the freedoms resting on those foundations will somehow survive their destruction.
Then we act surprised when people cannot distinguish freedom from license, compassion from enabling evil, or justice from ideological revenge.
I believe we are witnessing the consequences of a nation being given over. The frightening thing about that judgment is that those experiencing it actually celebrate it. They call their confusion enlightenment. They call their rebellion liberation. They congratulate themselves while the structure around them comes apart.
Prosperity cannot purchase an exemption from moral consequences. Neither can military strength, technological achievement, or a Constitution that fewer citizens understand and fewer leaders respect.
People Are Choosing Their Own Chains
In 1 Samuel 8, Israel demanded a king like the surrounding nations. Samuel warned them what that demand would cost. Their ruler would take their sons, daughters, fields, produce, and labor. The people heard the warning and insisted anyway.
They wanted what they wanted.
That is the danger of people who have lost discernment. They can demand the very arrangement that will diminish their liberty. They can trade responsibility for promises of security, and then discover that the government they empowered has developed an appetite their taxes and obedience can never satisfy.
Saul looked impressive. All these young Islamists and leftists are charismatic and vibrant. Appearance is easier to evaluate than character. Visible strength is easier to admire than obedience to God.
We repeat that mistake when we judge leaders by charisma, slogans, grievance, or the ability to tell us what we want to hear. People will receive the leadership it demands and discover that the answer to its demand was itself a judgment.
The Consequences
Conservatives should abandon the comforting assumption that the new congressional majority will be content with symbolic victories.
Control of Congress means leverage over legislation, investigations, spending, and, in the Senate, judicial confirmations. Trump’s agenda now faces an empowered opposition with both the incentive and the institutional means to obstruct it. Lawfare, subpoenas, investigations, and impeachments will be the norm.
Hanson warns that progressive victories may push Democrats further left as they prepare for 2028. Hanson warns that a leftist president backed by Democratic control of Congress in 2028 will pursue open borders, stop deportations, defund ICE, pursue the radical Green New Deal policies (i.e., elimination of fossil fuels and fracking), court-packing, elimination of the Electoral College, admission of new states like Puerto Rico and Washington, D.C., and abolition of the Senate filibuster—alongside a foreign policy increasingly hostile to Israel and more accommodating to left-wing governments. These evil people will fundamentally change our society and the structure of government.
Jonathan Tobin’s JNS analysis warns that Israel will also become a target of the new majority. He anticipates pressure on military cooperation, sanctions against Israelis in Judea and Samaria, and efforts to undermine the alliance even as direct aid gives way to partnership. He also warns of investigations and impeachment efforts that could consume the administration’s remaining time.
His most disturbing point concerns American Jewish life. When politicians normalize rhetoric that casts Israel and its supporters as the explanation for America’s difficulties, the damage reaches beyond foreign policy. It gives public legitimacy to scapegoating and makes resistance to antisemitism harder. Meanwhile, Republicans who embrace Israel-blaming narratives will help increase the division between Americans and Israel. The assault on the alliance will advance from both directions.
Rest in Peace, America
I do not use those words casually. I grieve what our country is choosing to surrender and what our children may never know. I believe America as we know it will succumb to globalist ambitions and ultimately be absorbed into a one-world government. This is how we get there: by a populace that steadily surrenders their convictions, sovereignty, and freedom.
Those who voted this way are making choices our children will pay for. They will inherit the debt, the damaged institutions, the erosion of self-government, and whatever remains of a culture that has lost its capacity to sustain liberty. Dismissing those consequences simply because confronting them makes people uncomfortable is profoundly irresponsible.
A civilization cannot keep tearing out its moral foundations and expect its freedoms to survive indefinitely. Too many Americans could not care less about the liberties others fought and died to preserve. They would rather accept promises of peace and security than shoulder the responsibilities of freedom or sacrifice for their values and morals.
Elections can accelerate that destruction, but no election can substitute for faith in the LORD and the moral convictions a nation has abandoned.
Christians must stop confusing hope in Christ with confidence that America will always recover. Our Lord has not promised the United States an endless succession of second chances. I believe we have moved past the point of no return as a nation.
However, the work of ministry remains; we still need to proclaim the truth and reach people. We do that work because Messiah commands it. His authority does not depend on our expectation of national recovery. Prepare people to remain faithful when obedience becomes costly.
The people who voted for radical leftists and Islamists will one day answer for what they did with the light they received and for dismantling the greatest nation ever to exist. Woe unto them for digging America’s grave.
By Pastor Brandon Holthaus