The country is falling into insanity. It’s no longer hyperbole, not merely metaphor. Large swaths of our population are losing touch with reality. We’ve got to fight the madness down again — but first we’ve got to contain the damage.

Recovering our sanity is going to take a long, protracted campaign on multiple fronts. In the meantime we’ve got to stop the bleeding. The best, perhaps the only way to do that this year, is by not letting the lunacy win in November.

I’m using the words “insanity” and “lunacy” as literally as I can here. Large portions of our population think a moral life means being ashamed of your skin color, unless it’s black or brown. It means letting others mind-control you into not only calling them but actually seeing them as the gender they’ve chosen.

It means killing babies in the womb for convenience. It means throwing the family system away. It means promising people the government will take care of their every need. It means sexual freedom overrules religious freedom.

And that’s just for starters. I could have written that before people started calling for a total overthrow of our country’s history, laws, economy, and justice system. If we hadn’t reached insanity as of six weeks ago, we certainly have now.

Thinking Long-Term and Thinking Right Now

We’ve got to beat back the insanity. In the short term we have to protect our loved ones; in the long term we’re going to have to strategize to re-persuade the populace to think straight again; but in the meantime, right now, we can’t give it any more control over us than it already has.

That was already a priority four years ago. A Hillary Clinton victory then would have been disastrous. A Democratic victory this year, though, could mean complete catastrophe.

Besides being the party of sexual license and baby-killing on demand, the Democrats have now gone full-on socialist. Joe Biden may be on the moderate side of it, but the party is set to overrun any moderating influence, even their own president, if he’s elected. Especially when that elected president is in doubtful mental health.

Democrat-controlled cities and states show us some of what we can expect. High crime, for one. High taxes. High cost of living. There’s a reason Californians are moving to Texas.

But the damage is at least somewhat contained there, at least for now. We have our president to thank for that, imperfections and all.

Choose Sanity

I still wince at some of Donald Trump’s boasting, not to mention his indelicate tweets and outright insults. Yet I certainly support his re-election. Every believer should. We should pray and work not only toward that, but for a victory for sanity that’s echoed in both houses of Congress, and in every state capitol.

Why? Because the Republican Party is perfect? Heavens, no; there’s plenty to worry about there, too. No, it’s because in a world going mad, they’re at least somewhat still connected to reality.

Donald Trump has done more to contain the madness than I ever expected he would. We need four more years of the same. Otherwise, think of a party unleashed to duplicate California’s social, moral, and economic failures across the whole rest of the country.

Contain the Madness

Don’t be fooled, though: This election is only about containing the lunacy. It’ll take a lot more than that to defeat it. Indeed, a Trump victory this fall is likely to spark even more violent “protest” than we’ve seen the past few weeks. It’s still better than the alternative.

We must be realistic, though. And courageous. And patient. It’s only one step in a long campaign toward getting our country thinking clearly again.

But it’s crucial. It will help keep us at least that much more sane for a few years longer. And who knows? Maybe by then the turnaround will have begun. Maybe we’ll start recovering from this madness.

Part of a series on Strategy Against the Lunacy.

Tom Gilson (@TomGilsonAuthor) is a senior editor with The Stream and the author or editor of six books, including the forthcoming Too Good To Be False: How Jesus’ Incomparable Character Reveals His Reality.