Here in the heart of Biden country, the average Democrat nervously ponders the Trump Republican, checking the room to see if he what he has to say is safe to say, almost whispering “I don’t get it. These MAGA types. They behave as if Trump is acting for their benefit?”

No one knows if he has someone specific in mind. What exactly is a MAGA type? He’s probably had an image instilled by Democrat propagandists who obsessively grouse about how un-American making America great again would be. Hitler liked Germany, so anyone who likes America is a Nazi, apparently. You have to criticize the country to prove you are sensible. Better yet, hate living here. There’s a prize for the most vitriol spewed. It’s the ‘again’ in Make America Great Again that chafes. Wasn’t America great before Trump ran for office? He must have been referring to the Obama administration, inferring that Obama made the country less great while in office. Only a racist would look at the mess and assume that the first Black president was responsible. It was those intractable Republicans who wouldn’t sign off on to full-blown communism, dammit! In contrast to Trump’s self-interest is Biden’s desire to train adults who graduated college to avoid responsibility for their debts by having college loans paid off to the tune of hundreds of billions of taxpayer dollars. Clearly there is no self-interest attached to creating even more helpless people dependent on taxpayer largesse.

If ideology is the unreachable perfection of human governance, then politics is the direction we happen to be facing while considering our next move to that end. Consider the information received from political operatives pretending to be objective. A Democrat will tell you that Fox News is right-wing propaganda while ingesting strawman arguments such as “MAGA Republicans are terrorists” from left-wing propagandists. Since the invention of television, there was only left-wing propaganda, unless you listened to AM talk radio, which was the media preferred by grizzled retirees in the last half of the twentieth century, at least in this tiny corner of the world. You had to be interested in politics and a lot of us were too busy avoiding responsibility to care about such things. Socialism seemed like a great idea back then because you didn’t have to do anything to make it happen. To break from the socialist fantasy, all you had to do was start paying taxes unless you were being paid six figures or more to tell everyone about how you get a free iPhone in your authoritarian paradise. The internet and Fox News brought right-wing propaganda from the sidelines to the center of public attention. This made Democrats really nervous because they no longer held a monopoly on ideological reality. Democrats may even have been shocked to discover that decades of left-wing programming didn’t result in a majority embracing the Democrats' dream of a socialist America. It is so much easier to vilify anyone watching Fox News or perusing right-wing blogs than it is to provide a winning argument for giving total control of the economy to the spendthrifts in government.

Democrats never really embraced the idea of inalienable rights. The right to defend yourself, the right to say what you please, the right to pursue whatever looks like happiness. If you own a gun, you might as well have gunned down students in a school like the lunatics who would have been just as happy to use a van to run over students outside the school. The use of hyperbole is strictly forbidden in Biden’s America, unless you are a Democrat. The scariest people in the United States of America right now are MAGA Republicans according to the ramblings of an old man best suited for a rocking chair on a porch filled with children who won’t stay off his lawn. Here is a list of the ten most dangerous gangs in the world, just like you would find in Billboard magazine, only it’s about gangs. The number one gang is MS-13, really scary and particularly violent murderers of women and children. They operate in Los Angeles, which while resembling a third-world latrine is still considered part of the country. The list is likely not considered authoritative because it doesn’t include MAGA Republicans, for some reason. It’s heartening to know that the FBI will be focusing its attention on people who say things instead of people who actually commit violence. In case you were wondering, there are MS-13 groups on Facebook.

Democrats and Republicans in Congress have nightmares about January 6^th 2021. Those terrifying MAGA Republicans stormed the Capitol building intending to overthrow the government with no weaponry or plan. Hypnotized to participate in a revolution on the spur of the moment by the oratorical skills of Donald Trump, who incited insurrection by telling people to protest peacefully. It was clever to use the Democrat propogandist’s definition of mostly peaceful when riling up the base. All of Congress was efficiently removed without coming into contact with the insurrectionists who were busy making videos with their phones for social media. Breaking into the speaker’s office must have been proof positive the overthrow of the United States government was imminent. Who knows what rifling through Nancy Pelosi’s papers would have led to if the perpetrators hadn’t been arrested and consigned to the endless hell of facing their accusers without an advocate. It must be awful to be so sacrificial and lamblike, staked as they are on the pyre of American freedom.

They’re still out there. The average Democrat continues “it’s great to live in a country where you can have differing political viewpoints.” It is easier to agree than argue. You can’t shake him awake with discourse. Talking points only lead to an exchange of talking points, each treating the other like a heretic with no resolution -- only positional entrenchment. A Civil War seems like a great idea until the bullets start flying and the house you live in -- along with your neighbor’s house -- are burned to the ground. You chip away at politics, remembering that the American Republic is greater than the land mass that is the United States. The Republic is about the sovereignty of individuals rather than the power of any government. Anyone attracted to power finds such thinking dangerous.

Jeffrey Thomas is a guy who likes the sound of his own voice and thinks his opinions matter.

Image: Dan Keck