A couple of weeks ago, on a balmy autumn day, I proudly planted a Trump yard sign in my lawn. My wife was on the porch. Across the way came a shout. “Your husband didn’t make you do that, did he?’ I looked across the way to see our neighborhood’s version of Gladys Kravitz. The decibels suddenly rose. “Trump is gonna take away my rights,” she screeched. “You disappoint me, girl!” My wife smiled, put a hand to her ear, pretending not to hear, pulling a Reagan. Gladys’ hubby scampered out and ushered her into the house. The trauma must have made it a whiskey night for vexed Gladys. No rocks, straight up.

Afterwards, we wondered about what rights Gladys feared that Trump would snatch. Gladys is past childbearing age -- unless something biblical happens. She certainly isn’t worried about having access to an abortion clinic -- and what does she have to fear but fear itself in a bluish state? Maybe she doesn’t want grandkids? Or like Bill Gates and every other conscientious Malthusian, maybe she hopes to depopulate the planet? “Manmade” climate change can’t be stopped just by banning plastic straws and curtailing cow flatulence, though those earn gold stars for fine starts. Who doesn’t want to eat bugs instead of a T-bone?

Maybe Gladys hopes to transition -- you know, not in a job but in gender. Trump and most Americans could care less. Yes, Rachel “Dick” Levine is weird and, no, embracing your DNA and accepting your biological maleness or femaleness isn’t weird, despite progressives’ relentless attempts to “Twilight Zone” female sports.

What Trump and common-sense people are aghast at is mutilating kids’ bodies. Crazy them, but they contend that Frankensteinian science can’t turn a 12-year-old boy into a 12-year-old girl. They claim this is a cruel hoax and must stop. Children, say fab progressive parents and well-paid Manhattan child psychologists, “feel” they’re “misgendered” so they are misgendered. In the Brave New World, bodies -- 100% nature made -- are subordinate to feelings. It’s kinda tabula rasa. Charge critics, it’s a cuckoo’s nest worth of refugees from reality cursing and shaking fists at God. Nature, normies are informed, can and must bend to fickle desires.

Let’s not skip the fact that mutilating kids’ bodies is a profit center. When medical center suits sniffed a new revenue stream, well, how hard was it to find surgeons willing to do the cutting? Cha-jing!

Maybe Gladys is worried that Trump will take away her right to have her community invaded by opened to illegals migrants? Diversity is strength and all that word salad stuff. It hasn’t happened in Gladys’ neck of the woods yet, but if momala creatively ballots her way into the White House, a new torrent of migrants will wash across red and blue communities everywhere… for four more years. Or longer, because momala and the cabal that employs her will set about fixing our broken election system. Surely honest elections are a right, and Democrats know how to safeguard rights.

In January 2021, wizened House Democrat leaders Nancy Pelosi and Steny Hoyer unveiled H.R. 1. That comprehensive elections reform measure was cleverly labeled “For the People Act of 2021.” Had Congress passed it, it would have centralized control of elections in Washington, D.C. Gladys’ Democrats claimed that Washington’s control of elections is democracy in action. Concentrations of power ensure our rights. But, finally, why care what the Founders wanted? Thomas Jefferson, James Madison, George Washington, and other slaveholders and misogynists -- and egads, lots of other dead white men -- were vile creatures whose statues deserve to be graffitied and sledgehammered.

Gladys loves the word “democracy.” It trips off Kamala’s tongue routinely. Democracy means everything to end-stage progressivism and means just about what comrades Stalin and Mao intended: We decide, you submit -- with nice, big smiles on the proletariat’s faces.

Vox populi requires that a few extra chairs be added in U.S. Supreme Court. Conservatives disparage that act of democracy as “court packing.” They preach about original intent. Guys like Clarence Thomas, Sam Alito, and Neil Gorsuch refuse to eat from FDR’s old crock of stew. A law’s intent is pretty much what’s felt, say the Sotomayors, Kagans, and Brown-Jacksons, whose feminism informs them unerringly. Ouija boards may also help.

If you want to figure out what’s on your rights menu, do as Gladys does, tune into MSNBC or CNN daily. Otherwise, shut up, sit down, and be grateful that you haven’t been cancelled into oblivion.

Did someone say, “Free speech?” Gladys, like John Kerry and Hillary Clinton, is emphatically for free speech -- within proper bounds, of course. The 1st Amendment requires guard rails, lest speech veer into hate speech and misinformation. Yard signs bearing the names of disapproved candidates are on the wrong side of the guard rails.

Der Führer Donald Trump and his hordes are reckless with speech. Questioning the governance and policies of the benighted cabal running the Biden-Harris administration is undemocratic. Charging that Uncle Sam has been bound and gagged and stuffed into the U.S. Senate cloakroom by Chuck Schumer, while an imposter, oozing corruption, is paraded, amounts to incitement. ls incitement uttering “Deep State” publicly? What Deep State? And how dare Trump ruffians disparage Chris Wray’s FBI? An East German Stasi Lite? Would the FBI get a spanking new HQ if they were bad boys and bad girls?

Who serves as arbiters of good and bad speech? Perhaps bad speech is like porn: elites know it when they see it. Or in Hillary parlance, the village will know it. The village is a collective, more in the Animal Farm mold than Mayberry. Every collective has a vanguard. Hillary, John Kerry, Barack Obama, Susan Rice, the faculties at Harvard, Yale, and Columbia and too many Gladyses to count will arbitrate.

What must keep Gladys crawling walls nights is that a monster is on the loose. Hitler’s doppelganger prowls the fruited plain, meaning to whip inflation, boot illegals, round up criminals, and keep the U.S. out of war. The UFC fights Trump attends just don’t stack up to real bloodletting. Democracy has never been more imperiled. Trump has even teamed up with renegade progressive RFK Jr. to “Make America Healthy Again.” How can anyone suspect the efficacy of Covid vaccines and wholesomeness of Cap’n Crunch? No decent soul doubts the CDC and FDA. And how this side of Genghis Khan can the economy prosper without wars? War is peace, and peace is a fascist scheme to help Putin and waylay democracy. What fate would befall Larry Fink and BlackRock without Ukraine to exploit -- err, develop? As BlackRock goes, so goes America. Ask Dick and Liz Cheney about that.

To date, the vaunted efforts of Democrats’ lawfare warriors have failed to hurl Trump into a U.S. version of Landsberg prison. A frazzled Gladys is further distraught. Hillary and the gals on The View warned that Hitler rose to power through elections. For Trump, this election looks promising. A nightmare scenario is unfolding. Kamala is closing her campaign thundering about the coming Trump dictatorship. In the waning days of Election 2024, the D.C. establishment is doubtlessly huddling to figure out ways to thwart Trump. Democracy demands responses. Alas, whatever schemes they hatch to save democracy may have to wait until the interregnum. Whatever the conspirators decide will square with Gladys. Meanwhile, Gladys plots. There’s a Trump sign across the street that the world needs to be saved from.

J. Robert Smith can be found at X. His handle is @JRobertSmith1. At Gab, @JRobertSmith. He blogs occasionally at Flyover.

Image: Gage Skidmore