'Won't Get Fooled Again'

The challenge before us as a people is not to ‘Make America Great Again’ - or help Trump implement the Christofascist ideology and theocratic inclinations of ‘America First’.

It is to convince many of our fellow citizens that separating children from their parents in the name of national security was and will be one of the most shameful things any country has pursued.

We need to find a way to reconnect mostly white suburban MAGA voters with their own humanity.

If you have met many of them, you already know this will not be an easy task.

And it is not because they are inherently evil, it is because they are manipulated, distracted and over-stimulated with lies.

They are trained to ignore their own empathy and better instincts to dance like seals for the frozen fish flung from the tiny hands of their ringmaster.

Tossed with a callous disregard to crowds of clapping fools. A cultish display and dynamic unlike any most of us have seen before.

Trump has a firm grasp on the bad manners and bad instincts of his audience; he has been tapping into the same constituency long before he entered politics.

He speaks to the hard hearts and halfwits - and appeals to their inherent desires for domination and ignorance over coaxing their better angels into action.

But just because those angels lie to dormant doesn’t mean they don’t exist.

MAGA voters have been conned; their connection with true patriotism has been broken.

They have become willing victims of a dogma that will surely turn on them in short order as well. They just don’t know it yet.

It will perhaps seep in slowly like a nightmare and then become an all-encompassing horror as they realize the true nature of their folly and their powerlessness to stop it - OR we can work to help wake them up from their slumber of madness.

Trump emerged from a character defect in the American personality. It is a recognition of this fact that will ultimately save us.

We can no longer afford as a nation to NOT look at the wreckage of our past.

The elements of recovery in any 12 step program consist of two major ingredients: rigorous honesty and a willingness to look deeply at our part in any given situation.

Especially those in which we feel burned or aggrieved.

A thorough moral inventory can benefit a nation as well as an individual.

One must be honest about the unsellable goods we are keeping in a decrepit and rusted warehouse, some stored for centuries. We’ve held onto and hid much of the wreckage of our past for far too long; it’s allowed men like Trump to gain purchase on the damaged psyches of tens of millions of Americans.

He has given them permission to be the worst version of themselves and to not only run away from our past - he is pushing a culture that glorifies much of what we did wrong and have failed to make amends for. Entire industries are forming and profiting from his misdeeds and malicious lies.

MAGA is a lifestyle brand for sure but it is one that is bad for our nation’s health and well being.

Radical acceptance and an honest appraisal of one’s past can work miracles in bringing about the personality change required to live a life of true freedom.

Honesty and hard work are the opposite of what Trump offers his audience. He is grifting and seducing them by offering a faulty sense of smug superiority over ‘the others’ they perceive to have wronged them. It’s a dangerous lie designed to appeal to the worst instincts of a people in the hopes that they turn over their power to him.

In the case of Trump, this is not turning to a ‘higher power’ but a lower form of leadership that relies on ignorance and brutality and demands absolute fealty.

We have seen what this can do a people time and again in the centuries that humans have struggled with self-rule. More often than not it devolves into autocracy and that is exactly what MAGA is offering its adherents.

They have no idea the dangerous waters into which they are sailing.

They’ve been numbed and dumbed down by powerful messaging and an avalanche of lies, from Fox News to conservative Christian culture that has been designed to allow them to relinquish their power while pretending they are the true patriots.

As a nation we now stand on the precipice of something darker than most can imagine.

We must cling to truth, science and principles that are quickly being culled from civic life, replaced with obsequiousness to the ‘Dear Leader’ and the repugnant Cabinet he has assembled.

Never before has such a befouled brood been foisted on the American people.

Each one seemingly worse than the last; Kash Patel, Pete Hegseth, RFK Jr., Tulsi Gabbard, Doctor Oz - all dangerous clowns and quacks. Predators and Putin’s puppets.

Being appointed without FBI background checks - and if Trump gets his way - without the advice and consent of U.S. Senate, as was enshrined into the U.S. Constitution by our founding fathers.

I doubt your average MAGA voter has any idea the way ‘recess appointments’ of Trump’s Cabinet picks will radically change not only the functioning of our government but the functioning of our democracy.

They stand and cheer when Trump praises Viktor Orban or Putin, they cackle along with pod bros who diss Ukraine or transgender Americans.

Pumping poison and propaganda into the minds of millions of young men and women.

What will that generation be like to contend with? The folks right now being raised in ‘Trump Country’ - taught to hate and demonize their fellow Americans while high-powered weaponry, xenophobia and tough guy theatrics are fetishized.

It won’t be pretty. Even an informal student of history such as myself is filled with dread pondering the consequences of this past election, which in many ways may have been our last in a fully functioning republic.

You can bet that is the plan if Trump and the GOP get their way.

Further gerrymandering and voter suppression will be on the menu; their efforts since 2020 clearly paid dividends in this cycle. Fast food fascism will be in full effect.

Fraught times are ahead but the good news is we can all find the courage to fight.

The headwinds are in our faces but justice is at our backs. This is no longer a fight between ideological policies.

Issues like mass deportations and family separations come down to a choice between good and evil. Let’s be the good guys again.

Not the b.s. myth and pablum served up by the jingoists with their knee-jerk patriotism but the real substance and character-building that can only be achieved by soul searching and virtue.

Redemption has always been apart of the American story and it is time to reach towards it once again.

Progress not perfection, as the say.

We must take ownership of the elements in our culture that allowed men like Trump to fester and metastasize for decades in modern American life.

Musk, Mark Zuckerberg and Jeff Bezos have more wealth and power than most nations and none of them would place democracy above their own profit.

Stop using their products.

You can live without facebook or buying another dongle with one click on Amazon. I know that feels like a challenge and an inconvenience but it is one worth considering.

Inserting Elon into everything poses an almost Shakespearean dilemma for not only Trump but the country at large.

My suspicion is whichever way it ends it will not end well for Musk. It’s just a question of how much damage he can to do our democracy first.

We cannot allow the greed and the dysfunction of men like Donald Trump and the billionaires who do his bidding to bring the rest of us down with him.

He is a bully and tyrant and as ungodly a man as exists.

His family is nearly as execrable as he is. Money has always been their North Star; if any family seems almost cosmically devoid of decency it’s the folks sleeping under the Spanish tiles of Mar-a-Lago.

We can do better as a people and a nation and we must. Our lives and the lives of people you have never met depend on it. Many of them are children.

We owe it to them to go beyond the gilded pomposity of Palm Beach and the plastic people that descend on Mar-a-Lago to pick the bones of democracy.

Flooding our timelines with their privilege and grift.

Trump sits in the center like some bloated beached whale; orange and smelly and inert while the sand flies buzz around his carcass.

There’s no gratitude or thankfulness on order. No giving, only consumption.

Serve the children of our future a nutritious meal instead. The kind that begins with honest ingredients and wholesome ideals.

We can still create the America we want to see our future built upon.

The aspiration of men and women should be that no child goes to sleep hungry - ever. Let alone, separated from their parents and thrown in a cage for no other reason than seeking sanctuary, asylum and safety. The better life that we are told is our birthright.

The rest of our collective history begins now - make sure you are on the right side of it.

The best way to fight back is to become the best version of yourself; the crux of Gandhi’s wisdom when he said, ‘Be the change you want to see in the world.’

You always fight darkness with light - and there is light in all of us. Protect it as you would life itself.

They are one and the same. Share it freely.

Enjoy your holiday.