Living among the encroaching weeds of evil

No small amount of ink has been invested in the question, “Why…?”

“Why do so many people believe that Donald Trump - a proven liar, fraud, sexual predator, cheat and avowed racist - is their savior?”

I mean, it’s not even a question anymore for the rest of us just how bad this evil man is for our country, if not the world. The sooner Trump is legally, if not definitively, sent away, never to be heard from again, the better it is for all of us.

And yet, there are about 70 million Americans (per the 2020 election results) who refuse to hear of it.

That huge number of MAGA followers should scare the living hell out of the rest of us. It certainly has scared the Republican Party. GOP officials have heard the MAGA crowd loud and clear - “…don’t support Trump, and we won’t support you!” 

It’s not a veiled threat. Any run-of-the-mill Republican politician these days who wants to win an election, knows that it is absolutely essential that they be seen AND heard kissing the exulted MAGA ring, if not the exulted MAGA backside it’s attached to, in order to have even half a chance of winning any partisan election.

All that’s required is for said MAGA candidate to yell at the top of his or her lungs that Trump actually won the 2020 election; that (without any proof) there was corruption of the highest order at play during that election; and that the infamous January 6th insurrection at the U.S. Capital was really just a peaceful, harmless demonstration that threatened nobody.

That’s it. You don’t have to delineate critical domestic or foreign policy issues, don’t have to offer any constructive ideas about strengthening the economy; don’t have to offer so much as a flea-flick’s worth of insightful vision about improving anyone’s quality of life.

But here’s the part that is rarely said out loud.

To be a successful MAGA politician, you have to keep cultivating the MAGA soil! That’s right!

If MAGA folks hate someone or lots of particular someones, you have to loudly justify that hatred, and make sure MAGA folks hear you preach it! And telling them that God agrees with their hatred couldn’t hurt either (that always gets a full applause).

Stay away from the truth! MAGA folks falsely believe they channel Jack Nicholson, but in reality, they just can’t handle the truth. Indeed, MAGA folks don’t want to! They want the world handed to them on their terms, the totally deluded way they understand it, nothing else! And they expect you to make it happen if you’re elected! So lie your lips off  to make it seem like all they have to do is vote for you .

Create false enemies - liberals, Democrats, educators, woke folks, poor people of color, victims of police abuse, radical leftists, respectable Republicans, media….anyone who is perceived to be against Trump. Despise these people openly and to no end, and you can’t lose!

Make honest government an enemy. Proclaim government workers evil and dishonest just because they dare to exist, and breathe the same air decent, godfearing MAGA folks do!

I’m sure there’s much, much more I can come up with here, but bottomline is the most successful MAGA politicians do all of the above, and then some. They keep cultivating MAGA soil with shovelfuls of despicable lies and hatred as fertilizer, and do you know what they get in return?

MONEY…a consistent bumper crop of lots of moolah from MAGAland! All from folks - many (but certainly not all) of whom are poor, white, older and disillusioned, who believe that by sending MAGA politicians their hard earned dollars, Trump and his minions will indeed “Make America Great Again”…but only for them!

And those poor folks, many of whom have proven to be spiritually destitute, just keep sending money to, and voting for, any MAGA politician who professes fealty with Trump, and follows the MAGA leader’s playbook to the letter.

It is a dangerous cult of personality that clearly threatens the very democratic fabric of this nation to the point where the rest of us literally don’t know what to expect next.

I so deeply wish that all that I’ve written above was just only a figment of a wild political imagination, except that it’s not. We’re right in the middle of this nightmare. And Trump and his MAGA minions continue to successfully mount this monstrous assault on our nation every day, and is daring us to stop him.

Some have even suggested a civil war may be the only answer in the end.

Personally, I don’t know what it will take to fix this mess (beyond a lot of praying and a whole lot of voting).

But one thing I do know is…if we don’t prepare to defend the decency and democracy of America, with all of its faults, we’re going to find ourselves permanently living among the encroaching weeds of evil.

All because we allowed a garden of suckers to drain us dry!