Tag MAGA

The Deprogrammer

Dusty Leave a comment

I was (Still am, actually) listening to a Spotify playlist of music by The Bobs. No, you haven’t heard of them unless I have mentioned them to you in the past; this a cappella group is one of my longest-lasting musical obsessions, surpassed only by the Living Legend Weird Al Yankovic. The Bobs were great singers — especially their bass, who is amazing — but their real gift was for songwriting: they were strange, oftentimes, and they were sometimes overly cheesy or too experimental — but there are a huge number of beautiful songs, catchy songs, clever songs, impressive songs, and, most importantly, meaningful songs in their catalog.

This is one of my first favorite songs by them. And no, it is not a coincidence that one of my formative memories was having a winter hat that my mother made for me, which I wore throughout elementary school, which was fashioned to look like a space helmet. I wore that thing every cold winter day in Massachusetts; and I was mocked for it pretty much every cold winter day in Massachusetts.

I love that: first because it talks about both living as your authentic self with gusto, even when people (your own mother, for instance) think you’re strange just because you put a colander on your head; and also about being protected from the exigencies of the world, how common it is for us to put on armor — which is, of course, the opposite thing from being your true self, because armor is how we hide ourselves. The song is about someone being weird: but it is also about how so many people do the same thing in so many ways; and it asks the question — which is the path to serenity? Is it safety, partly represented by fitting in with the crowd (and the image of rows of shining hairdryers at the beauty parlor as a sort of helmet is fantastic for showing us this) and partly represented by the fact of a literal helmet, which protects your head? Or is it being who you want to be, represented by the main character’s desire to wear a helmet because his heroes were firemen and astronauts? It’s a great question, honestly; and it’s interesting (especially because it creates a theme that continues into the main song I want to discuss, below) that a possible solution the song offers is to ask other people to join in with your particular weirdness: because if other people try it, and find that they like it, then it’s not weird — and then there’s nothing wrong with wearing a helmet.

And the whole time, it’s just so freakin’ jaunty! How do you not love that??

I know, I know; not everybody loves that. But I do, so — come try it on, nothing can do you wrong.

Anyway, I was listening to a playlist (Which also let me enjoy several of their covers, which are AMAZING: here they are doing a Jimmy Cliff song, “Sitting in Limbo:” Sitting in Limbo) and their song The Deprogrammer came on. Here it is:

So this is an interesting story song, which is one of The Bobs’ specialties, and for the same reason why “Helmet” is interesting: it starts with an unusual situation — a deprogrammer, a guy who kidnaps cult members and un-brainwashes them, which is a pretty wild concept, but also it was something of a fad in the 80s when the song was written (I remember a storyline from my favorite 80s comic strip, Bloom County, in which Milo tried to deprogram — I think it was Opus?); people at the time were understandably terrified by the mass suicide of the People’s Temple, ordered by their cult leader Jim Jones, and they wanted a way to save their family members from a similar fate — but then the story takes a surprising twist. Just like “Helmet” beginning as a celebration of being strange and quirky, and then turning to an insightful criticism of society in general, “The Deprogrammer” turns into the brainwashing/kidnapper building a sort of grudging respect for the cultist he is trying to “save,” and the interesting choice of words when he says, “Maybe this time, I’ve met my Master.” Does this mean the deprogrammer is now being drawn into the brainwashing? Since he joins into the repeated chorus that closes the song, it seems so. And that repeated chorus becomes a celebration of the cult’s mantra and the power of it, and the attraction of being part of a group, which seems to be what defeats the deprogrammer. The cultist he kidnapped, whom he can’t deprogram, just keeps saying “We are the light of a beautiful world,” and the song turns into a singalong, with a crowd joining in on that refrain, along with the alternating lines “The mindless words you are repeating” and “Logical thoughts are self-defeating.” The song adds echo effects and fades out on that repetition, turning into something of a hymn, repeating what is actually a lovely thought: We are the light of a beautiful world.

Who would want to be deprogrammed of that belief? Wouldn’t we be better off with that understanding of the world implanted deep in our psyches, so deep that nothing could pull it out? And too, as “Helmet” maybe indicates, if we can get people to try, to join in and recognize the pleasure and goodness of our subjective experience, then we can all be as one, and no one will have to feel left out or ostracized or marginalized. The world could be a utopia.

Except. Except there’s not a practice, not a worldview or paradigm, with which everyone can agree. Not one. Which means there has to be conflict, when we think like this. There will always be an In-group and an Out-group, even if the Grinch does decide to join in with the Whos’ Christmas celebration. And not only because the Grinch can never be a Who, but also because sometimes the In-group, the common majority mindset, decides to cut down all of the trees: and then not only does that choice necessitate conflict with the Lorax, it needs the Lorax, to speak for the trees.

Not sure why I went full Seuss there, since I was talking about the Bobs. Mainly because most of you don’t know the Bobs: but everyone knows Seuss, especially the ones that have been movified.

But we also have all seen, firsthand, the intentional creation of an In-group and an Out-group: and it has been accompanied by incessant, and profoundly obnoxious, invitations to those of us in the Out-group (One of them; there are actually several Out-groups, with differing levels of ostracism, hatred, or persecution attached to each) to just join the In-Group, and then everything would be fine. Except the In-group was created as a means of consolidating and wielding power, apparently mainly for the prosaic but profoundly insidious goal of stealing as much wealth as possible. Donald Trump chose his In-group, his Star-Bellied Sneetches, and he has been telling them for more than ten years now that they are the bestest: that they are the real Americans, the true patriots, the good people, the only ones who use common sense. And for ten years, I have listened to those same people turn around and tell me that I should want to be a real American, a true patriot, a good person, and a person who uses common sense, and they tell me that all I have to do is: follow Donald Trump. They say it in various ways, depending on the context of the actual conversation: they tell me I should “accept” that Donald Trump is my president, which actually means I should join their group and act exactly like them, including focusing all of my fear and anger and hatred on the Out-groups; they don’t say that I am only given this opportunity because I am a white cis-het man who speaks English and possesses legal American citizenship, but we all know that that is true. I have been told that I should “support” Trump and his actions because he “wants what is best for our country;” though he actually wants to take what is best in our country, and destroy everything good that he can’t take. And, of course, we’ve all been told that we must comply with the those who use force to impose obedience on us, or else we will somehow earn the violence that will be inflicted on us, and which will get no more sympathy than a shrug and a smirk and some variation of “Fuck Around and Find Out!” from the members of Donald Trump’s gang.

This was where my mind went when I heard “The Deprogrammer” again for the first time in probably a decade. (Now I’m listening to “Dictator in a Polo Shirt,” and I want to make a Trump reference about that, but I’ll hold off until I finish my current point. I’m trying to quit tangents, and though I can’t go cold turkey, I can lower my daily consumption.) I’ve been listening to the national conversation revolve around what it will take to turn Trump’s followers against him at last — I mean, it seems like it’s been the conversation for the same ten-plus years that Trump has been in power, largely owing to his iron grip on his base, and the utter spinelessness of the Republican party when it comes to disobeying him. And I admit that I try to kick that football every single time the Lucy of the media hold it for me: they tell me that Trump’s popularity is waning, that it’s lower than it’s ever been before, that his most recent actions or policies are unpopular according to national polling, and every single time, I get excited by the possibility that, this time, at last, Trump will lose his power, and we’ll be able to rein him in, and maybe even achieve the ultimate dream of impeaching him (for a third time) and this time, removing him from office — and maybe even putting him on fucking trial for his goddamn crimes. I don’t even care if the Supreme Court voids his conviction on appeal (That’s not true, I care enormously, but there’s nothing I can do about it, so I’m trying not to care. I can’t go cold turkey on caring: but I’m trying to reduce my daily consumption of caring.), I just want him to face a jury that tells him he’s guilty, and a judge that sentences him to fucking jail time. That’s what I want. Actually, I think that’s what the country needs: because if Trump can go through that process and be held accountable to that extent, given the real and actual punishment of prison time, then it will help to show his would-be imitators and replacements that they can’t just get away with literally everything they want to do, as he has done. We need to go back to having norms, and following them, and that requires Trump to pay,

But it’s never true. Trump won his primaries just this last month: he wanted Thomas Massie out, and Massie is out; he wanted Ken Paxton to run against the Democrat, and Ken Paxton is running against the Democrat. This is terrible strategically for Trump, because he is making enemies among the current Congress (NPR is, adorably, calling them the YOLO Caucus, the ones who are leaving Congress at the end of this term and so don’t have to fear Trump ending their political careers) — but also, the courts are giving him all of the gerrymandered maps he could possibly want, and his voters are still supporting him. And I go flying and land on my back, as the football is pulled away from me. I did it again with the Anti-Weaponization fund, and the news reports that Republicans in Congress “weren’t happy” with Trump’s attempt to steal $1.776 billion in order to pay off his brownshirts from January 6th (I’m sure most of that money would go directly to the Trump family, but that’s a different conversation: all of the bribes for his violent minions would be just as bad as the direct theft of more taxpayer money by Trump himself, and maybe worse depending on how much it would embolden the next crop of rioters before the next election), because the Senate passed his fucking ICE funding without any amendments even limiting how that stolen money can be spent. Even the YOLO caucus failed to vote on amendments in alignment with the Democrats: they gave Trump the bill he wanted. 1.776 billion dollar bills. And 70 billion more dollar bills for ICE. Still no investigations of the killings of Renee Good or Alex Pretti, by the way. Because Trump doesn’t want them, and his government does what he wants.

The reason I keep thinking Trump’s control is ending is because it doesn’t make any sense to me. Not even a little bit. But see, that’s because I’m not in the In-group: I’m not in the cult. I have not been taught to obey the Master in all things, to surrender my will to the Leader. I have been given multiple offers to join, just by accepting that Trump is my master and that everything he says is true, just as I have been told many times that I can save my life if I just comply with the gun-toting thugs in masks who enforce Trump’s control. I recognize that if everyone — everyone allowed to, at least, which would not include trans people or immigrants or those who have incurred Trump’s childish, violent wrath — just joined the In-group, and if we all helped to eliminate the presence of the Out-groups within the US, then we’d all be happier, especially Trump, as he would have both the adoring fans he craves, and the opportunity to steal even more money even more openly (Though I don’t know what would be more obvious than settling a lawsuit with yourself, using your own personal attorney as the currently-un-Senate-approved Attorney General as the one “making the decision” to hand you $1.776 billion, but I’m sure there is more money that Trump could steal, and he would: and he will, because while courts are currently trying to put a stop to the “Anti-Weaponization Fund”, the Supreme Court will surely overturn those lower court decisions and let Trump have anything he wants. Because they’re in the cult, too. At least six of them.); and as long as we don’t mind our world being destroyed by this worthless sack of shit, then we could all be happy together, cheering while we comply, thanking Big Daddy Trump while we do whatever he wants.

Nope. Don’t understand it. Doesn’t make any sense to me. But it doesn’t need to: just like particle physics, which I don’t understand either, the Trump cult is a fact of our world, whether we understand it or not. And even though I won’t be joining it, I also recognize that no deprogrammer is going to be able to save us from them. I think we’ll be partly saved by the unavoidable, and likely imminent, death of Donald Trump (I’m still going to hope that it will come after his trial and conviction and sentencing, even if he never serves a day in prison: escaping a prison sentence by dying would not reassure his imitators that they could get away with the same shit he did: and that might make our country a better place. Not as good as if we managed to pass laws that prevented this from happening again, no matter who tries to do the same shit; but it’s a start.), but I don’t doubt that this madness that happened once could happen again. I don’t believe Donald Trump’s ability to create a cult was due to his unique and unmatchable skills at manipulating people; I think Trump is the result of a perfect storm of events that created a political base hungry to become a cult, and he stepped right into that role: but if that perfect storm happened once, it can happen again. [Keep an eye on Spencer Pratt.]

I don’t know how we can prevent this from happening in the future. I’m not even sure how we can change the situation from becoming as dire in the future as it is now: that is, there are a hundred ways we can fix the American political system in order to keep a future Trump-imitator from doing the same things, but I have lost pretty much all faith in our political system to solve these problems. Our political system could have, and should have, solved this problem in 2021, when they should have convicted Trump of high crimes and misdemeanors, found him responsible for participating in an insurrection, and banned him from ever running for office again: and our political system chose not to do that. Our political system chose to continue participating in this madness, presumably for the same reason the Republican senators voted to pass ICE funding without limiting the theft of $1.776 billion: because this way they can retain their power, and maybe steal some of the money themselves. I have been shocked, but not really surprised, that not a single principled Republican remains in Washington; the last principled Republicans were primaried in 2024 (I’d say it was Massie, who does stand on at least two principles in opposition to Donald Trump, but as he does agree with Trump on every other point, he is not in fact a principled man. Just like anyone who has actually turned on Trump — and I know there are voters who have, genuinely, recognized what Trump is — because of the war in Iran and the economic apocalypse he is building for us: because that means nothing before now was sufficient to turn you against him, and that makes you unprincipled. I’m glad for people who manage to break free of the cult, but their participation in the cult until now is hard to forgive, because again, I don’t think it is Trump’s genius manipulations that created this cult: I think people put themselves in it, and he took advantage. Same with Thomas Massie, who’s a MAGA asshole who just doesn’t like the war in Iran or the Epstein coverup.) I still want to think about and talk about reforms to our political system which would help make the situation better in the future; but I don’t think that’s the answer to the Trump cult, unfortunately.

But this is what I want to say: this is why I wanted to write this post, why I wanted to share the Bobs’ song. Because another way to hear “The Deprogrammer” — not one that fits in the original story the song is presenting, but a way to think of it translated into our context — is as a refrain focused in two different directions: if we imagine the song describing our attempts, as the actual rational people in this country, trying to break the Trump cult free of their absurd willful ignorance, I think the story the song tells is accurate, because I don’t think we can deprogram them. We have met our masters, in the sense that we have met a challenge we cannot overcome — one we cannot master, and which therefore might master us. Hard to say that is not the situation we have been in for the last ten years: we could not overcome the first Trump campaign, and so it took us over; and then we couldn’t actually end Trump’s threat while he was out of office, and so he has mastered this country since January of 2025. I don’t think we are falling under his spell, as I think the song depicts: but picture the ending refrain this way. Imagine it is us saying to the Trump cultists: “The mindless words you are repeating!” just as an expression of outrage and disbelief: how could anyone keep repeating this mindless nonsense? How could anyone still think that Trump is good for this country, that he is fixing our economy, that the tariffs are going to bring back American manufacturing, that the rest of the world respects Trump’s strength and therefore the country is safer with him in charge — and so on, and on and on and on. Mindless words! They are repeating! And we say this to them, and they — deny, or refuse, or curse and spit at us. Even after a concerted effort, with everything at our disposal, to deprogram them. So we take a breath, remind ourselves of who we are and what we are doing, why we are there and working to save these people from the cult that has swallowed them: We are the light of a beautiful world, we whisper to ourselves. Then we grit our teeth and try again: “Logical thoughts are self-defeating,” we say to the cultist, quoting them (Because these are the mindless words they keep repeating) and how they have responded to the clear evidence and logic we have presented to them, over and over again: but it doesn’t work this time, as it hasn’t worked before, as it won’t work the next thousand times we say it, even if we manage to continue finding the energy and the optimism to keep trying, to keep talking to them. What keeps us going, in the face of that obstinacy, that unshakeable grip that the Trump cult has on its members, even today, when he has done everything he said he wouldn’t, and nothing he said he would? We whisper the refrain again, and again, it is lovely, and inspiring, and calming.

We are the light of a beautiful world.

Even if we can’t win this fight, even if we can’t change the cultists, even if they will always be the enemy, will always be a threat.

We are the light of a beautiful world.

Even if the Republican party keeps trying to push the same agenda, in some way or other, for the next generation, because it worked this time and politicians have no actual ideas to create positive change (at least not establishment politicians), and the establishment Democrats keep letting them, because establishment politicians have no actual ideas to create positive change.

We are the light of a beautiful world.

Even if JD Vance, or Marco Rubio, or Donald Trump Jr., or Spencer Pratt, or someone we have not even thought of — like Trump himself in 2014 — manages to recapture power. Even if the Supreme Court remains controlled by rabid ideologues for the next generation.

We are the light of a beautiful world.

We are the light of a beautiful world.

We are the light of a beautiful world.

Bi(Partisan) Curious

Dusty Leave a comment

Donald Trump is going to turn me into a conservative.

That’s probably not true. But it does feel like I have grown a bit more in tune with conservatives as I understand them – certainly how I idealize them, which I know is about as far away from the truth as are the demonizations of the left that are so popular on the right, that we are babykillers or pedophiles or corrupt Fascist socialists who sell American secrets to China so we can feed that money to Hamas to promote anti-Semitism. But one obvious thing keeps coming up: I have grown much more suspicious of government, and much more frustrated with government inefficiency; and both of those feel conservative-leaning.

I mean, maybe it’s not Trump: maybe it’s because I’m getting older, which supposedly swings people to the right; though to be frank, I’m not getting richer, which I think is the actual reason why people become more conservative as they age. It’s always easy to demand higher taxes on the rich when you aren’t one of them – though it is also true that liberals, masters of NIMBYist virtue signaling, are also fond of raising taxes on other people and not on ourselves. I suspect as well that growing anxiety and paranoia contributes to the stereotypical political changes that come with age; as my own anxiety and paranoia are focused almost exclusively on government and authority, it’s basically driving me closer to socialism – or anarchism, even – rather than the increased fear of crime and of marginalized people which I’ve seen in older people around me.

But I’ll tell you what, I do think there needs to be a rebirth and resurgence of the conservatism that I grew up with (Now THAT makes me sound like an old man), at least the conservatism I think I grew up with; though it would be swell if people would first figure out that trickle-down economics is a lie intended to consolidate wealth and power in the hands of those who already have it and who then espouse trickle-down economics. The economic side is coming along, I think, as Americans may actually be figuring out that the Republicans we elected last year have done somewhere between fuck-all and fuck-you in terms of helping make life more affordable, while they fire thousands of people, reduce useful and vital government services, and cut taxes for the rich, as personified by Elon Musk. (I tell you what, if Musk turns out to be a double-agent for progressives, I will yell “AHA!” Because not a lot of genuine conservatives could have managed to throw as much shit on the GOP as Musk has done. I mean, he’s no Trump, but it still seems too much for it to be coincidence.) But I think the rest of what I imagine as idealized conservative values, like small government, local government, a clear focus on maintaining the rule of law and of the Constitution: that is what I think we actually need. And then, inasmuch as conservatism ever represented the values of independence and personal integrity, “family values,” patriotism and Christianity both in a humble, individual sense, I think people turning back to that would be an incredibly good thing.

Though honestly, it would be best if that happened to the people who are actually supposed to be conservative, namely Republicans, rather than if it happened to me. But I will confess a certain imaginary scenario in which someone like me, and maybe actually me, steps into the void left in the GOP after Donald Trump dies or becomes politically insignificant (and God willing let that happen soon), and helps people to remember that there is nothing particularly wrong with conservatism, that progressive ideas need to be tempered in rational ways, that there is benefit in a marketplace of ideas and a political process that features opposition and negotiation, that a single-minded government is dangerous no matter how right-minded (or left-minded) that government is. That the problem with the current GOP is, first, Donald J. Trump, and second, everything that Trump represents: authoritarianism, white supremacy, anti-intellectualism, hypocrisy and narcissism. Not the essential values of conservatives, which, while I generally don’t agree with them, I don’t think they are at all bad. I think the Republican party returning to those values – maybe a little more modernized than the 1950’s Eisenhower Republicans I’m probably imagining – would be the best thing for our country, barring an actual leftist revolution that swept the entire nation along with it, and I keep looking for someone to carry it out.

Can’t find them. Not in Trump’s GOP.

Can you imagine that, though? If someone charismatic enough to actually get Republicans to listen reminded them of what the party of Lincoln should truly be about? I can’t imagine a change in the politics of this country that would have a more immediate positive impact. Not even the hard pendulum swing to the left which I suspect is coming after this particular round of violent greed is over, because as long as progressives and liberals and Democrats in government are opposed by people who will lie with every breath, spread rumors and character assassination with every press interaction, start pretty literal fistfights over every disagreement, and ignore all political norms (Which, to be clear, are the ESSENCE of conservative sensibility, and there is not a much better indication that the Trump movement is not authentically conservative – other than the obvious abandonment of respect for law and order and police authority, in favor of supporting a multiple felon and the complete discarding of all due process) in order to exploit any opportunity to harm their opponents and increase their own power, government will continue to be too dysfunctional to inspire any long-term support for progressive ideas and movements.

Think of it: if the Democrats as they are currently constituted, headed by people like AOC and Cory Booker, Jamie Raskin and Adam Schiff, and Pete Buttigieg and Gavin Newsom, rather than Joe Biden and Nancy Pelosi and Chuck Schumer, trying to actually enact Medicare for All, over the objections of Senators Donald Trump Jr. and Marjorie Taylor Greene-Trump (Dunno if she’ll marry one of the Trump boys or get Trump himself to adopt her, but I promise that she’ll be part of the family in the next decade. I am going to put my money on her taking up with The Nazi Cheeto himself after Melania finally divorces him.), who holds a filibuster on the floor of the Senate to accuse every one of the Democrats of supporting Chinese Triads in smuggling Fentanyl into Gaza to make Palestinian super-soldiers who will be unleashed across the southern US border to rape white women in order to bring about a wave of abortions which will then be used to distill that baby brain juice which keeps the Clintons alive.

What are the chances that any progressive/liberal alliance would be able to survive through that kind of inferno of flaming horseshit?

As long as Trumpian MAGA fanatics remain popular, they will ruin all attempts at a functional government. Because that is the larger Trumpian project: the undercutting of a functional federal government and a social power structure that serves the public interest and the general welfare promised in the Constitution, in service of the two main goals of the movement, namely a more lawless society where wealthy people and the white supremacist power structure can have free rein, and a right-wing-media-fed zeitgeist of apocalyptic terror that allows Daddy Trump to claim that only he has the strength and intelligence to save us all from the dangers and threats that surround us.

I do think that there is real value in conservative ideas and values – at least in real conservative values. It would have been wonderful if the last twenty years had included more genuine attempts to balance the federal budget and reduce the deficit and the debt, particularly in the times of economic growth, so long as it had been done the right way, by raising taxes on the wealthy. You know, the way Eisenhower did it: because asking the wealthy to contribute their fair share would show a respect for individual responsibility, and patriotism in the humble sense that asks everyone to contribute to the betterment of this nation and the people who make it up. (Also, while I’m no expert, I swear that taxing the rich seems pretty dang Christian…) Which value, when taken to a Trumpian extreme, is turned into that your-own-bootstraps nonsense which then justifies – or rather pretends to excuse – cutting Medicaid and food stamps and all of the social safety net, while allowing billionaires to extract all the wealth they could ever want without any return on our investments which made the wealth possible in the first place. I think the progressive desire to create programs that produce positive change is wonderful, but when combined with the liberal/Democratic desire to protect everyone and everything that needs protecting, it leads to levels of red tape and bureaucracy that undercuts the progressive program entirely; and, at least in theory, real conservatives would be useful in tempering or preventing that excess. Take, for example, this: https://open.spotify.com/episode/0uxWGBxJWf2oAB9uyDMoOB?si=407ef6fb2213428a

This episode of Jon Stewart’s wonderful podcast features Ezra Klein, the progressive former MSNBC host, who discusses a program intended to build rural broadband access under President Biden’s infrastructure bill. The program had a fourteen-stage process before a region – state or county or city – could receive grant money, which process produced so much red tape that out of 56 regions that applied for grants to build broadband infrastructure, only 3 had finished that process in the three years between the law being signed in 2021 and the end of infrastructure spending in 2024. And none of those three had actually managed to get the money and build the broadband. Klein goes into agonizing detail – he wrote about this in his most recent book – and shows how all of the delays and all of the red tape are well-meaning, but basically none of it is necessary, and taken as a whole, it was destructive: because no rural broadband was built. Multiply that by every other program Biden’s administration passed, and you can see why the Democrats lost the election: because even their important and genuine accomplishments never actually came to pass in the real world. Klein talks about how Biden planned everything on a six- to ten-year timeline – when elections happen every two or four years.

The best line in the podcast was this: “We are stuck between a party that wants to destroy government, and one that can’t make government work.”

I would argue that conservatives arguing for real conservative values could have counteracted the problems that come with a too-singleminded focus on liberal and progressive values. To be fully transparent, I do think that much of the problem is in the liberal influence on progressive movements, because I think it is liberals and Democrats who insist on political correctness and purity tests and virtue signaling, where progressives are focused on functional efforts to improve people’s lives. Klein talks about that, too, that part of the issue was things like a requirement that the subcontractors hired for the broadband installation represent women and non-white minority-run businesses, which is a great intention to have and a wonderful thing to try to do – but it’s not the point. The point was to build rural broadband (Which, coincidentally, would do a hell of a lot to help a large number of marginalized people; remember that women in rural areas are the ones who can’t find meaningful work opportunities, and also remember that the rural areas of the South are largely not white. Or maybe that’s not so coincidental, but it does show why liberals given total control can sometimes step on their own feet.). It’s this desire, not to achieve real progress, but to be liked, to be good, while working through the process, which makes the left twist itself into knots and get nothing done – though what I am ignoring is the fact that progressive goals and projects are frequently unpopular, because they are expensive and difficult and do not tend to aggrandize benefits in the hands of those who already have privilege, and it requires a spoonful of liberal/Democratic people-pleasing to help the progressive medicine go down… if there’s not going to be an actual leftist revolution, that is.

I don’t really know, at this point, if conservatives really do have that no-nonsense gruff exterior that we think of as people just getting shit done; but that’s what I’m imagining. I just picture a 60-year-old white man (Hey, I’m not stupid enough to think that the GOP will suddenly become multicultural; let’s not go too far into the fantasy) in a committee meeting, who just keeps responding to every liberal feel-good virtue-signaling suggestion with a steady beat of “The goal here is to build rural broadband.” Basically, I think we need people in government who just want to get shit done: not necessarily make sure that everything gets done in exactly the “right” way.

There is an important point to be recognized in the conservative drive to demand people work hard: because while government is necessary to make changes for large groups of people, particularly changes that are not profitable for any other group currently with privilege and power, what it comes down to, always, is people working hard. People in government work hard to make it possible for everybody else to work hard, by trying to ensure that everyone has an opportunity to actually benefit from their hard work. That’s the truth. Take it from me, a government employee who works hard to make other people work hard, so they can benefit from their own hard work. That’s what school is. And I don’t know that liberalism actually pushes people to work hard; within my example of myself and schools, liberals are the ones who get 504 accommodations and IEPs enacted and followed, and who make sure that the curriculum includes social-emotional learning and multicultural perspectives: conservatives are the ones who teach math and science and history. (English teachers are all liberals. With very few exceptions, who are mostly psychopaths.)

In the most simple sense (And I know I’m oversimplifying and basing this on stereotypes; doesn’t make me wrong, though), the recognition in liberal politics of the burdens of social marginalization and intersectional oppression, of mental health struggles and of the value of self-care, promotes a deeply valuable drive for people to take it easy, to relax and take care of themselves. But conservatism does value and push individual hard work, personal responsibility, self-reliance. Not Trumpian pseudo-conservatism, of course, which pushes people to hate everyone who doesn’t have dirt under their fingernails (Daddy Trump, as in all things, excluded, of course) unless the skin of those hands is brown, in which case they should be hated anyway no matter what is under their fingernails; but conservatism tells us that people need to do things themselves, and be responsible for the consequences of their decisions: which allows people to actually make those decisions themselves, without approval by a dozen committees, and then (in theory) holds them responsible for those decisions.

Liberalism is necessary to make sure that conservatives don’t treat people like shit in the name of promoting personal responsibility. (Also to make sure that conservatives in this country don’t go full white supremacist; which would naturally occur, as conservatism by definition is trying to retain and preserve a past system, which in this country means an oppressive racist and sexist system.) Progressives are the ones trying to make the world a better place, rather than trying to retain the status quo. I do not imagine that a United States run by conservatives of any stripe would be the best version of this country. But my God, watching the Democratic party fuck up every single opportunity that we vote for them has worn me the fuck out. The 2024 election broke me. The Republicans are going to lose in the midterms next year, and I am looking forward to that: but I cannot stand to watch Democrats win control of Congress in the coming reaction to Trump, and then do every fucking thing wrong again, so that 2028 swings back to the goddamn Republicans.

But right now, there is another reason. The main reason, the real reason, why I find myself wishing for a renewal of a conservative movement that probably never really existed. It’s not policies, not red tape and bureaucracy, not tax breaks, not cuts to the social safety net. It’s not the next election, not the future of how we see government. It’s none of those things.

I want to find a way to ensure that this country will still exist.

I’m trying not to overreact. I’m trying to see this as just more bullshit from Trump. But, I mean — he fucking sent in troops. Thousands of troops. To LA, to California, under his command, his and that fucking idiot Hegseth. He sent them not because they were needed, not because they were asked for, not because their presence will help: just because he wants to start a fight with the left, with California, with Gavin Newsom personally, who has been criticizing Trump for years, and who is willing to fight him back. Because MAGA wants to have the fight with the left — by which I mean the majority of the population of this country, the ones who don’t want a dictator, who don’t want tyranny, who actually want this to remain a Constitutional Republic, a country under the rule of law. They want to fight all the rest of us. They want to hurt us because they think we have stolen their country and filled it with illegal immigrants and trans people and abortions and fentanyl. They want us to pay for that: and Trump wants to help them do it. Not because he gives a shit about this country or what is happening to it; just because he wants to point his finger and see people die at his command. He wants the full might of the U.S. military to obey him, and destroy those he wants destroyed.

This is not about left and right, liberal and conservative. It’s about this asshole sending fucking troops to LA. It’s really just about life and death: life and death of immigrants and marginalized groups in general, life and death of this country and its self-image, life and death of the rule of law and the experiment in democracy that seems, at last, to have failed.

Our President sent troops to LA. Not to enforce the law: to enforce his will. To set off a fight — a fight that people are giving him — so he can escalate the tension until people finally snap, and fight, for real, fight for life and death.

Because Trump wants a war.

If Conservatives, real Conservatives, would help prevent that, then – yeah, I’ll be one.

I am a middle-aged white man, after all.

And whatever else I think of this country, I don’t want America to fall. Not like this.

Whatever it takes.