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Shelton's avatar

Agreed and thank you. I’m in maga country (Florida panhandle). My family and friends are maga. However, I’ve lost most of them. I’ve been strong in my convictions and that has alienated me from them. I think I’m okay with it, but some days it’s lonely being on the side of reason and logic. I can’t hate like they do. They don’t see it…but, it’s blinding to me. Actually, they think I’m mentally Ill because I express empathy and understanding. Also, they call me a narcissist. I used to blame Fox News, but as you stated, it’s them. All on them. They’ve made their choice to believe that bullshit. For me, I exclusively watched Fox. I voted for trump in 2016. Out of the blue, one day in late 2017, I was watching and something snapped. All of a sudden I really listened and what I heard was crazy talk. Up until that point, I’d never paid attention to what they were saying. I was raised in a Republican home and I’d never put any real thought into why. But what Fox was saying on this random day seemed insane. I turned Fox News off. I felt stupid and ignorant. I have a grad degree and I didn’t understand basic civics. I didn’t know who or what the speaker of the house was or did. I’d forgotten how a bill and law is made. I had no idea who my representative or senators were. So, I studied. I refreshed my knowledge of basic high school government. Well, good for me. I discovered I was a fool and I expected everyone around me to catch up with my new found discovery. They didn’t care and thought I was brainwashed by the liberal media. I guess that’s been my biggest challenge or regret. I wish I would’ve managed my expectations better. Even today I shake my head with their consumption of Fox News and newsmax. But, I understand them because I was them. But, my problem is realizing—they ain’t changing. There will be no come-to-Jesus moment for them. They’re happy with what trump does and who he is. They’ll lose their insurance and blame Biden—A little because Fox News tells them to, maybe a little because admitting they got conned ain’t going to happen. Mostly, they really love being pissed at things they don’t understand. They’re emotionally lazy and intellectually ignorant. They have neither the desire or the capacity to become a better version of themselves. Sadly, they want everyone else around them to live in their world of grievances and hate. That’s abuse.

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Roald Evensen's avatar

trump is on us, America.

We could rid ourselves of him tomorrow, but for the fact that he represents millions of us who want to pretend that the whole of humanity exists to satiate our appetites.

Add to that the fact that we elect self-satisfied cowardly pricks who call themselves leaders.

America is a gluttonous house of horrors.

We are now a criminal state, headed by a psychopath (look it up, people) who would gleefully send ANY ONE OF US to rot in Bukele’s CECOT. He jokes about it in the Oval Office with his new tinpot dictator pal. His sycophants titter in the background.

America should not be surprised at this most recent turn toward lawlessness. After all, we are the people who laughed at a stack of naked men in the corridors of Abu Ghraib. We are the the people willing to create perverse legal justifications for locking up men at Gitmo for decades with little to no legal recourse. We murdered Allende. We took selfies at our lynchings. We built Mount Rushmore on sacred land.

America eats its own and eats the world.

In the 1974 film “La Grand Bouffe”, a quartet of friends decide to eat themselves to death. Not pretty.

Kind of like America.

And the hardest part of trying to love my country?

There are so many good people here. They help turtles cross a busy road. They run restaurants exclusively with the labor of ex-cons who are re-making their lives. They adopt old, three-legged dogs. They pick up moldy milkshake cups along the highways. They build houses for neighbors of lesser means.

But here’s the problem. Plenty of other Americans voted for this president. And his actions to subvert the very idea of empathy, to spoil what’s left of the planet, to further degrade the lives of the poor, and to terrorize immigrants who likely have more to offer the nation than many of our native-born—they are the work of a monster who at 78 years old never for a single moment, not once, asked himself, “Could I be wrong about this?” His policies—legal and illegal—negate the efforts of millions of who work to make the country and planet better, healthier. His bigotry seeks to erase the history, culture and the achievements of our neighbors of color.

I’ve lived through nineteen presidencies with 13 presidents. Until the turn of the century, I always thought (naively at times, to be sure) that America was at least on a halting path toward a better place. Our rhetoric used to be about that path forward, not about “American Carnage.”

Done for now. Had to get this out of my system. My geriatric dogs need to get out to pee before we all go to bed. To get some sleep before tomorrow’s waking nightmare.

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