Welcome to the Moment of Truth: the thirst that is the drink.
The late champion of liberal democratic rationalism, Karl Popper, said, "[I]f we are not prepared to defend a tolerant society against the onslaught of the intolerant, then the tolerant will be destroyed, and tolerance with them... we should claim the right to suppress [the intolerant] if necessary even by force; for it may easily turn out that they are not prepared to meet us on the level of rational argument, but begin by denouncing all argument[.]"
Two groups are at odds these days: the MAGAts, and everyone else. MAGAts can often be identified by their red baseball caps with the words "Make America Great Again" in white letters above the bill. The caps are worn to protest the loss of US manufacturing jobs to China, and are manufactured in China. Not true, according to Snopes. But believable. Truthy!
MAGAts don't always wear hats. They can also be identified by their ideological and aspirational fealty to a sleazy real estate developer, who was born with a fake Rolex on his wrist and mentored by Senator Joe McCarthy's scummy lawyer, Roy Cohn – himself such a caricature of a slimy shyster that even the swarthiest Jews in the arms-for-blood-diamonds business are offended by having to share a cultural identity with him. This sleazy real estate developer, who goes by the name Donald Dump, sports a comb-over of bottle-blond fibers that renders his appearance a perfect metaphor for his moral character as well as his aesthetic taste. Donald Dump found Liberace's domestic decor understated.
MAGAts believe that immigrants and other foreigners, rather than the finance industry, overweening corporations, and self-aggrandizing mega-robber-barons, are to blame for workers' depressed wages, buying power, and standard of living in the United States, and they've finally elected someone as their Leader who will not only feed them this line of monkey gland sauce they find so delicious, but even take bold steps to put on scattered Lysenko-esque showcase versions of remedying what is actually not the problem.
In a global civilization slowly killing itself with fossil fuel emissions, industrial fertilizer and cattle farts, MAGAts believe the answer to all their problems is a bloated John Jacob Astor/Benito Mussolini hybrid reviving the coal industry, so that we may return the once great American sky to its once great condition as a gray- black death shroud over London during the industrial revolution, and thus complete the Dickensian metamorphosis of our ostensibly free society.
They believe making America great again means turning it economically and environmentally into 19th century London, with the gun laws of 19th century Deadwood. And they believe a man who is physical unable to utter an honest sentence, who bilks and abuses those who work for him, who pays women he has extramarital intercourse with to keep quiet about it, insults the appearance of others in the most juvenile way, and gets a giddy kick out of denying manmade climate change, the moral repugnance of neo-Nazis, the veracity of the first black president's birth certificate, and any other self-evident truth he senses his supporters would enjoy hearing him deny – this is the man MAGAts believe will return the United States to the mythical god-fearing, upright, chaste, polite society of their nostalgic Country Time Lemonade delusions, a place where white people will be able to do an honest day's work for an honest day's pay, in dignity. Everyone else, they believe, deserves poverty, prison or to be exiled and terrorized in a former colony of one the great European empires.
MAGAts believe that white people – white men, especially – are being uniquely shafted under an ethos that rewards gays and black people with special rights, like the rights to marry, attend decent schools, and vote. MAGAts are classically bigoted, in the Klan and National Socialist mode, against non-whites, non-Protestants, non- heterosexuals, and non-men. Finally, they are overjoyed by a political leader spouting overt disdain for the rights of human beings to due process, liberty, and the right of the press and the people to dissent, while his rhetoric emboldens the neo- fascist elements in our polarized culture.
So it's only natural that we should hate them, given the hate they have for us and the BS they back it up with. When one of them – take Alan Dershowitz, for example – bemoans being shunned by his former friends, or another of them fantasizes the injustices they would endure were they to drive through a so-called "liberal enclave" with a MAGA bumper sticker, they are met with anything but sympathy by decent society.
Why a MAGA bumper sticker, anyway? Why not something pleasant? Like a bumper sticker that reads, "I Love You, Sardines?" and then drive their car into the ocean and bring the fishes, who work so hard to feed us, a little warmth into their cold, salty lives? They should do something generous, if only from a publicity standpoint. Sure, it's a scary neighborhood, the sardine part of town, but if you spend a short eternity there you'll see sardines are just like you and me. Take the plunge.
Is it rude, is it uncivil, to shun, stigmatize, and hate the MAGAts? Aren't we just as bad as they are if we ostracize, berate, or clobber them? No. We will never be as bad as them. That's the point. They are worse than us. They believe untrue things, and are even jazzed about embracing and spreading ugly untruths that support their fascist beliefs. They want to continue believing that pursuing their version of America, the 19th Century London-Deadwood version, is going to be good for everyone, and if not for everyone, at least for those who play by their rules: admit that white people and men are the best people, Christianity is the best religion, and a blatant and not even very clever liar is the best President. These are beliefs we must extinguish from political acceptability. MAGAtism must be oppressed, discredited, mocked, and eradicated wherever it appears.
I know I'm preaching to the choir, but I also know that this choir has a tendency toward empathy. When it comes to MAGAts, their leaders, and their sloganeers on Fox News Channel and elsewhere, you must fight your tendency to forgive folly. You have to pause, take a deep, mindful breath, realize what these motherscooters are trying to achieve, and lash out irrationally and with unabashed fury. There is no reason to consider their point of view. There is no value to any of their sob stories. Anyone might have an almost identical sob story, yet somehow not have allowed it to turn them into a fascist idiot. There is no room for compassion. No time for it. No reason for it.
If there is a god, Donald Dump is her most botched creation. What was she going for? A duck? A pig? How did human DNA get in him? Was he conceived by a human mother and father? Or was it a mingling of fractured chromosomes suspended in a syrup of rat pus, cockroach urine, and rapist sputum, injected into the anus of a armadillo rotting alive from radiation poisoning? But that would mean he and Ann Coulter are siblings.
That's right, choir, don't be cowed into tolerance. Don't let yourselves be beguiled by the resemblance between MAGAts and Homo sapiens. Work on dehumanizing them in your mind's eye. Imagine having the opportunity to inflict suffering on a MAGAt, or a whole family of MAGAts. Offer no quarter. Demonstrate no compassion unless necessary. And I mean absolutely necessary. Like if you think you're being filmed.
Of all the things that are in short supply right now, kindness is the resource of which we are most in need. Don't waste it on MAGAts. Of course you will pity them. They are self-destructive fools. Of course you will be moved to tears by a MAGAt who has lost their home because a heartless multibillionaire couldn't be bothered to pay his fair share of taxes or his workers a decent wage. Your heartstrings will be tugged by the tale of a MAGAt who has had to file bankruptcy due to medical bills but still insists that a single-payer system will turn the USA into Cambodia under the Khmer Rouge. And yes, most MAGAts have more respect for human dignity than Donald Dump has. It would difficult to be as horrible a person in any respect as Donald Dump.
If a MAGAt is drowning, should you throw it a rope? If a MAGAt is choking on a Tic- Tac, should you give it a charitable Heimlich? If a MAGAt child is about to eat a Tide pod, should you prevent it? Yes, yes, of course. We're not heartless, after all. We're not made of stone, or of MDF, that compressed fiberboard that MAGAt hearts are made of. Just remember, don't take your humanity too far. But if you have a chance to both rescue a MAGAt from certain tragedy and gloat about it, I say, really rub their faces in your decency.
This has been the Moment of Truth. Good day!