On the eve of the Inauguration, I would address MAGA personally.
It is not my intention to persuade you to change your views. Not today—you will have your celebration.
If you are reading my work, you know I am insulting to President Donald Trump, many of your Fox News heroes, and the Republican Party, generally. This is fair; they are “in the game.”
I am not interested in haranguing small influencers or regular citizens, and, while I may fail on occasion, I restrain any temptation to call Trump supporters “hucklebucks or “hobbits” or whatever snide things you imagine the “Beltway elite” say of “flyover country.”
I have one lifetime (after which, if the Christians are correct, I will be in Hell), and it is half over. Ten years of it have been spent worrying about Mr. Trump’s fitness for office, and I am set firmly in my belief that he is a stupid, whining bitch. I see in him an autocrat, a fascist, a villain, and a fool. But I do not know you, and I do not wish to lose additional time before that inevitable perdition hating you.
I ask that you consider allowing liberals on the Internet the same grace. Twitter and Facebook have made moderation decisions this month that empower you to find the nearest queer person online and say they should be dead. If that sounds fun, I ask you to pray. People feel very unsafe, and this is not purely paranoia. The vitriol and anger in the political discourse have, do, and will lead to violence—and there are very awful people on both sides.
Before it was moved indoors, I had some intention to visit the Inauguration so that I could see the crowd size first-hand—I quite like attending Presidential Inaugurations, and it could be fun (and easy) to sneak into some of the Inaugural balls to see if all Republicans party like Lauren Boebert. Firsthand, I can tell you that during the second Bush inauguration, those Halliburton bastards could not hold their liquor. I was convinced against this by a relative, the type of staunch conservative who called President Ronald Reagan a RINO, who told me that “if you open your mouth, that mob will kill you.”
Well! I would like to keep out of the gallows, and I cannot be stopped from running my mouth.
I never confronted the guy who was vandalizing the local gas stations with “I did that!” Joe Biden stickers during the early days of 2021. Everybody knew who he was. There was only one guy with that many Trump bumper stickers in a ten-mile radius, and he parks like an asshole. Still, nobody called the police or got in his way. So, if the time comes when they start executing satirists, I ask you grant me the same courtesy.
President Trump won this election, but there are nearly as many people who voted against him as for. Half the country will not change its mind or disappear.
We do not have to be friends—we will not be—but seriously consider that it might be unnecessary at this point to seek more “woke libs” to “trigger” and “troll.” If you see on Instagram (or as I like to call it, “the Gram,”) some purple-haired nonbinary twink drag queens eating magic mushrooms and gushing about Alexandra Ocasio Cortez’s Green New Deal for Gaza, maybe you don’t have to interrupt the conversation (like the Kool-Aid Man) because it would be funny to irritate them. There are people seeking conflict—I sell them t-shirts—combat them instead, or find some nicer hobby. You have already won the maximum number of Donald Trump elections permissible by the United States Constitution; leave the losers alone.
When President Joe Biden described “the restoration of America’s soul,” I wish people tried to understand his meaning. It might have seemed hokey or kitschy, but it was not obscure or wrong. There is little point to any patriotism if the land of the pilgrims’ pride has become a place where, every single day, we should be made afraid or even annoyed by each other’s antagonism.
I understand many conservatives feel the same way, except they imagine the roles reversed and the liberals to have been their aggressors. All right. So, let the score be considered settled and your revenge completed—or do you hope the shining city on a hill will be an argumentative Hell forever?
So long as our Constitution holds, we will be a divided nation, and nobody will ever shut up about politics. So it is better that we start finding ways to leave each other alone and talk about leaders, not each other. Practice: Instead of saying “woke liberal SJW cucks,” instead say “Van Jones” or “Chris Hayes.”
Lord, I am taking a gamble penning this reflection. There is a high probability something is said Monday so egregiously violent or dangerous that this embarrasses me—like the time in 2016 I called into C-Span open phones to say I thought Anthony Weiner (aka “Carlos Danger”) must have surely learned his lesson. If soldiers come door-to-door to kill the “Enemy Within” while I am writing about national reconciliation, I will deserve whatever executions and waterboarding they have reserved for especially nasty essayists. I hope it is done quickly. But I will never hear it said that I did not pursue reconciliation in the best way I know how: by suggesting everybody fuck off.
Sincerely,
Hex