MAGA’s Inexplicable Madness

Some of the most stunning images I can recall from September 11, 2001, are ones where we see Vice President Dick Cheney and First Lady Laura Bush among others in the bowels of the White House. They’d been whisked down to the Emergency Operations Center for their safety as the terrorist events unfolded.

It never occurred to me that I should be concerned whether they were Republican or Democrat. All I saw was my government in a defensive crouch, mulling the vulnerabilities of our national security while heavily guarded Air Force One kept President George W. Bush out of harm’s way.

The American in me emerged. Past partisan disagreement was easily put aside in the face of crisis.

This is what we’ve lost in our country, as made painfully clear yet again by the response to the House Select Committee’s final public hearing regarding the events of January 6, 2021.

So often when we (yes, including me) speak of MAGA as a homogenized group, we think about the thugs. The armed, vested, frothing mostly white guys who stand at the ready to inflict harm on the order of former president Donald Trump. The people who are willing to fashion flag poles into spears, bust windows, destroy furniture, and defecate in our Capitol building. The people who are currently on trial or already convicted of crimes committed on that vile day.

What we don’t tend to think about are the — dare we say — majority of folks who comprise MAGA: our neighbors, our co-workers, our family members. We know them to be a variety of things — hardworking employees, doting parents, responsible gun owners, church goers, loyal spouses. All in all, we know them as good people, some of this based on years of entrenched relationships.

Which is why we don’t know what to do with this unhinged devotion to one man by these very same people. For many of us, we have respected these folks our whole lives. Heck, I can name a few people who I spent most of my adult life thinking were way smarter than me. This has rocked me at a core level, making me wonder how off my judgment has been on a whole host of things since, seriously, how smart can you be if you’re all in on a proven grifter?

This is not about differing opinions. I’m tired of that knee-jerk reaction to what I’m saying. It is not…