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.