You know your town best. You know where people need to be reached.

Across the street from the house with the Confederate flag? On the sidewalk outside the local coffee shop where the guys with red hats hang out? Or maybe in a bathroom stall at Hobby Lobby or Chick fil-A? You know best.

But it’s not a complicated thing to do. And for people like all of you reading this, who no doubt have been doing everything asked of you up to this point (calling congressmen; boycotting businesses with distasteful political affiliations; showing up at protests, vigils, and bridge brigades; and speaking out whenever possible on behalf of democracy), it’s an easy way to inch the needle just a tiny bit further.

In my car I have a box with chalk, rocks, markers, and post-its. (I also have some of those “I did this!” stickers with Trump’s ugly mug to put on gas pumps, but I’m running out of those). And everywhere I go, I like to leave a small message. I leave them in Red places and decidedly Blue places, like the library parking lot.

Here are my reasons why these small acts of free speech (too small to even call defiance) might just matter in the end:

Your statement might be seen by a woman who is afraid of her MAGA husband and who is worried about voting. You could give her all the encouragement she needs. She is not alone.

Maybe your message will be found by a MAGA person worried about the ramifications of their vote. We’ve all read articles and heard stories about how MAGA has given lonely people such a strong sense of belonging. Maybe the person who reads your suggestion to Make America Wonderful Again will feel something akin to relief. Even a touch of homesickness. If they don’t make the big jump yet, it might just encourage them to turn off Fox News in the knowledge that there may be something else out there for them after all. They are not alone.

Your “mini-manifesto” could even be noticed by a fellow Blue person, somebody who’s been feeling tired and discouraged and is given a little jolt of hope by the reminder that their people are still out there. Or it could be viewed by an immigrant, somebody who will heave a huge sigh of relief knowing there are Americans out there who don’t hate their existence. We are not alone.

It’s a small thing to do, but potentially so powerful! In that “beating butterfly wings” kind of way.

Never let your messages turn to litter - only place paper near easy-to-reach trash receptacles. Anything you write on and drop anywhere (rocks, shells, sticks) should be a product of nature. (Last fall I was frantically writing on dried leaves, but that turned out to be a pretty dumb idea). And if anybody ever asks you to wash off a chalk message on their property - well, it won’t happen, because you would never deface private property in the first place. Public property, that’s a different story, and chalk is hardly defacement. Especially if rain is in the forecast!

You might even measure your messages to their potential audience. Library goers, for instance, can handle “FDT” and “8647.” MAGA waverers might have a better response to “MAGA wrecks families. Step away!” (But that would take a pretty big rock, or maybe a conch shell, which could look weird in the middle of Main Street but would also be very cool).

Anyway, use your imagination, and get the message out there that the tsunami is coming. The world is your oyster (shell)!

Oh, that’s one other thing I forgot to mention: a hard-core MAGAt, the guys outside the coffee shop, finding your leaving. They’ren not going to change their mind, obviously. But you might just piss them off - and you’re also putting them on notice.

Now doesn’t that make you want to go outside and grab some rocks??

He said something about Americans that don’t necessarily look like what some people expect Americans to look like, and how they still belong here. How America is a big place, with room enough for everybody.

In the modern day, we all think of the new immigrants to our country, black and brown people from tormented corners of the earth our president refers to as “shithole countries.” But there was a day, not all that long ago if you measure history in generations and not in five-minute social media bursts, when some of the earliest and now most entrenched immigrants to our country - Irish, Polish, Italian, Jew - bore a stamp of shame and stereotype that was often unspoken but nevertheless real.

And for no group of people was the sting of shame sharper than for Arab-Americans. I know, because my father told me the stories many times about the enclave of Syrian Catholics where he grew up in Brooklyn in the 1930’s and 40’s. He told me about how he envied the Irish kids (who beat up him and his friends regularly, when they weren’t engaged in friendly stickball games on the block), because they had blond hair and parents who spoke English and they could actually pass as “real” Americans. Pop’s dad, Zahed, came to America rather late in life and, though quite well-educated and fluent in both Arabic and French, he could never quite master the English language. Pop told of the overwhelming shame the old man felt when there was some kind of scuffle at the local Catholic school, and he was unable to defend his own children to the priest/principal of the school. He solved the problem by pulling them out of the Catholic school and plunking them in the local public school (thank goodness, or Pop never would have met my Jewish mother). And my Syrian grandmother, Amena, never learned to speak or read English properly - she was famous for opening up cans of the all the wrong vegetables and fruits because she couldn’t read the labels, and for the teasing we gave her for not being able to pronounce the name of her favorite color in English, “purple,” because there are no p’s in Arabic.

But there’s one story I want to tell you, because I think it really sums up Pop’s growing-up experience in America, and I have a feeling it might be similar to the experience of many of our immigrant neighbors today. Take a look at this picture:

I know it’s old and crinkly and faded; it’s probably from about 1938, judging from the ages of those pictured. That’s Uncle Bill on the left; Amena in the middle; aunt Helen on the right; there, crouched at the bottom with a big I-can’t-believe-I’m -really-at-Coney-Island smile on his face is my dad, about aged 7. The picture was taken on a rare beach outing on a hot summer day my dad recalled well. He used to describe it to me. I’ll quote his telling from memory, and try to capture that Brooklynese accent of his in the process:

“We’d go out to Coney Island, not often, but just when it got so hot in the house we couldn’t stand it. That was a long subway ride, even from Atlantic Avenue, out to Coney Island. And I remember my mother would pack all kinds of food, good stuff: olives, and sliced up cucumbers, and Syrian string cheese, and maybe some of those dates she used to stuff with walnuts and roll in sugar, you remember those? Maybe some leftover kibbe or lahmajin meat pies. And she’d always make a special picnic food, ejjeh, these little parsley omelets she had a special pan for.”

Syrian ejjeh with ejjeh pan, image courtesy of Sitto’s Kitchen

He’d take a deep drag on his cigarette and a big sip of his ever-present coffee at this point, before continuing.

“And you know what, Chrissy? I was such a dumb, ungrateful kid. I’d look at the kids on the boardwalk, American kids, Irish kids, and there they were with their ice cream cones and their hot dogs and their Orange Juliuses, and I’d say, ‘Ma, can’t I have a nickel to go get an ice cream cone?’ And she’d look over at the American kids and you know what she’d say? She’d say, ‘That’s for them, you don’t get ice cream. Shut up and eat your ejjeh.’”

That’s for them. Shut up and eat your ejjeh.

Those words stayed with my dad his whole life. He fought in the Korean War for two years, and he married mom and had four kids and went on to have a very successful business career. My dad was a tall, handsome, charming guy that everyone loved. But there was a certain kind of person he always gave a very wide berth to, and I still remember those guys. They were often his bosses - Mr. Sheehan, Mr. Lyons. Fair-haired, Irish, country club types. Pop learned to drink scotch alongside them and order steaks at company dinners, but I think there was always a side of him that would have preferred some ejjeh and rolled dates.

And that’s what El-Sayed reminds me of, and why he makes me smile whenever I hear him speak.

He reminds me of the kind of big America that lay ahead of that 7-year-old boy in the crinkly picture above, conquerable and welcoming.

image courtesy of Slate Magazine

I just heard about Iran’s $10 million bounty on Barron Trump’s head.

Wow. May I share the two rapidfire reactions I had to this news? They came in such quick succession I felt almost dizzy, nay, giddy!

Reaction of Pre-Trump me of one year, even six months ago:

What?! That’s horrible. They’re beasts! Who does something like that? Okay, you might not like Trump – I get that – but to threaten someone’s child?! Aren’t there rules about stuff like this, laws that govern war? Geneva conventions or something like that? I mean, MY GOD! As a parent, I just think this is the most horrible, unimaginable thing. It’s so PRIMITIVE, the idea of threatening someone’s family just because there happens to be some kind of rift or war or longstanding enmity; I mean, come on! Who does this? This is barbarism, right out of medieval times. Leave the kid alone – even if his dad is the worst ogre on the planet, leave that poor kid out of it!

And then, almost immediately, the reaction of the post-Trump me of August 25, 2026:

$10 million? That’s a lot of money. And it would be tax free, right? I could see where somebody who happens to know where Barron Trump is could really use that money, some random college student, barista, or dishwasher down at the dining hall. I mean, $10 million tax free is a LOT of money, especially with the economy in the crapper and the stock market struggling to get back to its “all-time high,” what with all the insider trading and the Strait of Hormuz being closed and everything else. And the tariffs! But wait, didn’t Trump kill the Iranian leader’s whole family? So this bounty isn’t really that bad, right? They only want one kid, and Barron isn’t even the favorite! (Geez, I wonder what they’d pay for Ivanka? Someone really should check that out. . . ) Anyway, it’s a good thing I don’t know where Barron is, because I’d kind of be tempted to rake in that kind of cash. Somebody knows where to find the kid, though. After all, money’s money. . .and it’s not like there’s not other kids where that one came from! It’s like high gas prices, or COVID 19, or foreign wars - poof! One day, they’re just gone!

Damn. I didn’t mean for this column to be a tribute to Donald Trump, but it looks like that’s exactly what it turned out to be. How that man has changed the way I look at things!

He’s had such an outsized influence on this country, shifting our priorities and shedding a whole new perspective on what really matters in life, amiright?

Wi$hing Iran all the be$st!

In my last article, I did not hesitate to blame my generation (Boomer) for their alliance with MAGA. But they’re far from the only problem.

Sadly, here in our Republican, blood red corner of PA, there are plenty of young people carrying a torch for the Orange Menace.

All the black and gray pickup trucks with tinted windows in this town are not driven by Boomers. All the cars with stickers of American flags with blue stripes and “I love Jesus” are not driven by Boomers. The homeschoolers next door who gun the engine past my “Hate has no home here” garden flag are not Boomers. The guy with the crewcut who slammed the door in front of me at the gas station the other night wasn’t a Boomer. Some of the houses with Trump signs also have swing sets and trampolines.

And even in my own extended family, there are young men looking for the benefits of AI or cryptocurrency to enhance their prosperity. And they have wives eager for a “safer” America for their children to grow up in.

There are plenty of young and youngish people out there who don’t get it, who think perhaps this is a normal bump in the road of “politics as usual” (who can blame them, especially if they can barely remember an American political scene not dominated by Trump?). There are plenty of young families who just want it to all go away, who keep pushing ahead in hopes it will be for their children like it was for them, that if they keep their heads down and pay their taxes and fly their American flags on the fourth of July, America will be as it should be and as they’ve always expected it to be.

Listen, it’s ironic, because some of those young and youngish people have parents and grandparents they disagree with. They worry because their Boomer parents are out in the streets, organizing and attending protests, standing vigil at detention centers, ferrying immigrants and posting anti-Trump messages on social media. All those Boomers out there making trouble are very worrisome for their children who are eager not to rock the boat, to just wait it out, to live their lives with heads down and good old American obedience.

One forty-something woman I know, on hearing talk of a potential general strike (which of course never happened), whined that such an event would really harm the small non-profit she runs, and her father’s small business, and why should innocent, uninvolved people like them be made to suffer because a few rabble rousers just want to make trouble and agitate the system?

Well, that’s exactly why, I tried to say, to wake up the sleepers like you! But our conversation had already moved on to more “polite” things, because she really doesn’t like the nastiness of politics.

(Note to self: what is the relationship between the words “polite” and “politics?” So many people tell me they think there is something rude and impolite about politics; I must look it up!)

So don’t be too quick to judge the Boomers, the “stupid white hippies [who] need a nap,” as Stephen Miller called us. There are plenty of us out here making the resistance happen, and waiting for some of you millennials and Gen Zers to wake up and smell the stench of corruption, and join us out here on the front lines!

Sources

image courtesy of Substack, and lesdoggggg on TikTok

Am I the only one who’s worried about this?

Last night I attended a production of one of my favorite musicals, Hair, at a nearby regional theater. I was lucky enough to see the show as a teenager when it first opened on Broadway and have never lost my enthusiasm for the music or the message.

As I watched the young actor playing Claude Hooper Bukowksi, circa 2026, anguishing over burning his draft card in 1968, I thought of Kegsbreath’s many invocations of Bible scriptures (and Pulp Fiction scriptures, of course), braying about the righteousness of war and the honor of sacrifice and even hinting at a draft, going so ominously far as to make draft registration automatic for all eligible men between 18 and 25, thereby ending the long-established process of self-registration.

I wonder how many new Claude Hooper Bukowskis are waiting in the wings, ready to take the stage in the next generation’s version of Hair as they are forced to participate in an unpopular and unwinnable war in Iran?

Now back to the graphic pictured above.

At intermission I turned to the lady next to me, who was clearly around the same age as me (read: old, but in a dignified way!). Because I find it hard to remain silent about these things, of course I had to speak up.

“Can you believe it?” I remarked. “I look at those kids up there and realize I’m them 50 years later, still in the streets.”

She looked perplexed.

“The resistance?” I persisted. “Are you not objecting to the Trump administration?”

“Ohhhh,” she said. “Of course! I can’t stand them. I hate everything they’re doing.”

A moment passed.

“But,” she sighed, “what can we do? We’re at a play tonight, so we might as well just enjoy it. No sense thinking about it.”

NOW does the graphic make sense?

I’m really worried about those over 100 million who just want to “relax and enjoy life.” Even though their hearts are often in the right place, and their minds might be firing on all cylinders, their willingness to duck and cover might just end up biting all of us in the ass.

Maybe they’re just thinking, I’ll vote, that will take care of it.

Or worse, What’s the use, mine’s only one vote. And I don’t want any trouble at the polls.

Or maybe, I’ll vote by mail, if I remember. Or if I signed up to have my ballot sent, I can’t remember. And if I get it on time, and I’m not away on my cruise then.

Now it could be because I’m heavily involved with the immigrant community, and interacting daily with a lot of innocent, beleagured people who are finding it awfully hard to relax, that I feel so strongly about this. But there’s plenty of work out here that needs to be done!

Even those annoying phone calls and emails to our representatives in Congress. Are you at least doing that, I wanted to ask the nice lady beside me, but I didn’t want to inflict any more lack of enjoyment on her.

This morning I read the local review of last night’s play, by Rich Mehrenberg:

“Lastly, speaking of generations, this show lands differently in 2026. Hair is a celebration of peace, love, and joy associated with the youth culture of the Boomer generation. When the show was first produced, it was easy to go along with the idealism and righteousness that the story celebrates. However, with time and reflection, the question that kept nagging me as an audience member was when and why did this generation change their priorities?

The Boomers who vehemently opposed the Vietnam War are the same ones who enthusiastically endorse the current war with Iran. The youth who joyously embraced ‘I’(M) Black’ and ‘Colored Spade’ are now doing their best to remove any traces of DEI in this country. Hippies went from singing ‘Good Morning, Sunshine’ to fiercely rejecting any exploration of renewable energy. It was difficult for me to appreciate the earnestness of the show without taking it in with much more than a grain of salt.”

Damn, he’s right! What happened to us?

I hate the idea that my generation (Boomers) are the turncoats who form the foundation of MAGA. Yes, it’s true that Trump is a Boomer, but he’s quite clearly the kind of person that most of us would have hated in our youth. Square, establishment, clearly a sell-out, a kiss up, a drag, a fink, a drip, and a dope; he was decidedly not cool, not in the groove, the kind of turnoff everybody just tuned out. He was the very embodiment of the “square” adult figures and parents that Hair ridicules: “What the hell you got, 1968, that makes you so damn superior? And gives me such a headache?”

Even Trump’s status as a bone spur coward draft evader doesn’t earn him the respect due to the draft card burners and conscientious objectors who fled to Canada! That took some cojones.

I read a book by Turkish journalist Ece Temulkuran, How to Lose a Country: The Seven Steps From Democracy to Dictatorship. I don’t have a copy of the book in front of me, but to paraphrase, one thing that really struck me was Temulkuran’s description of the boiling frog aspect of totalitarian takeovers. I guess it’s like bankruptcy: it happens slowly, and then all of a sudden. We’re getting close to the “all of a sudden” part of the process. But one thing Temelkuran said that really stayed with me is how things won’t look all that different for a long while under dictatorial leadership: cafes will be open, and there will be sunny days, and kids will go to school, and you’ll still attend parties and go shopping. So it’s very easy to be fooled, or to ignore the gathering storm clouds. It’s easy to make excuses: We’re at a play now, I’m busy with work, I can still afford groceries, thank God I have health care, I don’t know any immigrants, I just won’t watch the news and get myself upset.

I’m not saying we should abandon all attempts to enjoy life; quite the opposite, in fact. I think we have to seize all the moments of joy where they present themselves, but we can’t look away from the misery, either. Nor can we take out eyes off the storm clouds, because no picnic can last forever. Keep the umbrellas handy!

Oh, and the answer the then-young Boomer generation gives to that parental question posed in Hair?

“Well, if you really want to know, 1948, I got life, Mother. I got laughs, sister. I got freedom, brother. I got good times, man. I got crazy ways, Daddy. I got million dollar charm, cousin. I got headaches and toothaches and bad times, too, like you.”

And isn’t all any of us has, at the end of the day?

Sources

https://www.broadwayworld.com/central-pa/article/Review-HAIR-at-Gretna-Theatre-20260725

https://people.com/us-military-automatic-draft-registration-11946348

Temelkuran, E. (2019). How to lose a country: The seven steps from democracy to dictatorship. 4th Estate.

What you are about to read is not true. It is allegedly true; quite possibly true; very likely true; maybe even 97% true or even 600% true, to invoke a popular Trumpian statistic. It might also be a figment of my imagination. It is, I admit, based on a strong hunch. A spidey sense borne of many years of observation.

So I guess what I’m saying is, if the highly litigious Donald J. Trump wants to sue me because #11 or #23 is not true, he’s welcome to do so.

But I’m 800% sure he won’t, because I’m 1500% sure I’m right.

And now, 25 things Donald Trump has (very, very likely) never done:

1.encouraged a dog to sleep on his bed on a cold winter night

2.carved a pumpkin

3.whipped heavy cream into frothy peaks

4.driven a car

5.taught someone else to drive a car

6.pumped gas

7.counted out change

8.petted a kitten’s belly

9.made a snow angel

10.exulted over a window seat on a long train trip

11.written a thank you note

12.planned a surprise party for someone

13.felt salt spray on his face on a boat ride

14.found an arrowhead or a sand dollar

15.asked an elderly relative about their childhood

16.played a musical instrument

17.raked or jumped in a pile of leaves

18.gotten an unexpected Valentine

19.made someone an ice cream soda

20.kneaded bread dough

21.run a mile

22.tried his hand at pastel painting

23.ridden a bike

24.finished a jigsaw or crossword puzzle

25.let a child win a game of Scrabble

I might be way off on this, but there’s just something so weird and alien about the current occupant of the White House. It’s hard to picture him doing any of the normal things that everyday people do, which is not only creepy and sad, it’s also dangerous. If we have no common ground, no shared experiences as Americans or even as human beings, well, where does that leave us?

Alone. Isolated. Cut off.

All 350 million of us, that is, cut off from that one alien dude in the White House.

Right off the bat, in this essay, I’m not talking to anyone who refers to “the Gulf of America.”

Who calls the current occupant of the White House “President Trump.”

Or who thinks our country has a “Department (or a Secretary) of War.”

Who refers to anyone as “illegal.”

Who thinks all those afore-mentioned “illegals” are criminals and rapists, or believes that they didn’t come into the country the “right” way.

Please, if you think if we’re benefiting from the “art of the deal” in Iran, I’m crossing the street to avoid you.

I certainly am not addressing anyone who thinks of Trump as a “good businessman” - in fact, I’m making darn sure I never have to do any business with you, including splitting a lunch check.

People who think communism is socialism, Saudi Arabia’s a good ally and Spain is “scum,” tariffs are paid by the country they’re levied on, and dead senators can easily be swapped out for their sisters, line up over here. Not talking to you.

In a nutshell, here’s who I’m NOT talking to:

You remember that kid at the pool who only knew how to splash water at everybody else - and never stopped? And thought it was so funny? Or the third grader who cut in front of you to get to the water fountain? Or the sibling who swore they didn’t take the last sour apple lollipop even as you watched them eating it?

I certainly remember them. And I remember that when you went to complain to whatever grown-up was in charge, the lifeguard or teacher or parent would just look at you with wise, tired, adult eyes and tell you how “dopey” all those aggravating nine-year-olds were. And they’d tell you not to waste your time, or theirs, on such nonsense.

When the word “dopey” popped into my head for the first time in fifty years just the other day, I was so glad to think it again “Dopey!” That’s just the word we need right now.

(Look, I’m not ignoring the fact that we live in deranged, dangerous, dark times. But that doesn’t mean we can’t take a moment to think about how “dopey” it all is, too.)

Washington DC, for example, is being lauded as never having been more beautiful. The reflecting pool is infested with algae, the South Lawn is torn up, the Kennedy Center is covered with tarp, the East Wing is a demolition site, the Rose Garden is a paved patio - but yeah, “beautiful.”

That’s dopey, right?

Mitch McConnell is both alive and dead. The Strait of Hormuz is both open and closed. The new presidential ride, Qatar One, is both safe and unsafe. Insider trading is both happening and not happening. Transparency about ICE is bad but transparency about blatant corruption is good. People who call Social Security about missed payments are fraudsters (Lutnick). The Iran war is an exercise in patriotism and keeping America safe and it’s “going to make us a ton of money” (Graham). Gas prices are going down. Trump smells like a spring bouquet. Mar-a-Lago face looks lovely and youthful. Leftists should be deported.

And just yesterday, Andrew Tate, the manosphere influencer, the ultra alpha male abuser and terrorizer of women around the globe, was arrested wearing a plum-colored blouseshirt with a plunging neckline, form-fitting capri slacks, and a pair of narrow shoes that look suspiciously like. . .espadrilles??

Yes, all this stuff is dangerous, in a way that eating the last sour apple sucker certainly isn’t, but it’s also just so damn dopey.

It’s why the intelligent and reasonable among us are so freaking exhausted. Dumb is exhausting!!

How much dopiness can we take?

Dopiness that could get us killed or deported is still dopiness, right? I’m thinking of Alexei Navalny’s autobiography, Patriot. Every day his life hung in the balance in a Siberian prison camp, and yet he could still clearly see the dopiness of his jailers and the entire Russian kakistocracy. And he wrote brilliantly, mockingly, about that dopiness, their most salient feature even before their sheer evil.

The current occupant of the White House, of course, is cruel and malignant. He’s also seemingly illiterate. Dopey on steroids. Before we indulge our deep terror over the threat he poses, can we just take a brief moment to reflect on his sheer dopiness?

Of course, the dopiness IS the scary part. Because he thinks he’s a fully functional human being, nuclear button and all, and apparently so do all the dopey people around him.

But relax. No sense getting worked up. Have a Dum Dum. I recommend the sour apple.

Oh, by the way, did you know “dumb” actually has a “b?” No? Apparently many people don’t realize that.

The dopey ones, anyway.

My family’s never been one for outright displays of patriotism. Being American was just what we were. It meant we got to celebrate Memorial Day, the Fourth of July, Labor Day, and Thanksgiving. Did that make us American? We all had identical navy blue passports. Did that? Dad and Uncle Bill were “grunts” in Korea; Uncle Emil and Uncle Sidney served in WWII. So that made us American, right?

When my brilliant younger brother (who went on to Columbia University and a career as a professional journalist) was in junior high, he entered a contest sponsored by the local VFW or American Legion, I forget which, and won first prize for his essay on “What the Flag Means to Me.” But what did the flag mean to him? He is deceased now so I can’t ask, and I’m not sure anyone knows what became of that prize-winning essay. I do remember rolling my eyes at its contents as a jaded high schooler two years older than him, but was it the corniness of the topic, or the fact that I was just jealous he won? Or was he, somehow, more American than me?

A few years after that it was the summer of 1976, and I was studying in Spain at the University of Salamanca’s accelerated program for foreign students. I remember being kind of bitter because it was July 4 - the Bicentennial! - and I was far from home. I went to a telefonica, a big room where people could go to place long-distance calls, and paid way too many pesetas to hear my faraway family members burble excitedly about the tall ships in New York harbor and the amazing fireworks displays and parades going on all around town. And Mom had made a red white and blue cake for dessert, with blueberries and strawberries! I hung up the phone feeling keenly and wretchedly American that day, another sleepy Sunday in Salamanca with nothing particularly exciting going on.

And then there was the gentle teasing I endured from my Spanish friends every time we went tapa-hopping, and I always wanted to gulp down my little glass of wine (“waste not want not” didn’t translate well into Spanish) before hopping on to the next bar, and they thought my Puritan ethic of getting my money’s worth of wine even in a country where the stuff (literally) flowed like water was pretty funny.

It wasn’t long after that, though, that I experienced another form of being American, an unpleasant first for me.

Salamanca had a community pool where a lot of the university students liked to hang out. I was there one day, and I don’t remember if I was the only American, but if I was, I was the only one conversant in Spanish (our lingua franca). Most of the kids hailed from other European countries: a lot of French, some Germans, a handful of Italians and Portuguese, and on this particular day, a Swiss kid singled me out in the crowd and decided to regale me with some of his anti-American viewpoints. He called me a capitalist, an imperialist, and blamed me for the Vietnam War. He demanded I respond with some kind of justification or excuse. I felt sorely ill-equipped to defend my country (why had I poured so much energy into my language classes, and nodded off so often in History??). I’d always found Vietnam a particularly confusing subject, ever since I’d become aware of it around 1971 and tried to catch up. I stood there shivering in my bikini and towel, looking around at the European, distinctly non-American faces surrounding me, and thought So this is what it’s like to feel American.

I think I managed to stammer something about Switzerland’s neutrality and their not being much use in any conflict, which didn’t really redeem my American credibility but made me feel a tad bit better. I wished my kid brother had been there: he’d give them what for, telling them all what the flag meant to him!

Years later I was a flight attendant, traveling to Canada, Mexico, Europe, and Latin America weekly, so that they began to feel like my own backyard. I always tried hard to apply my language skills and genuine curiosity about other cultures to try to dispel anyone’s ideas about “the ugly American.” I once got into an argument with a pilot on a layover who wanted to me to ask a Parisian waiter for ketchup for his steak frites. I refused to do it, explaining it was gauche, and besides, he’d probably get a dish of tomato sauce anyway, since ketchup was non-existent in Paris at the time. He told me in no uncertain terms it was my “job” as the French speaker in the group to get him some ketchup, so I managed as best I could with the perplexed waiter, who promptly brought out a saucer of tomato sauce. The pilot glared at me through the rest of the meal and it made me wonder if somehow he was more American than me.

In the late 1990’s I was flying pretty regularly to Brussels and had a group of friends there who thought Americans’ prudishness over Bill Clinton’s well-publicized affair with Monica Lewinsky was downright hilarious. Why, when Francois Miterrand died in 1996, they loved to point out, his mistress and secret daughter attended the funeral right alongside the legitimate family! I couldn’t think of anything to say that didn’t make me seem even more prudish, so I just gulped down my wine to the very dregs and tried to make one of those blase Gallic gestures (“Euh”) to show that as an American, I was perfectly able to hide my disgust and embarrassment with the same jaded veneer they all presented.

So over the years, here’s what I collected: being American meant being thrifty, prudish, ignorant about our own history, and unsophisticated about sex.

And, to top it all off, I still had no idea what the flag meant to me.

You know, there is something I’ve forgotten to mention up until now: the pride. The pride I’ve always felt pulling out that navy blue passport at Customs and Immigration. The pride I’ve always felt in answering the inevitable question every traveler gets: Where are you from? Saying the pledge of allegiance in school all those years, even singing the Star-Spangled Banner, was just kind of a pro forma, baseball game kind of thing you had to do. But I have to admit, hearing the strains of the national anthem on foreign soil always did fill me with a certain swelling pride. In those moments, there was no shame or confusion in being American.

Just a week or two ago, though, something happened that made me rethink the whole thing yet again. Something that normally would have brought out that instinct of pride, but that now affected me in a completely different way:

A close friend of the family, an elderly Frenchwoman, was describing the liberation of Paris when she was a child. She remembered standing with her father on that hot day in August of 1944, watching the tanks rolls by, so happy and joyous, and on top of one of the tanks, high up in the air, she spied an American soldier. “An American!” she said breathlessly in relating this story 82 years later. “It was the first American I had ever seen - and I thought he was a god!”

I think at one time I would have liked that story, but I guess my Americanness has really changed in the era of Trump. “No!” I wanted to tell her. “We’re not gods! Clearly we’re not gods, and it’s too bad we ever let anybody think that! We’re thrifty and foolish and sometimes ignorant and unsophisticated, and we laugh too loud and smile too much, but we’re good people just like all the other good people in the world, and it’s time the world saw us for what we really are!”

There. I feel better already. I’m an American with feet of clay like every other American, guilty of all those stereotypes and weirdly proud of that!

Now, if only I could figure out what the flag means to me. . .

The last long piece I wrote on Substack had me thinking I would spend a lot more time exploring the who’s who of MAGA and the what’s what of people who think, in SNL terms, “just a little differently.”

But nah.

Is it really worth it? We can analyze till we’re blue in the face (and we’re already Blue enough, right?).

A couple of things have helped me understand the “how” of MAGA. Take a look at this diagram of “circles of moral concern,” a concept that goes back as far as the second century Stoic philosopher Hierocles, but which has since been tweaked and refined many times over, and used as a framework to understand human society and mankind’s empathetic priorities:

Can you find yourself in those circles? I’m sure you can, probably in the outermost green circle. Maybe even a little outside of that, outside the circle itself, just in the event there are some friendly aliens out there who could use some loving kindness!

Now think about MAGA. Where do they fit into the circle? You got it. They’re lucky to make it into the third circle, the “friends” one. In fact - ironic side note here - of the friends I’ve drifted away from or severed ties with during these politically strained times, including the ones who bleated the loudest about how badly I’ve treated the relationship - I can’t help but notice that some of them happen to owe me something - a favor, perhaps, or some small kindness, a lunch, a birthday text even. Funny I never noticed that lopsidedness till now, till they tested my patience and protesteth too much over my political “rudeness”. . .

Some of these disappeared friends are from a group I think of as sub-MAGA, the quiet ones who have “no opinion” on the news of the day or if they do, they don’t care to share it openly. This is a quote by the 84-year-old German filmmaker Werner Herzog that has been making the rounds on social media:

“Dear America, You are waking up, as Germany once did, to the awareness that 1/3 of your people would kill another 1/3, while 1/3 watches.”

Now that quote reveals something far more interesting to me than MAGA per se: “the 1/3 that watches.” MAGA is the 1/3 that will be doing the killing, but who are these 1/3 that will be doing the watching?

They are the ones, in fact, that we have to watch. That last 1/3 are the most dangerous Americans of all. They think politics is rude and unpleasant, and they don’t like to talk about it. They think their opinions are their own and no one else’s business and they shouldn’t be judged for what they think because what they think is secret and nobody else’s business and they certainly wouldn’t want to see anyone HURT, but…. BUT! How can there be a BUT? Massive injustice and flagrant corruption are happening all around us and they decline to make a comment. Why? What’s so controversial about their opinion that they can’t just come out and say what they think? My (former) hairdreser has a policy of “no politics at work,” so she won’t put up a sign in the salon’s front window saying ICE is not welcome there. Why? Because it’s her opinion that politics is rude and unpleasant and impolite, and could offend someone (like perhaps a paying customer?). Therefore, opinions are to be kept to oneself and risks are not to be taken?

A lot of those in the 1/3 say they don’t like Trump - they’re not the same as the 1/3 that would kill us, mind you - but their willingness to watch us be killed is just as deadly.

What to do about it? The helplessness can be paralyzing; we can’t give in to it.

In my next Substack, I’ll share some ruminations about the changes we are experiencing.

Please feel free to share your own thoughts in the comments below!

Image of moral circles courtesy of ResearchGate

The people I’d like to talk about today are those Americans who live next door to us, maybe even sleep in our beds, who work alongside us, drive on the same roads as us, and even enjoy dinner right at the next table in our favorite restaurant.

They’re the ones whose voices we never hear in the resistance circles we increasingly spend our time in.

Maybe it’s because they’re the folks we haven’t been spending much time with lately, even if they’re physically close by; they always seem to be sighing or harumphing or storming out of the room every time we open our mouths. Or they have taken to just looking at us and shaking their heads sadly.

Who are these mysterious people, anyway?

Why, they’re what I call the brake retarders of progress! They’re the ones who made Trump possible, who are holding us back from where we need to go as a country in a modern, global, twenty-first century world, and who are throwing the bigget turd ever into the punchbowl of our upcoming 250th birthday party. That’s why I think of them as brake retarders on progress. Brake retarders on happiness. Brake retarders on freedom.

Let me introduce you to the three groups of brake retarders I’ve identified here in this little red corner of my deep purple state:

First, we have MAGA. Those are the people who scream “TRUMP!” (or worse) out of car windows, their faces red with fury, as they gun the engine past protestors standing on street corners with peace signs. They’re the people with the tattered TRUMP 2020 flags hanging from their front porch, the people who can’t shut the hell up about how Biden ruined our country, the angry-looking older men peeling furiously out of the gas station because they don’t like what it just cost to fill their pick-up truck.

That’s MAGA, and most of us haven’t exchanged a civil word with them since 2016. So let’s move on. . .

Next we have the MAGA-adjacent Righteous Ones. They’re the ones that are just so worried about our country, who want to protect children from illegal immigrant rapists and transgender teammates and dangerous books. They’re the ones who just thought a businessman would be better at running the country, and who think raising your voice and making a stink at school board meetings is really annoying considering they had to live under Biden for four whole years, and Trump hasn’t even been president for two, and if you don’t like it, just wait your turn like they did and in three more years you will once again have a chance to choose your president, but for right now they’re just breathing easier knowing Trump is in charge, even though, well, sometimes he is a little coarse and a tad bit vulgar, but at least we’re SAFE here in America now.

Of course, the MAGA-adjacent Righteous wouldn’t know if they were safe if they were right in the headlights of Godzilla driving an army tank into their suburban subdivision. They are absolutely clueless, and most of them have some large MAGA presence breathing fire into the air they breathe and the water they drink, which is why I refer to them as “MAGA-adjacent.” It might be a husband, a child they don’t wish to anger, a friend they don’t care to risk losing. These folks view themselves as “doing their own research” and “thinking on their own,” but really their hallmark is their almost total lack of thinking. They also view themselves as very reasonable, tolerant, and “safety first.” They are willing to speak up on the things that matter to them even through their haze of misunderstanding because they “don’t hate anyone,” although they do ooze great quantities of pity and piousness from their very pores.

The righteousness of the MAGA-adjacent Righteous is almost as dangerous as the fury of MAGA. Be wary of them.

Next up in the pantheon of the brake retarders are the ones I call “whiff of MAGA.” They wouldn’t like that designation because it sounds faintly impolite and these people are VERY sensitive to impoliteness, because they are, above all, polite. They are polite, and they are apolitical, and it’s funny how those words look so similar next to each other! These are the people who float through the world with no sense of danger – using the neat little trick of closing their eyes. They especially dislike politics because of its very rudeness, and often spout the opinion that “Everyone’s entitled to their own opinion.” They like opinions just fine, so long as they’re about paint colors for the kitchen, jalapenos on pizza, sports teams, best hotels at Disney, etc. They just don’t like opinions on politics because – circular argument here – politics just seems so rude. These are also the people that haven’t turned on the news since January of 2025 – it’s just too stressful and downright rude sometimes. That’s their opinion and they’re entitled to it, right? You might even have found that your presence makes these people feel so uncomfortable that they have subjected you to their ironclad rule: No talking about politics. The very politeness of Whiff of MAGA often feels like a club to the side of the head, or an electric shock to the thinking part of the brain.

Stop talking about politics and eat your disgusting jalapeno pizza!, the people whose opinions must be respected will tell you.

Anyway, those are the different types of brake retarders I’ve encountered in my little corner of the world. Perhaps you know some others kinds?

In the next Substack or two, I’ll explore how these people might have wound up like this, and then we’ll contemplate what if anything we can (or should) do about it. For our country, and for our own sanity.

Stay tuned!

We’re at war with Iran. Unless you’ve been asleep for the last couple days or in a coma, you surely are aware of this.

A small group of resistors held a protest on a busy street corner in our town this past Saturday, hours after learning of this scary new war. Our protest had been previously scheduled in alliance with the March 4 Democracy in Washington DC, but turned out at the last minute to be something of an antiwar protest.

The street corner where we stood is an active one, with lots of traffic coming from four different directions. We’ve been there before, and since this is a seriously red town in our little corner of south central Pennsyltucky, we’re used to getting the finger, having cars gun their engines and blow exhaust fumes in our face, and enduring red-faced people yelling “TRUMP!” at us from pickup trucks festooned with battered American flags. But this past Saturday morning felt different. . .even more hostile, if that’s possible.

There was less supportive honking than we’ve come to expect - a function of confusion? Melancholy? Fear? There was much more pro-Trump activity, but that seemed to come from a place of fear and confusion too. A guy yelling at us from his truck about our lack of respect for the Constitution. A guy on a motorcycle with a distinct Arabic accent shaking his head at us and saying that we don’t understand what “very bad, very evil people” the Iranians really are. A young woman yelling at me to “Go back to the nursing home!” (I’m celebrating my 70th birthday today and no, I don’t color my hair.)

There was, however, an undercurrent of franticness that belied all that jingoistic “patriotism” on display last Saturday morning. The guy with the Arabic accent had his own ax to grind (and never mind his great good fortune to have been allowed to live in this country, where his freedom of speech is all but guaranteed), but everybody else, the dyed-in-the-wool MAGA Americans, seemed to be at a loss. Yelling “TRUMP!” or hurling insults at old ladies on street corners seemed to be all they could muster on short notice with the brand-new news of the Iran war percolating in all the muck of their Trump-infested minds.

Besides being old, I also happen to be Jewish, and I know something about these addled rednecks in their fume-spewing, flag-bedecked pickup trucks:

They couldn’t have been any too happy to wake up on a sunny Saturday morning and find out that their Amurica was now entering a dangerous new war in partnership with, and partly on behalf of. . .Israel.

I imagined the thought bubbles slowly forming above their obtuse little heads, in a vivid cartoon style brought suddenly to life:

“Wait a minute, Israel? Ain’t that where all them Jews live? But ain’t they the damn libtards on the college campuses that’re trying to put the men on the girls swim team? Ain’t they the godless unChristian heathens who want to allow women to get them post-birth abortions, and let gays marry each other, the ones with Trump derangement syndrome who hate everything the president does just because he’s Trump (correction: TRUMP!), and now we’re sending our boys into harms way to help their damn country? Why in the name of all that is holy is our president (TRUMP!) helping the goddamn Jews do anything? Amurica is for Amuricans, not Jews, and not Israel neither!”

Do you have a sense now of how much more virulently those cars were gunning their engines on Saturday morning, how furiously the red-faced people were shouting, how frantically and angrily the cars with the faded and peeling “Trump 2016” bumper stickers were spewing their noxious $2.89* a gallon exhaust fumes in our general direction? How “Go back to the nursing home!” was suddenly the only thing they could think to say?

*$2.89 of blessed memory! That was 3 days ago, an eon in Trump time.

To the south of us, in a town even more red than ours, a group of resistors was driven from the town square by a Jesus freak with a megaphone and a group of jeering, cursing Trumpers outside the American Legion.

These streets are getting dangerous. Confused and angry MAGAts are more dangerous than smugly satisfied ones. I’ll close with words from the brilliant Timothy Snyder in his On Tyranny: Twenty Lessons From the Twentieth Century (which not nearly enough Americans have read with the attention it deserves, sadly). A year ago we were grappling with Rule #1: Do not obey in advance. But 2025 is over now, the first year of Trump’s second term is behind us, and much more agonizing and painful change is upon us. In the split second of a year in the history of the world, we’re ready now to observe the truth of Dr. Snyder’s last 3 lessons:

#18 Be calm when the unthinkable arrives.

#19 Be a patriot.

#20 Be as courageous as you can.

We have each other. We must link hands and face an uncertain future together. Doing whatever we can, digging deep into our reserves of strength, and refusing to give in to fear.

We have each other. At the end of the day, that’s all we’ve ever had, as citizens of this great nation. Let’s remember all the great lessons we’ve been taught by our Founding Fathers, presidents like Lincoln and Kennedy, and brave resistors like Martin Luther King Jr. Those patriots knew this moment would come, and did all they could to prepare us.

Now let us be as courageous as we can.

There’s a reason this Substack is called Reflections From a Purple State.

Because Pennsylvania is a politically purple place. Blue in places like Pittsburgh, Philadelphia, and the Lehigh Valley, and increasingly in the central part of the state. In the 2024 presidential race, Trump won 50.37% of the popular vote, to Harris’s 48.66%.

A difference of 1.7 percentage points. That’s pretty, pretttttty close.

If you live in Pennsylvania, you know what that means. A lot of red. A lot of pickup trucks driving around with tinted windows and Confederate flags, if you don’t happen to live in Pittsburgh or Philly.

If you know me, or follow my Substack, you know I don’t hold back around MAGAts. And lately I’ve been rummaging around among the not-so-publicly-committed (friends, acquaintances, and businesses) to get people to place their cards on the table. I think it’s the least they can do, if businesses want my money and friends/acquaintances want my trust.

Not surprisingly, it’s not all that easy to get that information in these polarized times. The both-siders like their both-sides position, even seem to find something virtuous in it. They seem proud of their “open-mindedness.” “I don’t judge my friends for their politics,” they’ll intone sanctimoniously.

Yeah, but I do in these critical times, so thanks for helping me decide to cancel that lunch next week.

Or they say (more daringly), something along the lines of not approving EVERYTHING Trump does, but some things they agree with.

Like what? I ask, and the answer is usually about keeping America safe from dangerous criminals and rapists.

A medical care provider I confronted the other day (I know, my cojones are growing exponentially by the day!) had this to say:

Look, I don’t support either party. I don’t like what ICE is doing, but the fact is, these people shouldn’t have come in in the first place. They should have been VETTED, and they weren’t.

Yeah, but they’re here now. So. . .

Well, like I said, they shouldn’t have been allowed in. That was a mistake.

Yeah, but you’re just saying our immigration policies are flawed. Everybody knows that. What should we do, though, now that they’re here? Do you support what ICE is doing, the deportations?

Again, I don’t like the extremes to which ICE is going. But those immigrants really shouldn’t be here. The fact that they got in without being vetted is WRONG.

So, you’re saying, what? ICE is doing the right thing?

No, I didn’t say that. Don’t put words in my mouth. I don’t approve of the way they’re carrying out their job. But I AM saying that those people shouldn’t have been let in. There was no vetting! And that wasn’t right.

Does your head hurt yet? Welcome to Pennsylvania!

Not everybody is as slippery and slimy as that guy (chiropractor) was. Some are more. . .honest?. . .in their stupidity. Like the skinny little bandy-legged “official” who was helping a tractor trailer back up into the ICE processing center in our town last week while we were conducting a vigil (bearing witness) to their actions. The trailer was loaded with SUV’s marked “ICE” and “Defending the homeland.” A group of observers were taking photographs, and the skinny little guy didn’t like us being in the road. Get off the property! he yelled shrilly. And then – to make sure we didn’t harbor any warm fuzzies for him or the entire process – he added, as if for good measure, You people are all defending a bunch of murderers and rapists!

The rapist and murderer trope! Bet you thought that was dead and gone. Nah. Not here in Pathetic Pennsylvania.

So there’s the rapists-and-murderers trope, the I’m-just-saying-both-sides trope, then there’s the hands-off trope. It goes something like this:

Look, I have nothing against immigrants, they’ve done nothing to me and I hold no prejudices, I just think if they’re going to come into our country, they should do it the right way. I mean, my great great grandparents came from [insert European country], and they did it the right way. That’s all I’m saying. Just do it the right way. Then you have nothing to fear from ICE. . .if you just do it the right way.

I tried to correct the above person about “coming in the right way” today vs 100 years ago (which went over like a lead balloon), then I pointed out all the people that are following legal steps to be allowed to stay here and still getting deported, then I finally turned to the subject of ICE brutality and the abandonment of due process that is the legal right of all people in the United States, not just citizens (see: 5^th and 14^th Amendments). And I usually wind up getting something like this:

Oh boy, I bet you get your news from CNN! Honestly, you sound like you have Trump Derangement Syndrome. You need to DO YOUR OWN RESEARCH!* All that stuff is so sensationalized, and if people are going to get in the way of law enforcement, they’re going to get hurt, let’s face it.

I’m sorry. Now I’ve made your head turn around 360 degrees like The Exorcist. We’re used to that here in Pennsylvania, where battered Trump flags ripple in the cold wind and MAGAts define themselves as the righteous, the law-abiding and law-respecting, the both-sides-fair-minded, reasonable ones. It really plays with your mind, this twisted psych game that you have to remind yourself over and over again, is nothing more than the echoing roar of a dying beast. Call that beast the patriarchy, call it the Epstein class, call it conservatism or collapse of empire or the Confederacy or Christianity that’s taken a wrong turn; whatever it is, it’s dying an ugly death and it’s clawing at us in its death throes, trying to take us down with it. But we’re not ready to die, it must die without us, and as I write these words, I realize I have finally finished with that battle.

No longer will I apologize for asking you, to your face, if you are MAGA. In the roiling and dangerous environment of a purple state like ours, it’s necessary for our very survival to know the answer to that question, and there’s no shame in asking. And I will ask. And the way I’ll ask might be by questioning where you stand regarding ICE. This is the question of this moment in our history. And there’s only one acceptable answer:

I hate ICE. I don’t respect ICE. I don’t want ICE in my country.

Chinga la migra.

And as for the friend who recently said, I must have missed the rule that said you had to agree on politics to be friends, and the one who said, The world’s a crazy place right now, so let’s just relax and not talk about stressful stuff, I have this to say:

Chinga a la amiga, también.

Postscript: Dear friends and Substack readers, thank you for bearing with me as I have worked through these strange and difficult-to-comprehend issues. I bare my soul to you not just for the sake of soul-baring, and for my own relief, but also in the hope of showing you are not alone if you also happen to live in a purple environment. This has been a catharsis; but that catharsis is now over. I’m ready to move on. I’ve tried to gain understanding, and it hasn’t come, but acceptance has. I accept what I can’t understand and feel ready to move on. I’m tired of being against MAGA, and frankly, I’m just plain tired of MAGA.

As many greater minds than mine have perceived, it’s not enough to just be against something, you also have to be for something. Thinking about all the positive and important changes we have the opportunity to bring about in this dark time is really thrilling.

Great things are coming, friends, if only we hold the line

In my last Substack, I explored the idea of expanding my boycott of MAGA from the small world of family, friends, and acquaintances, into the wider world of businesses and local shops and providers.

Everybody knows where Amazon stands, and Walmart, and Target, and Home Depot. But what about your dentist? Your hairdresser? The butcher slapping your steaks on the scale? I’m ready to take it to the next level and find out.

The first opportunity I had to test my new boycott level was at the chiropractor. Look, I pretty much knew what to expect. In our little corner of Pennsylvania, a high concentration of Mennonites and Amish sort of gives it away. Conservative = Trump voters. Half this doctor’s clientele wears frumpy clothes and bonnets, so I had a good suspicion. In addition, when I’ve tried to gently suss him out in the past, he’s made some pretty wishy washy “both sides” statements that raised the MAGA sensory hairs on the back of my neck. But now I was ready to go in full bore.

Because, why not?

I decided to take a lighthearted approach to help me get used to this new process. I’m not someone who generally relishes confrontation, but when I have to do it, I like to get my money’s worth.

I chose my clothes specially for the occasion, settling for my “Is he dead yet?” t-shirt and a favorite button: “None of this is normal.”

When I walked into the office, the receptionist glanced at my shirt, as did the doctor, then politely looked away and assumed their usual air of professional cheeriness.

I went in for my adjustment and the usual question-and-answer period, comprised mostly of courteous niceties. He asked me if I’d been shoveling much snow in the recent cold weather. No, I said, but I have been spending quite a lot of time outdoors this winter.

Oh? He looked up.

Yes, I said. I’ve been attending a lot of vigils. And protests. All outside.

Oh. He went back to writing his notes.

I think the people of Minneapolis are pretty amazing, I ventured. We can all learn a lot from them. They’re practically writing a textbook on how to save our democracy.

He looked up and went into his familiar spin about how he’s an independent, he doesn’t support either party (which I always find interesting, because I’m an independent too, much as that sucks in PA where we can’t vote in primaries). He tried to throw some spin my way (now that he knew for sure where I was coming from), but I stopped his both-siding with a question:

Why do you have that awful Epoch Times in your waiting room?

Oh, he liked that question! He immediately jumped in to defend that anti-Commie rag and sputter about how terrible China is, and did I realize. . .

Never mind, I interrupted the man not used to being interrupted. Why are you chasing after that tennis ball? Don’t worry about China. Worry about Russia. Russia’s right on our doorstep. The president’s in bed with Russia. That’s why we’ve abandoned our allies and destroyed the entire Western world order. Worry about that!

I saw in that moment something I couldn’t quite identify in his eyes. Was it fear? Shock? I don’t think he expected to hear these things or be spoken to this way. Maybe he thought I was disrespectful, or just a libtard. Maybe I was the first libtard he’d ever met! Maybe I was saying strange things he’d never heard before, or seemed more certain or better informed than the Amish housewife with the bad back or the elderly man he had treated just before me. Whatever, there was something different. He seemed rattled. I felt oddly liberated, from what, though? Maybe from pretending?

He tried to regain his both-sidesism and his authority as we headed down the hall to the receptionist desk. He asked if I had heard what Melania had said when asked about Epstein. “You’ll have to ask him,” she said, pointing to her husband. She sure is a smart lady.

I didn’t have the heart to tell him it was Melanie Gates who said that, not the Slovenian-born recipient of the Einstein visa.

The elderly man who was still checking out had a few questions about cancer treatment, and doc launched into an enthusiastic screed about the use of ivermectin in large animal studies. The man nodded with interest.

I mean, think about it, doc said, who would want to undergo chemotherapy when the answer is as simple as a treatment with ivermectin? And these are large animal studies, it’s been very successful, people just don’t want to believe it.

There was some discussion about the doctor the man should call for more information, a number was jotted down, and the man had just one question:

Is he a Christian, this doctor?

He was assured that yes, indeed, the recommended doctor certainly was a Christian.

Then I know he’s good people, the old guy said happily, tucking the slip of paper into his jacket pocket.

Now it was my turn. The receptionist looked up at me with a thin smile. She’d read my t-shirt and heard the Melania exchange.

That’s $42 for today.

I inserted my card in the machine and when the choice came up for language, on a whim – I honestly don’t know why, maybe because I was feeling a little giddy and the receptionist was now busy checking in a home schooly looking mom and her three kids, but for some weird reason I chose Spanish. I finished the transaction, the receptionist turned back to me, ripped off the receipt. . .

. . .and looked down at it in horror.

Oh my. What’s this?

She was holding the receipt like a dried turd.

What? I peered over the desk. Did I make a mistake?

No, it’s just. . .I can’t read it.

I laughed. Is it in Spanish? Did it print your copy in Spanish too?

Why did you do that? she asked.

I speak both languages, I said. I’m sorry. I didn’t realize it would print your copy in Spanish. Do you want me to translate it for you?

She shook her head. No, I’ll just. . .

She looked like she wanted to cry. I had the impression she just wanted me out of there. She didn’t ask the usual question about booking my next appointment.

Heading out to the waiting room, I stopped to look at a framed drawing on the wall, depicting all the great milestones of chiropractic history. At the bottom, if you zoom in, you’ll see it reads “the Fountain Head.” Isn’t that rich?

I slipped a copy of Timothy Snyder’s “20 Lessons in Fascism” under the Epoch Times and skipped out of that office for the very last time, feeling like I had just had my best adjustment ever.

Zoom in to see “The Fountain Head” below. Refers to the origin story of modern chiropractics, but an interesting call back to the rugged individualism and anti-collectivism of Ayn Rand’s bold hero, Howard Roark:

photo courtesy of Etsy

It’s time. Time to take things to the next level.

You’ve already done everything you can think of. Boycotted all the obvious places: Walmart, Target, Amazon, Hobby Lobby, Chick Fil-A. In my case, even Meta platforms like Instagram and Threads, which I used to love, because of the smoldering disdain I harbor for the smarmy Mark Zuckerberg.

Here in town, I avoid the obvious MAGA spots like the local doughnut shop with the Trump flags and the diner that stayed open during COVID. A car dealership that has billboards promising to “make America (something or other) again” is immediately struck off my list. Of course, most businesses don’t go out of their way to advertise their political leanings, but I’m sensitive to the vibe I get when I go in, the other clientele, the conversation swirling around me, and if I get a whiff of MAGA, I’m out.

I have friends, cousins, and an uncle I no longer speak with. I don’t have to listen to them flap anymore about how terrible it is that I would let politics come between us. I accept their harsh judgment of me as a harsh, judgmental person and have moved on with my life.

In fact, I’ve made so many wonderful new friends in the resistance movement, it’s helped to fill the gaping crater of missing friends and relatives. I’ve learned to live in a dichotomous world of before and after: I treasure my memories of once beloved people in my life, but accept that there won’t be any new photos added to that particular album of memory. And that’s okay.

But as the outrages grow more frequent and more flagrant (Trump suggesting nationalizing elections, the murders of American citizens on the streets, the nauseating spiral of Epstein’s crimes and Trump’s very real involvement), my anger and disgust grow proportionally, and I begin to fear that I haven’t flushed ENOUGH MAGA out of my life. Where else is it lurking? Like a case of measles spreading through my fevered imagination, I remember the chiropractor’s casual joking comment that “it’s not technically pedophilia, 15 is not a child,” and I cringe. I think of the hairdresser flippantly remarking “they’re ALL crooked, the Democrats are just as bad.” The cheery Christmas letter from a faraway friend extolling 2025 as “the best year of my life” still sticks in my craw.

All these encounters have left me with a yukky feeling, despite my cowardly smiling and nodding at the time. When old friends have shut me down with Can we please not talk about politics?, I have hastily complied, not wanting to be an uncooperative boor. Not wanting to spoil their chatter about the cruise they just took or the great dinner they ate. Not wanting to be that pain in the ass with Trump derangement syndrome, who just can’t shut up about politics while they are just trying to live their lives in peace.

They look different to me now, those people I once loved or liked or at least tolerated with considerably more patience. I may seem deranged to them, but they seem simple to me. Gullible. Selfish. Not terribly bright. At once boring and infuriating. Completely tiresome.

And I really. . .since we’re being frank now. . .I actually don’t give a shit about their cruise. I am deranged by the insanity, the gaslighting, the corruption, the pure hatred emanating from this bizarre government. America doesn’t feel the same to me, or maybe I’m just seeing America from the bottom up now, whereas before I thought I was squarely in the middle and didn’t truly understand the concept of “no justice, no peace.” I wasn’t black or brown then, but somehow now I am, and I will never allow myself to forget that when the next guy “beneath me” needs help. I don’t trust my own government to tell me the truth or to protect me. I don’t want to leave the country, but I don’t want to stay either. I’m sick with apprehension every day. I fear the future. I barely trust today.

It’s inconceivable to me that other people don’t feel the same way. They’re still planning trips to Europe and seemingly unaware of how much Europe hates us. I talk to people in Europe and I read foreign news widely, so I know. It’s ironic that the Americans who feel the way I do don’t want to travel right now, and the ones who live in the fog of denial can’t wait to travel. All the wrong people are going to Europe, and they probably won’t even notice when Europeans want to talk about nothing but Trump. Or they’ll come home complaining that everyone over there has Trump derangement syndrome and is obsessed with politics. What a bore, they’ll complain. And we’ll suggest they plan their next trip to a place where America is loved, Hungary or Russia or Turkey. The first-rate countries are no longer for them!

And so, with reluctance, I realize it’s time to level up. It’s not enough for people to be not openly MAGA; I now have to start weeding out those who, by virtue of their silence, their indifference, or their stated lack of interest in politics, might as well be MAGA.

I need to ask the chiropractor where he stands on Trump, because there are plenty of good chiropractors out there and I want one I can feel good about paying. When the hairdresser laughs off my question with a flip both-sides joke, it’s a good moment to remember the new salon that just opened alongside the pizza parlor that brought us free pizzas at a recent protest, on the blue side of town. I need to write back to the faraway friend and tell her why 2025 was such a rough year for me and so many like me.

It’s been said (most famously by F. Scott Fitzgerald) that the test of a first-rate intelligence is the ability to hold two opposing ideas in your head at the same time and still be able to function. My intelligence might not be first-rate, but I can certainly try to teach myself some new tricks. Fond memories of (MAGA) places and people I used to know on one side; a host of happy memories with new friends now in their place.

And despite the pain and an occasional pang of nostalgia, getting more intelligent is an exercise I could definitely get used to!

In our small city, there is a large and colorful immigrant population. By “colorful” I mean not only all shades of White, Brown, and Black skin tones, but everything that goes with that: lively music, interesting food, the chatter of multiple languages. New restaurants, shops, and bakeries have a way of opening up and dotting our familiar Pennsylvania landscape with all kinds of exotic and intriguing new experiences to awaken our senses.

Or they did. Not so much anymore. You see, we also have an ICE Processing Center and, on the other side of our state, an almost 2,000-bed detention center for immigrants.

It’s gotten quiet in the immigrant sections of our town.

And a small group of resistors here have gotten in the habit of spending time two mornings a week across the street from the ICE Processing Center, holding signs that let the people who work there know just how their actions are judged by conscientious Americans, and the immigrants who show up for check-ins know just how much we value and respect them.

Anyway, one day I showed up late, with only half an hour to go on the day’s watch. I told the others I’d be fine, and waved them off to do their day’s errands. I was standing there just a short time when a white pick-up truck with a couple of cross decals on the rear window slowed down, passed by, turned around, and circled back. The man inside was an older guy (my age), and was pleasant enough.

“What are you doing?” he asked with what sounded like genuine curiosity.

“Making my feelings known to ICE. And to the innocent people they’re making suffer.”

He didn’t mince words. “But what about if they’re criminals?”

I didn’t mince either. “How do we find out if they’re criminals, if they’re not even given due process under the law?”

He quickly pointed out that if they weren’t citizens, they didn’t have that right. I pointed out that both the Fifth and Fourteenth Amendments guarantee that right not just to citizens, but to all persons in the United States. The language is pretty clear.

His answer was revealing: “Oh,” he said.

Because he was not argumentative, or nasty, or in any way confrontational, I decided to risk having an actual conversation with him.

“You know,” I said, “I’ve always had a soft spot for immigrants. I guess because I’m the direct descendants of immigrants. And their stories have always stayed with me, and meant so much to me.”

“Not me,” he responded. “My family’s been here a long time.”

“How long?” I asked.

“Oh gee, I don’t know. My brother is the one who knows a lot about that in our family. But it was a long time ago.”

“See, mine came not all that long ago, like around the turn of the twentieth century.”

“Yeah, that’s when mine came. From Ireland.”

That’s when his came. The same time as mine. “A long time ago,” in his book. In mine, the memory still so fresh, the vivid stories I used to hear around the dinner table. My great grandfather claiming to have jumped ship when he saw the Statue of Liberty because he was a deserter from the Austro-Hungarian army and didn’t want to be shipped back to Czechoslovakia to fight in a war he cared nothing about. My grandmother on the Syrian side packing picnic lunches for beachside days at Coney Island because, as she told my 9-year-old father begging for Nathan’s hot dogs and ice cream cones, those expensive American treats were for “them,” for the real American kids, not for a skinny little Arabic-speaking kid like him.

I asked the man in the white pick-up truck if he thought his family had come over during the potato famine, and he said yes, he thought so, he’d heard his brother say something about that. He became animated sharing what little information he had, and said he wished his brother were here to give more information.

I told him to check the records on ellisisland.org, which is free and a source of endless fascination. He seemed excited to try it, or at least share the information with his brother, and we parted on good terms.

It stayed with me, though. His family having been here so long, and mine having arrived so recently. And who knows? They might even have sailed over on the same boat.

When I tell people I’m boycotting Amazon (or Walmart, or Target, or Home Depot), they often look at me with something resembling pity. You poor thing, you don’t get to order every single thing that crosses your mind every time you think of it? How do you live with yourself? I’m not sure how to explain that I don’t even miss that old habit, because it would probably ring hollow with them.

But I assure you, once you wean yourself off that kind of thinking (I must have this unique cat toy and I must have it now!!), it’s amazing how quickly you stop thinking about cat toys and dog mats and night lights and other geegaws that Jeff Bezos really wants you to think will change your life.

(And which somehow never do.)

Even people who are on “our” side, dedicated resistors like the ones who traveled with my husband on a bus down to Washington DC last Saturday for Remove the Regime, were heard saying that there’s no way they can stay away from Amazon – they need to buy gifts for their grandchildren for the holidays, the kids have sent them the links of what they want and it’s required.

Required by whom?

My first brush with boycotting came sometime between 1965 and 1970, when Cesar Chavez and the United Farm Workers went on strike to secure a living wage for the workers picking table grapes in California. They asked Americans to boycott grapes for the length of the strike. My mother, a dyed-in-the-wool liberal Democrat straight from the FDR era, sat us kids down and patiently explained that there would be no more grapes for our family until the strike ended. I remember one day in the school lunchroom watching a kid eating GRAPES at a table nearby. I was shocked; I hadn’t even seen a grape for years! I went home and told Mom about it and she explained that the kid’s parents were either severely uninformed or severely uncaring, but either way it didn’t matter, because we weren’t going to have any grapes until Cesar Chavez said we could.

Years later I went on strike as an American Airlines flight attendant, but that’s a whole ‘nother story. The point is, I think the grape boycott did a lot to prepare me for that challenging moment in my life.

Not doing something (buying grapes, going to work) is a skill like any other that we can learn. Not using Facebook no matter how appealing it is, is a way to tell Mark Zuckerberg no, thanks. He might not miss you or five of your friends, or even 200 of them, but do you think he’d miss 2 million users? I think he would. People not buying Teslas have sent Elon Musk a message. Non-shoppers at Home Depot have sent a message, too – although the hundred or so people in Monrovia CA who bought ice scrapers for 79 cents the other day and then stood in line to return them, jamming up the store’s operations, also sent a clear and powerful message!

In other words, not doing something speaks volumes. And it is a powerful feeling to not do what you’re told (by corporate America, or anyone else). Once you realize just how much you’re responding to what you’ve been told and not really acting of your own free will, it’s liberating to thumb your nose at those who are bossing you around and just walk away!

Not buying in particular is a skill that can be learned just as surely as we all learned to become the addicted, constant consumers we have all become. We really are addicted to that immediate gratification, especially with the advent of the internet. The term “retail therapy” evidently first emerged in the Chicago Tribune when Mary Schmich wrote on Christmas Eve of 1986, “We’ve become a nation measuring out our lives in shopping bags and nursing our psychic ills through retail therapy.” By 2001, the European Union found in a study that 33% of shoppers surveyed had a “high level of addiction to rash or unnecessary consumption,” indicating that it is not only an American problem.

Yet “boycott” is a word that seems to scare people, or put them off. What would sound more appealing? “Withholding?” How about “choosing to forego?” Or “unselecting?” The important thing to remember is that boycotting involves an element of choice. Rather than seeing boycotting as giving something up, think of it as making a conscious choice to gain something (more money in your wallet, self-satisfaction, even watching billionaires squirm). You have to see it as a win or a gain, not as a sacrifice. Boycotting is empowering, not limiting! It is an opportunity for you to take control of your own wallet.

If you don’t believe me, just ask anyone you know who has stopped using Amazon. There are millions of us (though there need to be millions more). I think you’ll be surprised when they tell you how little they miss it, which kind of indicates right there that we might have a problem, Houston.

From November 28 to December 5 (black Friday to Cyber Monday), a number of groups are calling for a nationwide boycott of large corporations – and at the same time, encouraging shoppers (including holiday shoppers) to patronize small, local businesses during the busiest shopping time of the year. Blackout the System, No Kings/We Ain’t Buying It, and People’s Union USA are all promoting boycotts of varying businesses and varying lengths. You can choose to be part of the action, or you can make up your own action. You can do it for the length of the holiday season, or you can make it your new normal. You can be empowered, because it IS your choice!

Or, you can be like that boy in the lunchroom eating his grapes.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Retail_therapy

https://www.latimes.com/california/story/2025-11-22/ice-out-of-home-depot-monrovia

https://www.montgomeryadvertiser.com/story/news/2025/11/24/black-friday-2025-activist-groups-call-for-economic-blackouts/87448095007/

Anyway, today at No Kings in York, PA, we had, at our best count (read: people better at math than me), upwards of 2,000 people joyously waving signs, chanting, dancing to a great line-up of protest songs, and just happily trying to restore a sense of decency to what we used to call our American democracy. Our Indivisible group collected hundreds of dollars and dozens and dozens of groceries and toiletries for immigrants struggling in our town (many of whom were here with temporary protected status, before it was cruelly yanked away).

And we had a wonderful time. Which sounds like a crazy thing to say, certainly for people who haven’t ever attended a protest, but those who have know exactly what I mean. Damn it, it’s FUN!

Below is my favorite attendee at today’s protest, a towering, tiny-handed Trump (in prison garb, no less) that was crafted over the course of several days by some talented local “artivists:”

Our Trump puppet was escorted around the demonstration by a couple of Monopoly style “trillionaires for Trump” complete with top hats and suit pockets stuffed with thousand-dollar bills.

It sure was fun to ruin Trump’s weekend, wasn’t it?!

The danger is that we retreat back into our sense of business-as-usual and wait for the next big protest to be organized for us.

Which, I’m sure, will never get us out of this mess. It’s going to take a lot more than that, and we can’t keep waiting to be told what to do and when to do it (not that the big protests aren’t fantastic!).

I have some suggestions:

We need to start planning smaller protests – and other events – on our own. Small groups of people holding signs should become a regular sight in towns and cities around the country. Pop up protests, singalongs, puppet shows, painting get togethers where hopeful, colorful messages are written on rocks to be distributed in parks, parking lots, and countless other places to cheer and to educate. This is in addition to the postcard writing meetings and calls to representatives that we’ve already been doing. Mix it up, invent something new, keep the momentum going! In our town we call it “artivism,” a way to turn art into activism (or activism into art). Music, writing, visual art – they all play a part in boosting not only the power of our message, but our endorphins. It’s also a great way to push back with creativity, imagination, and humor against an opponent that is devoid of all of those attributes. For the same reason some people don frog and unicorn inflatables or dress up as tacos, the rest of us can find our own ways to express ourselves with joy and imagination.

In our town, we have found many ways to express ourselves. We man visibility brigades on overpasses. We do ICE vigils across the street from the local ICE Processing Center twice a week. We’re planning a float for the Halloween parade and a Handmaid’s Tale event on the courthouse steps. We have also scheduled an immigration panel for next month, in order to explain some of the complexities and problems of the immigration process to concerned citizens who are alarmed by what is happening but up until now, knew little about it.

We seem to never run out of ideas, energy, or enthusiastic participation no matter what new project we launch.

Remember, we’re a red dot in a sea of purple, but that dot is growing more and more blue every day. If we can do it, everybody can. Maybe that dot slowly changing from red to purple to blue is a result of our energy and passion. Maybe more and more people want to be on the right side of history - or maybe watching us is giving them a case of FOMO! Whatever the reason, I was pleasantly surprised to see many new faces at today’s protest, including people who seemed a bit tentative and even nervous, approaching our sign-up table and saying, “I’ve heard of this. What is Invisible, anyway?”

Wow! I guess we’re not so “invisible” after all!

If the answer is “no”. . .I’m not sure what to say to you.

I guess I’d like to ask you, “why not?”

If you’re not going because you have a haircut scheduled for that time, I would encourage you to find another No Kings event (there are 3,000 scheduled around the country) and attend that one, even if it means you have to drive a little further.

(I won’t even ask why you went and scheduled a haircut on a day we’ve known about for months.)

Maybe you’re not going because you can’t be on your feet for long. You could always take a folding chair, or drive past the protest and honk your horn enthusiastically. That’s extremely encouraging to protestors, and marks you as a supporter and a patriot. In fact, the more times you drive around the block and honk, the more you’ll be contributing!

Perhaps you’re not going because you’re scared and don’t know what to expect, or you think you’ll look silly because you’ve never been interested in politics or you think this whole thing will blow over or you’re afraid there will be terrorists there, or maybe you even voted for Trump back when you thought he had some pretty good ideas.

I can assure you that everything the Trump regime is saying about the No Kings demonstrations is false. Karoline Leavitt’s comment yesterday that the Democrat party is made up of Hamas terrorists, illegal immigrants, and violent criminals is actually pretty hilarious. And I’m not even a Democrat!

Oh, you thought only Democrats would be at the protest? Think again. The streets will be crowded tomorrow with Independents, Libertarians, Green Party members, moderate Republicans, disenchanted Republicans, and even former MAGA members. Any American with a pulse who has roughly a third grade understanding of how the U.S. government is supposed to work (respect for the Constitution, checks and balances, 3 branches of government, limited executive power, etc. etc.) knows that something very fishy is going on in Washington right now. The ability to discern the stink of corruption is not limited to Democrats; plenty of people who think (or thought) of themselves as Republicans or conservatives at one time can surely smell that rotten stench emanating from the White House and the Capitol at this moment.

Are you afraid that people you are close to, or who you work with, or who perhaps pay your salary, will find out you went to a protest and judge you harshly for that?

And why would they, unless they support the foul-smelling regime? And what is it you fear of such people? A negative judgment from such people seems like a compliment in disguise.

Are you becoming uncomfortable now? Good. Because if you don’t plan to contribute to No Kings in any way at all, it is quite possible that you will be judged harshly. Democracy itself is that judge, not the anti-Antifa (read: pro-fascist) crowd.

So before you stay home and pull the blinds closed or go ahead with that haircut tomorrow or other “business as usual,” remember how little your country has asked of you up until now. John Kennedy warned us about moments like this, didn’t he? We love to quote him and admire that speech of his, but have we ever asked ourselves what we are willing to do for our country when it needs our help?

It’s crunch time, my friends.

Only you know why you don’t plan on joining arms with American patriots and lovers of liberty tomorrow. Only you know how you will answer someday when you are asked, perhaps by children or grandchildren, “Where were you then? What did you do? How did you fight back?”

Will you tell them about your haircut?

Are you not going because you’re afraid of the Insurrection Act, afraid of crazy, angry MAGAts with firmly held Second Amendment rights? If the First Amendment doesn’t matter to you, why does the Second?

Yesterday Ezra and Leah Levin, the founders of Indivisible, spoke to this fear in their weekly “What’s the Plan” video broadcast. It’s true that there is a small chance of violence. There is a very small, even miniscule, chance that you could be hurt.

But balanced against the very real, sustained kind of damage that could be done to you and your family by living under an authoritarian regime, perhaps over many years, that danger seems quite negligible, doesn’t it? And well worth confronting.

It’s crunch time, my friends. We’ve had a number of protests, each bigger than the last, and in the early days of ten months ago, it felt like a small number of us (mostly older, retired) could do it all. Like we could hold the fort. But our arms are growing tired. And the damage to our democracy is so great, the outrages so extreme and ever increasing, it no longer feels like we can do it alone. We’re fast approaching a tipping point, and maybe even an “it’s too late” point. If Trump and his regime can keep getting away with the kinds of egregious violations of law and public trust that they are committing, without any pushback from us, then we are going to die in a very different country than the one we were born into. It’s time to fight back. It’s time to wake up, to stop making excuses, to think that other people can do it for you or it really isn’t your problem or you never cared about politics or it’s not polite to object or whatever other false narrative is playing in your mind that keeps you from fulfilling that pledge of allegiance you recited every day throughout your childhood.

And ultimately, it’s a lot more important than your hair.

Note: Almost every word of this is true. Ask me at the end what’s not true (you might be surprised).

Setting: Outside one of the offices of PA CD 11 Representative Lloyd Smucker

Time: A rainy morning, any time after January 20, 2025

Characters: Constituents (3) being led by Constituent Organizer (1)

Spokesperson for Congressman Smucker (SP)

1: Okay, everybody, ready to let them know we’re here? Got all your questions and comments ready?

2,3,4: varying responses of “yeah” “you bet” “sure thing” etc. Obviously very eager.

1: All right, I’m going to ring the buzzer then. BZZZZZZZZ.

SP appears, holding a tiny umbrella.

SP: Good morning. Welcome to Congressman Smucker’s official space. What would you like to talk about today?

2: The Big Ugly Bill!

3: Tax cuts for the rich!

4: The Epstein files!

SP: Sure. I’d be happy to discuss all those things with you. Who’s first?

2: I want to talk about the cuts to Medicaid. It’s not fair! A lot of people are going to lose their coverage. It just seems very cruel.

SP: Sure. But as you know, it’s all about cutting wastefraudandabuse. Who’s next?

2: Well, what about people who just can’t work? I’m a retired physician and I’ve seen firsthand how much people rely on these Medicaid benefits.

3: Yeah, me too. I’m a psychotherapist.

4: And I’m a teacher. A lot of my students and their families are going to suffer, and I worry about how this will impact their learning.

SP: Of course, Congressman Smucker worries about that too. He’s committed to helping Pennsylvanians.

4: My brother’s struggles with addiction were real, and he was never able to secure Medicaid for his treatment.

SP: I’m sure the representative would love to sit down with all of you and the affected parties and take a look at those deserving cases. I’m sure he can straighten it all out.

4: My brother’s dead, so his case doesn’t matter anymore.

SP: Perfect! Any other questions?

2: Yes, I have a question. Why are we standing outside in the rain? Is it possible to go inside for this discussion?

SP: I’m glad you asked that question, and I’ll be sure to pass it along to the Congressman. Any other questions before I head back inside?

2: Yes, actually. I just want to know if the Congressman considers himself a member of MAGA or the GOP. Or both.

SP: Well, I wouldn’t presume to speak for the Congressman, but I can certainly get an answer for you.

2: Good. I also want to know why he never holds town halls other than telephone town ones, which aren’t really town halls. And whether he has ever voted against any Trump initiative or policy. And whether his loyalty to party is greater than his loyalty to country. And also, whether. . .

SP: Again, I wouldn’t want to speak on the Congressman’s behalf. But I’ll be sure to ask him and get back to you.

3: Do you think you should be writing down our names and emails?

SP: Oh sure. Next?

3: Um, I wanted to talk about Antifa. What are the Congressman’s feelings about it?

SP: I’ll reiterate, I wouldn’t presume to speak for him. I will ask, though.

3: Do you know if the Congressman opposes or favors fascism?

SP: Again. . .

3: Does he think there is an enemy within our country, like the President and Stephen Miller have said?

SP: I couldn’t say. But I will find out for you, certainly.

1: (handing SP a small slip of paper) Here are all the names and emails of everyone here. So that you can get back to us.

SP: Thank you. (bats it away)

2: Do you think you should be writing all these questions down?

SP: Certainly. (very visibly doing nothing of the sort)

4: I have a question about the Epstein files. Would the Congressman vote to have them released, or not? And if not, why not?

SP: As I’ve said before, I can’t speak for the Congressman, but. . .

4: But shouldn’t you know his thoughts on these things?

SP: Frankly, these things have never come up.

4: Never? Then what kinds of things do come up? What kinds of things does he discuss with his constituents?

SP: I’m not at liberty to divulge the Congressman’s private conversations with his constituents, I’m afraid.

3: But what about with you? Has he discussed any of this with you? With his staff?

SP: No, ma’am, I’m afraid he hasn’t.

2: But these are the things people are concerned about! This is what his constituents want to know! What is his position on the ICE raids going on around the country?

SP: The what what? I’m afraid I don’t know what you’re talking about.

3: Of course you do! THE ICE RAIDS!

SP: Pardon me?

1: (sotto voce) He probably doesn’t know. If it’s not on Fox News, they don’t know about it.

3: Ohhhhhhh.

4: But back to my question. The Epstein files. Can you at least tell us Smucker’s position on pedophilia? For or against?

SP: Again, I’ll be happy to relay your question to the Congressman. . .

4: You can’t even answer that question?

SP: Not without talking to the Congressman, no. I wouldn’t want to speak for him. Are there any other questions?

The puppets are silent, dejected.

SP: No? Well then, thanks for coming by. Have a nice day!

Silence from the puppets as SP exits.

2: That was really depressing.

3: I can’t believe how much he lied. Or gaslighted us. I’m not even sure what it was.

4: My brother’s still dead. Why do I feel like that wouldn’t have changed?

1: Yup. Happens every Wednesday. Anybody want to sign up to come back next week?

Puppets all shake their heads, mutter “No way,” “No thanks,” etc.

1: Well, I’ll be here anyway. With a whole new group of constituents. Asking all the same questions.

Come on, everybody. Let’s get out of the rain.

The puppets go trudging offstage, having completed the fact-finding mission with their representative in Congress.