Yesterday it hit me like a ton of bricks. I have a friend from intermediate school and high school that decided to end our friendship. I suppose this didn’t happen yesterday. I just noticed that he had unfriended me yesterday and when I reached out he made it official. I wished him well and then we seemed to roll back into the same arguments. I hoped he was at peace. He said he was. He clearly is not. Then again, maybe I’m not either.

Anytime a relationship ends it is a good idea to inventory our own lives. Is there something I did that was wrong? Have I changed in the intervening years? Have I somehow become radicalized and not know it? Have my views become more extreme and driven people away? These are all legitimate questions and I should recount my history so people get a clearer picture.

I have always been keenly interested in politics because my family was always keenly interested in politics. We have always been left of center and I imagine always will be. So, if anyone really changed it wasn’t me. What we have seen since 1980 is that half of our country is moving further to the political extremes and it isn’t us on the left. I suppose some of that is a natural backlash when you have people that were quiet about their desires before now coming out and demanding it out loud. I do get how that seems sudden and it seems arbitrary and contrary to everything we have been. It’s really not. Women have been demanding more rights for decades. People of color have been demanding more rights for decades. People with alternative lifestyles have been demanding more rights for decades. I’m sorry if some people slept through that and missed it.

I think a large part of it is that our parents largely shielded us from the worst of their struggles. We saw an idealized view of life growing up. In some ways it may have been easier back then. I’m sure for some people it was. I can certainly look at my relatives that did not go to college and see how they succeeded when people today struggle under those same circumstances. I’m sure some of these same friends I grew up imagined they would be doing something different by now. I’m sure they imagined life being easier than it became.

In this kind of world it is easier to blame someone else than take personal responsibility. Blaming someone else is what demagogues do best. Today it might be the immigrants, but we have heard the current GOP nominee mention other groups as well. He has called people like me “the enemy within.” We cannot normalize that. We cannot simply brush that off. We cannot simply accept that as the musings of a mad man howling at the moon.

So, while it would be wrong to say that I have not changed at all, it is more fair to say that I haven’t changed all that much. I am speaking out more because the situation calls for it. I am sure some of you have had similar experiences. It’s obvious to me that my friend has changed and not for the better. I refuse to believe that he was always this way because that would mean that I was okay with it at some point. Others have described this current iteration of the conservative movement as a cult and I think that aptly describes what has happened to him. I pray that he wakes up one day and realizes it.

MAGA Republicans are at each others’ throats in SoCal. That’s always a fun popcorn-worthy show, and the latest flap here is proving up to be worth at least a C Ticket.

Recall that TFG decided to have a rally at Coachella earlier this month. No, not at the world-famous Coachella Valley Music And Arts Festival; that’s held in April. But it was held at the self-same venue on the Butler Ranch in Coachella Valley, California.

That’s where Vem Miller, a TFG supporter and Clark County (Nevada) caucus captain, got himself arrested for a 3rd assassination attempt of expert french fry cook Don the Con.

Following his brief detention, Miller is suing his captor, Riverside County Sheriff Chad Bianco, in federal court in Nevada. Bianco claimed in a news conference that Miller was a “sovereign citizen,” had false passports, guns in the trunk of his car, and that the car wasn’t registered and had fake license plates.

In a weird turn of events, the Chair of the Republican Party of Clark County, Nevada, Jesse Law, says that he knows Miller, counts him as a friend, and provided VIP passes to Miller for the event.

“It’s what we do for volunteers that we know,” said Law.

Sheriff Bianco is an ardent Trump supporter. While not a sovereign citizen, he was once a member of the ultra-right Oath Keepers and is well-known to be considering a run for Governor of California.

Ironically, the arrest that he made in Coachella to thwart a 3rd assassination attempt of TFG may have just cooked his goose in that regard, and not in a Haitian way, either.

Alfredo at the Dairy Queen went out of his way this past weekend to drop a line at the Salon about this month’s fundraising reports at the FEC. Very telling, indeed.

You know, I remember a time before “dark money” when fundraising was on a semi-level playing field. Sure, there were egregious “mistakes” that needed correcting, but they were in the open. They were emended.

For the most part.

But since the Citizens United decision that invited billionaires and their corporations to massively support candidates in a way no one else could compete, our election campaigns have been a paragon of how not to run a republic.

Here are three examples of what “true” fundraising used to be like.

This is TFG’s official campaign’s 48-hour FEC contributions report.

His total contributions are $106,869.48, and note that, of the 69 contributions, there are no individual contributions higher than the allowable.

In contrast, Congressman Colin Allred, from the Dallas area, who is running to unseat Ted Cruz, turned in this report for the same filing period – again, this is his “real” campaign committee.

Yes, that’s 83 contributions for a total of $122,810.00.

Again, Allred is running for the Senate, not for President.

It’s bad enough that Don the Con got beat by a congressman in fundraising, but take a gander at the same period’s FEC filing for the Harris For President Committee.

That’s 529 contributors, for a total of $750,328.38.

If that doesn’t explain why the Republican majority on the Supreme Court ruled on Citizens United the way they did or why Republicans simply can’t live without an ample supply of “dark money,” nothing will.

Last night, our parish decided to add a prayer to the list of prayers we say at every mass. This prayer was for us to give us wisdom to choose the candidate that would best bring about the kingdom of God. They added a bit about choosing the candidates that would serve the needs of the people and not look to be served.

I was struck by two things there. First, none of the candidates were mentioned by name. No parties were mentioned as the preferred party. That was obviously left up to us. Secondly, I know some candidates immediately came to mind and that is particularly true when the idea of serving vs. being served was mentioned. I also know that everyone else in the congregation had the same amount of certainty, but their certainty might be different than mine.

This brings us to the real topic of the day. What do we do on November 6th? Obviously, we can assume that the results will not be known immediately because right wing activists won’t allow the results to be clear by that point. I hate to sound like a partisan hack, but the right is the only group claiming the elections are rigged and fighting the results.

We are scared. We are frightened. We want to figure out how to defend ourselves. Some of us will likely flee to another country. Some will buy a firearm or some other tool to defend their home in the worst of cases. Others may attempt to move off the grid to protect their family.

We do this because we are scared. We are scared because of the rampant disinformation that we see about everything. I’ve gone over that too. If you constantly are bombarded with bullshit it is hard not to get activated by it. One of two things is bound to happen. Either you start to believe it or you know it is wrong and hearing it repeated makes you more and more angry.

When I go through confirmation classes I usually read something called “The Missing Piece” by Shel Silverstein. Essentially, the idea is that each of us is broken in some way. We aren’t quite whole. However, that brokenness comes with advantages in the story. You are able to stop and smell the roses or talk to a bug. When you are complete you can’t do those things.

Yet, the moral to the story is that this brokenness only gets healed when we find the missing piece. That missing piece is other people. The hardest lesson to learn and the most important lesson to learn is that there are truly very few bad people in this world. Most of them are just not a fit for us in that moment. Being unfit for us doesn’t make them bad. It just means they are a better fit for someone else.

Good leaders understand this basic principle. We are flawed when we separate ourselves and isolate ourselves. We are perfect when we work together. The tragedy of the last decade is that we have allowed someone to divide us and isolate us. We each carry some responsibility for putting ourselves in this predicament and we each carry some responsibility to get ourselves out of this hole.

It starts by hopefully moving on from this period on November 6th. As I sit here, I don’t know what the end result will be. Either we will start putting the pieces back together or we will find our missing pieces somewhere else. This current America cannot stand. It will not stand. We will be different on November 6th. Whether it is for the best or not remains to be seen.

TFG watches are here (for ordering) at TheBestWatchesOnEarth LLC! You can get your Swiss movement TFG Watch for yourself and all your friends by just going here to order yours. Order now and get your watch by October/November/December.

A store that is conveniently located in a strip mall in Sheridan, Wyoming (see below) is the location of TheBestWatchesOnEarth, and also the offices of a trade delegation from Montenegro.

They start at only $499 each, and there are only a limited number (500) of each kind. Be sure to point out to your friends that each watch bears the signature of the former guy, right there on the watch face. And the “Fight Fight Fight” watch is not only dust and water resistant but it will withstand water pressure down to 666 feet (more or less).

Not into keeping time? No worries! At this very same place of business, you can buy honey. No, really. You can buy honey here at Kingdom Honey LLC. Can’t get it up? Their top-selling brand includes doses of Cialis, a male enhancement drug approved by the deep state.

Many of these watches have sold out and time is short. Only 16 more shopping days until Election Day, so order yours now. You’ll get your watch by Christmas.

We promise.

Brett Baier asked an important question to Kamala Harris that she couldn’t answer. If Donald Trump is so bad then why are so many people supporting him? Good question Brett. I think the answer can be seen in some of the political ads we have been seeing. Those that are running ads these days actively think we are idiots based on what they are feeding us. I made the mistake of flipping it on “Forensic Files” late last night and saw this brazenly mendacious bullshit on full display.

I saw three kinds of ads that made my blood boil. The first one was a local commercial asking people to vote out “all Democrat judges” because they are “soft on crime.” These commercials are not so offensive by themselves, but when you run five or six of them consecutively and offer absolutely zero context it becomes obnoxious. Of course, those ads offer nothing in the way of context. They are just bad judges. Got it.

Not to be outdone, a PAC on behalf of Ted Cruz told us that Collin Allred voted against the parents bill of rights so now he supports gender reassignment surgery at school. You have to be a real piece of Samsonite to believe a word of this ad. Where do I even begin here? I earned a degree in Political Science and now support English classes. Could you imagine me working a scalpel to turn Harry into Sally? Am I supposed to be manning the anesthesia machine?

Has anyone seen a school nurse’s office? Where in the hell would we store the surgical equipment necessary? We barely have the supplies to bandage a wound suffered on the playground much less perform complex medical procedures.  Then I saw a disabled veteran in an ad saying that Allred supported sex change operations for people in the military and children. First of all, the grammarian in me is asking a ton of questions. Are children in the military?

Obviously, we had a transfer of ideas that wasn’t properly punctuated and separated for our consumption. How many people are we talking about here? How many children are getting sex change operations? How many men (I’m assuming men) in the military are getting a sex change operation? If we are to believe that Kamala really wants to fund sex change operations for undocumented migrants (as the highly edited ad that clearly skipped from phrase to phrase suggested) then how many are we talking about?

Fortunately, I can answer that question for you. According to most sources, a little over one percent (1.14 to be exact) is transsexual. As an observant American, I can vouch for those numbers just based on what I see and going through all the people I know. I also know based on my experience in the classroom that fewer children are transsexual. Those statistics are currently sitting at 0.6. percent.

The point is very simple and goes back to the question that Baier was asking. There are two important things of note in the transsexual question. First, most people don’t have the first damn clue how many people are getting gender affirming care. They think the percentage is much higher than it is. Furthermore, they don’t have the first damn clue what gender affirming care actually is.

Secondly and more importantly, most Americans have little ability to filter out obvious bullshit from actual information. Too many people have not developed an active bullshit detector. If a story sounds outrageous then it probably is. We have information at our fingertips that can actively debunk this nonsense. Too many Americans are not doing that.

So, to answer Baier’s question I can simply say that millions of people are politically ignorant. When someone is ignorant you can tell them anything and they will believe it. You have to have some knowledge before something outrageous begins to sound outrageous. Without that knowledge then it just all gets baked into a bulging bullshit cake.