I think when you look at the heart of MAGA you see a common thread through all of it. They feel discounted. They feel unheard. They feel like their feelings have taken a backseat to the feelings of others. That anger gets directed at so-called coastal elites and intellectuals. Those groups feel superior to the regular folks.

We’ve talked about what ends up happening with that anger and who it gets directed at. What’s funny in a not so funny way is how that gets turned around. A commenter on Facebook (I am keeping him anonymous out of respect) essentially said that he owns a business, so he knows what he’s talking about and I don’t because I don’t own a business. Pot? Meet kettle.

That’s the real ballgame here for conservatives. They love the electoral college. It allows them to condense the election from 50 states down to seven states where things are theoretically a toss up. As it stands, Donald Trump has very little chance of winning the popular vote.

The point is that when the electoral college was set up it was set up to prevent the masses from choosing the president. We may be nearly 250 years into the future, but we are still there as a practicality. The biggest difference between liberals and conservatives is who they want to choose who leads our country.

It is a feeling that they are somehow more valuable than you and me. They are more successful and therefore more valuable. If you look at our overarching economic policy since 1980 it is an overwhelming belief that so-called job creators are more valuable than those performing the jobs. This is why we are busting unions. This is why wages for workers have stagnated while wages for CEOs and captains of industry have gone through the roof.

In that world, those that are “successful” see their vote and voice as more valuable than anyone else’s. Imagine the hubris of a businessman thinking their opinion on education policy being more valuable and more informed than an educator’s. Imagine that same businessman thinking their opinion on health care reform, national defense, science policy, or the criminal justice system being more valuable than people working in those industries.

Business people might be experts in their area of business, but they rarely have a wealth of knowledge outside of that immediate area. This immediately becomes important when we are talking about issues of race, ethnicity, sexual orientation, and gender equality. It’s not that we don’t get an opinion. It is that those opinions aren’t worth as much as someone that has lived that experience.

Where we make out mistake is assuming that we know more than others because of our status. I have more education than most, but that doesn’t make me an expert across the board. Someone can be in business, but that’s a fairly narrow focus. I might feel my opinion is more informed than someone else’s, but they still get their opinion and they still get their vote.

If Kamala Harris wins then job one and maybe the only job is moving us forward to wear the idea of a “swing state” is a thing of the past. Who gets the most votes? That’s the only question that should matter. I don’t care if you are a businessman or a minimum wage employee. Your vote should count the same. That is the way democracies work.

Well, then let’s have a short review before the Final which will be True/False and Multiple Choice.

In a former life, I used to pound the pavement, knocking on doors on hot sultry Texas afternoons with a voter list prepared by our local paid political hack … er … political consultant. The list guaranteed that we would not be “preaching to the choir,” nor would we be talking to people who were “unavailable to persuasion.” In other words, no “triple D Democrats” and no voters from the Dark Side.

It kept you on your toes.

On one memorable occasion, I knocked on a door that was opened by a big burly gentleman with no neck to speak of, and I asked to talk to his wife, whose name was on my list – but not his. He took one look at my lapel regalia – aka campaign buttons – and asked why I wanted to talk to her.

I immediately saw my mistake and told him that I had the wrong address.

“I think you DO,” he answered to my retreating back.

I might have blown his wife’s cover as a closet Democrat anyway, and for that, I was and am truly sorry.

But this year, women as closet Democrats have their own campaign spokesperson: Julia Roberts. 

“In the one place in America where women still have a right to choose, you can vote any way you want, and no one will ever know,” she says, in a recently released TV ad.

It’s a secret ballot. You can vote for anyone and anything, and the old man doesn’t need to know about it.
This naturally unleashed a furious male MAGA backlash. How dare they tell women to lie to their husbands! Encouraging infidelity is not strictly OK.

The icing on the cake is who chose to loudly object: Newt Gingrich.

Newt, you will recall, has had a checkered past vis-a-vis his marriages.

Three of them.

But that didn’t stop ol’ Newt from saying this:

“For them to tell people to lie is just one further example of the depth of their corruption. How do you run a country where you’re walking around saying ‘wives should lie to their husbands, husbands should lie to their wives’?” 

Indeed.

Gingrich divorced his first wife after her cancer surgery and his second wife while having an affair with his soon-to-be third wife, Callista.

Having the cojones to criticize Democrats for suggesting that wives should lie to their husbands about who they voted for, when he himself felt the need to lie to his wives to cover his infidelities is a little rich.

But to Newt, it’s just another day in politics.

Those of us that work in education have to balance an unbridled optimism and joy that we want to share with students with the mounting frustrations we deal with. It presents an interesting dichotomy, but in my mind it is fairly easy. I am increasingly discovering that it is the adults that are the source of the frustration. When you keep peeling back that onion you soon discover that virtually all of the adults see eye to eye on what should really be done. We are just left to go with the flow in an impersonal system that has its own ways and own mind about such things. I have to practice turning off the frustrated face and switching the happy one back on.

Generally speaking, I try to be a jovial person. I haven’t always been this way. I experienced a bit of a conversion several years when I entered the hospital with a staph infection. I came out of that experience with all my fingers and toes and with a new understanding that nothing is ever guaranteed.

This is a daily battle. It is a daily battle to look at things from the bright side. It isn’t something that comes naturally or easily. Gratitude is a choice and it is one that has to be made daily. Grievance leads to anger, frustration, and more importantly envy. Envy leads to the dark side. This is where so many people are these days. Avoiding it involves seeing it and acknowledging it. It involves a self-talk that can bring me out of that head space.

The last several weeks in particular have produced three noble truths that I cannot ignore. First, I am angry. There is a meme going around where we acknowledge that both sides hate. One side hates women, black people, immigrants, liberals, and LGTBQ+. The other side hates bigots. Hate is a strong word, but the anger is palpable.

The second noble truth is that this anger is justified. I don’t think people quite understand what life is like for a progressive Christian these days. We feel that our faith has been hijacked on one side and is being mocked on another front. When we were growing up we learned what we were supposed to be as Christians. We were taught to love everyone. We were taught to accept everyone. We were taught that our love and charity shouldn’t come with strings attached.

Then, when we tried to live according to that creed we were told we were not Christian. We just weren’t judgmental enough. We were only Christian if we supported a man that represented every vice we were warned about growing up. So, that when we say we are Christian we are immediately judged by those that follow someone that represents just about everything evil in the world. Of course, we were then judged by those non-Christians that simply being Christian means you are an asshole like they are.

The anger is justified because it masks a profound sadness. It masks a sadness for the loss of loved ones that have been taken in by hate. They have been taken in by bigotry, grievance, and disinformation. I feel powerless to do anything and say anything. Decency has become a vice. Cruelty has become a virtue. Up is down. Left is right. Black is white. In this bizarro world, the ravings of a demented and evil man become virtue and truth. Of course, I’m angry. It is the stage after the anger that worries me.

One thing I’ll bet the TFG staff never suspected they’d have to deal with in their campaign was having a rally warm-up comedian tell a string of racist jokes that would be all anyone ever talked about in the media coverage that ensued. A whole string of speakers – including Bronzer Boy himself – followed, but no one got the column inches like ol’ Tom Whatzizname got.

So, I thought, turnabout is fair play. Why not tell some Nazi jokes? Not just any ones will do, though. They should be Flüsterwitze, or “whisper jokes,” the jokes that Germans would tell each other during the 3rd Reich that sometimes got them in hot “wasser” with the local SS.

Some of them aren’t very funny by our standards, but then, you could say that about Tom Whatzizname’s jokes.

At a press meeting, Josef Goebbels tells an American journalist: “If Roosevelt had something like the SS, there wouldn’t be any gangsters left in the US!” The journalist answers: “Of course not. They would all be squad leaders by now.”

What’s the difference between Christianity and National Socialism? With Christianity one man died for all of us, but in National Socialism all of us are expected to die for one.

Hitler is visiting an insane asylum. The patients lined up by their beds greet him with “Heil Hitler!” One man stands aside and does not greet him at all. Hitler gets angry and asks him why. He answers: “I’m not crazy, I am the ward’s orderly.”

An Essener and a Berliner talk about the damage done by allied bombing campaigns. Says the guy from Berlin: The last bombing run on the capital was so serious, the window panes kept falling out until five hours after the raid. The guy from Essen replies: That’s nothing! After the last bombing run, pictures of the Führer kept flying out of the windows for fourteen days!

Soldiers of the Volkssturm are now being sent to the front in pairs. One throws a stone, and the other one shouts “boom!”

When a silver aeroplane flies over, it’s American. When there’s a green plane, it’s British. When there are no aircraft, that’s the Luftwaffe.

When a clock goes forward it goes ‘tic-tac’ – but when Rommel goes backwards, it’s tactic.

On the Wehrmacht sniper training range, the lieutenant says to a fellow soldier: “That guy over there is pretty good”.

“Yes indeed, but I have a feeling that we should better check his personal background”.

“Why,” asks the lieutenant.

“After every shot he carefully removes his fingerprints from the rifle”.

A man walks into the records office and asks to change his name.

The clerk is not keen on helping but asks the man’s name and the man replies “My name is Adolf Stinkfoot.”

The clerk is sympathetic and decides to allow the man to change his unfortunate name. “What do you want to change it to?” asks the clerk, the man replies “Maurice Stinkfoot.”

Propaganda guy asks a youth:
– Who is your father?
– Fuhrer Adolf Hitler!
– Who is your mother?
– Great Germany!
– What is your dream?
– To become an orphan!

Herr Sergeant, we have food only for half our unit!
All right, we shall eat after the attack.