If there ever was a modern nation “fiddling while Rome burns” it is the America of the twenty-first century. No matter what happens in the community on all sides around us—homelessness, mass killings, the death of civics education in schools, sports gambling, rampant sexual abuse in the churches, insensate addiction to video gaming, porn, or any number of legal or illegal substances—Americans could care less.
As long as our bellies are full, our eyes and ears are tingling with happy-go-lucky TV drug advertisements, free-the-nipple social media, Hollywood photographs, get-rich-quick promises by employers and stock traders, upcoming sports events, and online shopping sales, we are happy and unconcerned about anything else.
It is not possible to assess how far backward this country has slid from the knowledge base and intellectual capacity, habits of hard work, and social, spiritual, and political attainments of even our most recent ancestors, let alone the Founders of this country. How would we even know who they were and what they accomplished? We know nothing of American history and the efforts our ancestors made to lift up future generations economically and socially, and our leaders are certainly not interested in teaching us any of that. It is in their best interest to play dumb. And, besides, they probably don’t know much if any of that history either.
MAGA constantly accuses Democrats of undermining everything holy and true about America. MAGA Republicans believe they must be able to defend themselves against their own government and all its subversive election workers, civil service employees, liberal local prosecutors, and defense and intelligence agencies.
Those agencies are full of anti-American liberals who want to overthrow God’s kingdom and everything else good in America, including private schools, oil companies, law enforcement, and the Ten Commandments. Republicans want their own party members to be armed to the teeth, and rich party member to have private security armies to protect their interests from all the bad elements in society.
MAGA Republicans are fully prepared to shift the entire American tradition and culture over to a politics of force, rather than to a politics of reason, law, and shared community values. For example, Rep. Nancy Mace (R-SC) recently asked Rep. Jasmine Crockett (D-TX) during a House hearing if she wanted to “take it outside,” that is, to use fisticuffs and fingernails to settle their differences. MAGA women have learned well at the feet of the male prophets of force in the party.
Pete Hegseth, the MAGA nominee for Defense Secretary, constantly speaks about “lethality” as his own personal ethic and the best ethic for America’s fighting forces, completely forgetting about the historical peace-keeping philosophy of both of our political parties. Donald Trump sets the standard for the movement with his personal motto—“fight like hell”—as evidenced by his announced intention to make “all hell break out” in the Middle East if Muslims don’t accept his Day 1 sovereignty over the whole 1,400-year-old religion-based conundrum.
The MAGA party has taken care to empower white supremacist organizations and prepare them to “stand by” at the ready until such time as their lethal skills are needed. MAGA also wants Americans ignorant of history and civics to have AR-15s and other hardware at the ready-to-place debate as the best forum for decision-making.
MAGA is preparing for civil war, and the 2024 election was just the start of their preparations, not the end of them. Do you think all of America will willingly bend the knee to autocracy or monarchy just because a handsome, wealthy, sexually active, strong-arm politician says pretty please? Converting a 400-year-old civilization based on friendly and ethical debate over to a government based on unfriendly use of dark-side force is going to take some doing. Republicans are hard at work at it, especially since the rewards are clearly much more money and much more power.
Democrats, while less sanguine about using battlefield equipment and projectiles at home, are still just fine using them to kill innocent Muslim women, children and elderly in Gaza. Israel’s Netanyahu is the far-right tail that wags the far-left Democrat party dog. And you don’t think religion plays a role in our government any longer?
In the meantime, Democrats have always been more comfortable fawning at the feet of Taylor Swift than reading and studying the U.S. Constitution. They are the ones fiddling the fastest while America burns.