I remember the exact moment when I realized I loved my country. The year was 1997. The place was Italy. The affliction was love. The guy had a Che Guevara poster on his wall. I had no idea who that was. He was talking about Israel and how terrible they were. I had no idea what he meant, so I just nodded along. But then he started trash-talking America.
So I said, “Well, you sure like our Marlboros, our Levis, and our movies, don’t you?” It could have been a joke, but it somehow wasn’t. I wasn’t mad exactly, I was defensive. And that’s how I knew I loved my country, and why I was an unapologetic American.
Like Kevin Kline in A Fish Called Wanda:
As we gather together on the Fourth of July to celebrate the nation’s birthday, I’m struck by just how polarized we still are. It is as bad as it was during the last Civil War. So, how can we feel as if we are still “One nation, under God, indivisible with liberty and justice for all?”
They don’t feel that way on the Left, and they make sure everyone on the Right knows it. They hiss and shriek and moan and scream at Trump and his supporters as though they are living under an oppressive emperor rather than just having suffered a humiliating defeat in November.
If only they called him an emperor. They’ve gone all the way to Hitler. Once you’ve reached Hitler, there’s nowhere left to go.
But maybe that’s wrong. Perhaps there is still somewhere else to go, taking what is a virtual Civil War and transforming it into a hot war, or at the very least, a violent uprising. If, say, a few blue states decided to secede from the union, over mass deportations or transgender ideology, what then?
Zohran Mamdani has promised, if he’s elected, to obstruct ICE, even if it means he gets arrested by the feds.
Gavin Newsom has already taunted Trump into arresting him for obstructing ICE. Mayor Karen Bass in Los Angeles and all of the wealthy donors who put her in power are making mass deportations the central issue for the Democrats. Is it a cause worth fighting and dying for?
They’ve taken to social media to proclaim “Alligator Alcatraz,” which is designed as a deterrent to discourage gang members, drug smugglers, and other criminals from risking crossing the border illegally, “Alligator Auschwitz.”
This illustrates perfectly how it is that the Left has become the crazier side. What Trump says could be seen as potentially removing American citizens, but it’s not clear exactly what he means. If you do not exist in reality, what he says can mean whatever you want it to.
They react with the same level of panic as they had with the Access Hollywood tape, Russiagate, E. Jean Carroll, Stormy Daniels, “good people on both sides,” “losers and suckers,” Ivanka Trump, Elon is a Nazi, impeachment, impeachment, indictment, indictment. They are the party that cried wolf.
Their helplessness in the face of Trump’s wins is then taken out on those they know.
Most people on the Right have a story like that. I have lost many friends over the past ten years, and much of it even before I ever decided to vote for or support Trump. It’s just that I asked too many questions. I didn’t follow the rules.
It isn’t just the betrayal of voting for Trump, although that’s a big part of it; it is the mandated directive from inside their Doomsday Cult. They must purge those who do not align with their views, and even those who know or are friends with Trump supporters are also banished, swarmed, and attacked.
So, how can we celebrate as one country if so many of those who rule our culture and dominate so much of our society are this intolerant?
A New America Online
I’ve lived online for 30 years. I helped build what would become a vast utopia of a new America. Our superpower was creating our own reality and then presenting it to the media, who then transformed it into the status quo.
Much of the early internet took shape in the George W. Bush era. Not many people realized the power of social media back then, but Barack Obama did. It’s not likely Bush would have even been elected if social media had been around. The Republicans were slow to catch on.
Obama had an energized army of college-educated tech junkies who loved nothing more than going to war for him every day. I was one of them. Presidential politics would never be the same. Out of that era came the cool yet morally superior alpha voices, like Rachel Maddow, Chris Hayes, and Jon Stewart.
We had all of the power because every major institution, university, corporation, and every person, famous or otherwise, had to have an online presence. We’d taken control of the port of entry and thus could decide the rules that everyone must follow.
So what happened? Trump happened. Unlike most Republicans, Trump took to Twitter like an early adopter, using it to build his own movement. With Obama leading one tribe and Trump leading the other, we became two warring sides— call them the “virtue signalers” vs. “trolls.”
Trump antagonized the Left. He refused to play by our rules. He loved saying things that shouldn’t be said, and he took pleasure in knowing that with every Tweet, he made the news.
If the Democrats had shrugged and moved on, they probably wouldn’t be where they are today — a collapsed and failed utopia. Instead, we began fighting our virtual Civil War with my side calling itself “the resistance,” which it never was. It was always the empire.
Trump was only the second Twitter president to be elected, and the shock of our side losing was too much to bear. Thus began our ritual of purging, destroying, attacking, demonizing, and dehumanizing those we deemed a threat.
The Me Too Movement took down hundreds of would-be assaulters, rapists and harassers. Then it cycled through the wheel of oppression with each group taking center stage — the future is female, Muslims, Black Lives Matter, Trans Women are Women, no human being is illegal on stolen land.
Trump was someone who could not be destroyed, banished, or canceled until January 6th, which provided the necessary video footage to prove the hypothesis that it was all justified. Those bad people got what they deserved, and did not belong in our government or our country.
Banning Trump and other Conservatives from social media sites we thought belonged to us would set up a series of events that would flip the power balance online and eventually, in government. When Conservatives finally had a voice, they also had a superpower. They could speak the truth that no one on the Left could.
Speaking the truth was the Left’s biggest threat in an online world built on words. If it’s just words, they can be altered, softened, transformed to mean something other than the truth. We manufactured our reality for so long that eventually, there was no such thing as the truth anymore.
We had to go along with the lies — to say men were women and women were men, bad movies were good movies, and children could be born in the wrong bodies, and America was corrupted by the “white supremacist patriarchy.” Oh, yeah, and Trump was Hitler.
That is the truth of the last ten years, but it is not the story the Left would tell. They can’t handle the emotions that bubble up inside them when confronted, and they have to flee the conversation by either hanging up the phone or walking away.
The story of America didn’t include a new America born within it, and how would we navigate that world if so much power were concentrated on one side? So much so that they would reject the results of an election and use all of their power to bring down a duly elected president. And then they tried to put him in jail because they could not beat him. That was a kind of tyranny America had not seen since its founding.
Are You Not Entertained?
The Left’s unsustainable fragility is matched only by Trump’s equal and opposite lack of fragility. He seems to delight in always pushing farther to see just how much he can upset the Left. Whether it’s “Alligator Alcatraz” or the newly announced Gladiator-style fight at the White House for America’s 250th.
Coming soon to a TikTok near you, the claim that Trump will be throwing prisoners from “Alligator Alcatraz” into the Gladiator’s ring at the White House.
The artist in me is grateful for the electrified chaos Trump brings, because I know that someday, all of this madness will translate into some truly great art.
The patriot in me knows Trump is a president who loves this country - and that’s something we haven’t seen in the White House for a while. But it is essential to keep the dream of America alive.
Posted to the official White House YouTube channel:
My very Liberal town has prepared for the Fourth of July parade by lining lawn chairs up and down the main road. They might be oppressed Doomsday Bunker dwellers online, but in real life, they’ll be waving an American flag, having a picnic, watching a parade, and then the fireworks.
I remember all of the Fourth of July holidays throughout my life. I remember the sand in my toes as the sun went down, and I remember the fireworks bursting through the twilight. Maybe I didn’t know what any of it meant. Maybe I couldn’t understand the past. But I will always feel a pang of sentimental nostalgia when this day rolls around every year.
And that’s how we celebrate as one country by ignoring our virtual Civil War that is tearing us apart and remembering a day we all used to love before someone invented social media. We don’t have to watch this show. We can shut it off.
We find a way outside, not just to leave the internet, but to touch grass, look at the sky, smile at each other, and be grateful to be here at all.
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