Calm Enough to Write

For how long, I don't know

In the short space of fourteen weeks, a deluded malignant narcissist upended the entire political, economic, and cultural environment of the United States of America.

For most of those weeks, I was in a state of angry shock, trying to suspend my disbelief that the electorate of the Republic actually believed that this diseased son-of an-anti-democratic-slum-lord vulgarian racist xenophobic cluster-fuck of a human being was fit to occupy the Oval Office. He made false promises to the ignorant masses who shared his hatred for The Other—whomever that may be—and topped it off with outlandish claims against his opponent without addressing any differences in policy or in any vision for the country’s future.

Why? How?

I wasn’t sure until I read a very telling theory on a Facebook post. I can’t recall the author, albeit the thesis was quite clear: '“Fuck the liberals!” That, it seems, is what it all boiled down to—a visceral hatred of the left and all that goes with it, the entire spectrum thereof. The Orange Combover latched onto that with glee and made it the meassge. The recipients did not care one whit about economic policy, the financial markets, the rights of resident aliens, or the mistreatment of American citizens of color; as long as their hero could “own the libtards,” nothing else mattered. Consequently, I question the right of many in the electorate to vote. A well-informed populace is key to a constitutional democracy (that’s a synonym for a republic, in case anyone slept through their political science or civics class), and thus the New Idiocracy has no place in a voting booth.

Yet here we are. Get as mad at me as you want; the inmates are now running the asylum.

I’m reminded of a news clip featuring some southern redneck being asked if he wanted a dictator in the highest office, and he grinned and drawled that this country could stand to be led by a dictator—the standard southern conservative elitist preference for more than century. It’s already biting them in their Confederate-wannabe asses, so we’ll see how much they wave that rebel battle rag after that.

As for the right-wing agitators, the neo-Nazis, and white supremacists emboldened by the Tangerine Slime since 2015, well, I will point out that my father, his older brother, and a few granduncles on my mother’s side spent part of the 1940s eradicating Nazis and fascists from the face of the Earth. I consider it a Steele family tradition, one which I will gladly continue.

I am a veteran non-commissioned officer of the finest Army the world has ever seen, and I earned the designation of Rifle Expert, the highest attainment in marksmanship of the M-16A2 rifle. Recently I joined my brother at a weapons range (of which he is a member and no we’re not “gun nuts’) and tried out his Sig Sauer .22 and Glock .380 handguns, rented a favorite of mine, the M1911 .45 pistol, and also rented a Ruger 10/22 bolt-action rifle. At the risk of boasting, my brother described my shot groups with all those weapons as “terrifying.” It’s good to know that I haven’t lost my ability. If any of those Loud Boys or Loath Creepers or Budweiser Battalions try anything stupid, well, if I have to I can still turn a wife into a widow from 500 yards.

I’m not saying that another civil war is imminent. Yet the behavior of the current executive and legislative branches of the U.S. government has a lot of people wondering the tree of liberty is in need of some watering. Or who knows?—in 2026 the Democratic Party may gain control of the Congress and impeach the imbecile and his lapdog, and then convict and remove them. If not, it could happen that this moron will give the military one unlawful order too many and be removed in a less democratic fashion.

Am I being overly dramatic or pushing for violence? Hardly. The point is that we aren’t the ones toting AR-15s into a McDonalds or a Walmart just to make a ridiculous point, and we certainly didn’t storm the seat of American government like disaffected children who didn’t get their way. Some of us are simply ready for whatever this clown and his amateur Brown Shirts think they can get away with. We are not the equivalent of “good Germans.”

We are not nice people anymore.