We’re heading to an era, headlong, in which faithful praxis untainted by partisanship and culture war will be considered heretical. It’s only a matter of time. The MAGA Christen aren’t the only cause but they have hyper/accelerated it.

Erika will ride that bump for all it is worth.

There is REAL terrorism driven by Muslim extremism. Same for Christianity. Same for Hinduism. Same for Buddhism.

HUman nature is consistent, no matter the faith.

13/ When you see people scare-mongering that a mayor is Muslim, educate them. When you see Johnson and Trump lying, call it out constantly and publicly. When you see MAGA demonizing the stranger and other, demonstrate sacrificial love to the attacked.

Be everything MAGA can never be.

/ENDS

12/ Plan and act accordingly. Don't succumb to the MAGA default of mockery and "stigginit." Don't mirror the people who have brought America low. Demonstrate by action why MAGA is untenable. Remind the people that America can be more than an orange pedophile and hate.

11/ Hope is good. Last night brought hope for many. It should be savored. But hope isn't enough. Hope must be made manifest in practical ways for it to have real effect. The country has a year to prepare for the midterms. Those midterms may determine whether democracy survives at all in America.

10/ Trump has one year to reverse the policies that lost MAGA the elections last night. And his voters have proved repeatedly they have the memory of a dead goldfish. As soon as he gives them enough targets to hate, pets their egos, and scores a few policy "wins" ... they'll prop him up again.

9/ But ... many of the MAGA leadership DO can and they have intentionally attracted people who mistake grievance politics for nation building. They know how to manipulate the MAGA rank and file, particularly Christians who live a largely cultural faith and wear it primarily as identity.

8/ They have little real understanding of the rot partisanship inflicts on the body politic, and little grasp of how the civic sphere works beyond a paradigm of "blow/react." If you asked them to expound on Burke, Engels, Althusser, Aggarwal, Negri, or De Toqueville ... they'd just stare blankly.

7/ Most of them have spent decades steeped in post 9/11 hatred for Islam ... yet few of them even realize that extremism in Islam is as common as extremism in Christianity ... ie, not common at all. But the 25 years of scare-mongering has rewired their nervous system and killed critical thinking.

6/ Anyone who can rationalize that can rationalize anything. And because they are often low-information or badly educated they will be easily moved by deception and bad arguments ... which are the norm for MAGA. They were driven to support a rapist, ignore their terror attack on the Capitol, etc.

5/ In other words, people who be easily driven by scare mongering about Muslim mayors, the shallow ideology of partisanship, and the fear of personal loss. We cannot assume even basic morality from any of them. After all, they stand for a rapist and pedophile, still.

4/ When you take away the fringe and focus on the average MAGA we can see they tend to follow a pattern: Culturally Christian, shallow understanding of political theory, untrained in basic sociological concepts, a sense of community that is nationalistic but not communal, etc.

3/ MAGA is horrible at governance, and lacks even basic human decency ... but it is excellent at driving scare votes. Every MAGA election win has been driven largely by rank self-interest (and the cost to others be damned) AND scare-mongering.

2/ Man is a reactionary creature, by nature. For every person who votes with a eye to the future, the good of the community as a whole, and for decency ... there are 10 more who vote solely out of self-interest and using no moral baseline.

I’m all outta bubble gum.

This era has been a paint stripper for the soul.