OPINION: Life as a Make America Great Again (MAGA) Extremist Republican

Sub­mit­ted by W. Jule Wind­ham

As one grows old­er things change. The Bible says when I was a child I thought as a child, when I got old­er, I put away child­ish things. How true, but what are the child­ish things?

When most of us were young we were taught patri­o­tism, respect for author­i­ty, required to be civ­il and kind to one anoth­er, fol­low the laws, and we all learned of an excep­tion­al coun­try called, Amer­i­ca. This was not only instilled in many of us by our par­ents, but by school teach­ers, and almost every adult we came in con­tact with as a child. Today some con­sid­er those things to be no longer true, but to what some would call a MAGA Extrem­ist Repub­li­can, they are not child­ish things at all and should nev­er be put away.

Lets look at what now con­sti­tutes a MAGA Extrem­ist Repub­li­can. You know the folks that our Pres­i­dent, and most of the news media con­sid­ers a threat to democ­ra­cy.

1. Ener­gy inde­pen­dence. Ener­gy inde­pen­dence used to not only seem rea­son­able, but desired. It caused low fuel prices, a stronger econ­o­my, and tru­ly is a nation­al secu­ri­ty issue. Today, if one would like to see increased fuel pro­duc­tion and you hap­pen to be a Repub­li­can you are an extrem­ist and want to destroy the world by ignor­ing cli­mate change by the use of fos­sil fuels.
2. Open Bor­ders. Just a few years ago peo­ple who came to Amer­i­can ille­gal­ly, were called ille­gals. It was not a desired thing to let any­one and every­one enter the coun­try. Today not using the cor­rect term such as migrants is con­sid­ered an offense if you dont agree to give each migrant a tele­phone, health­care, clothes, hous­ing, edu­ca­tion, and a bus or plane tick­et and if you are a Repub­li­can, you are again, extreme.
3. Respect for Author­i­ty. The over­whelm­ing major­i­ty of Judges, Law Enforce­ment offi­cers, etc., are good, decent folks, try­ing to serve our com­mu­ni­ty. If you dont think the judi­cial sys­tem or law enforce­ment is inher­ent­ly flawed or we dont need to pack the court with judges who are polit­i­cal. If you dont believe we need to defund the police and you are a Repub­li­can, you are a threat. There was a time this view point was con­sid­ered well, nor­mal, but lib­er­als con­sid­er this unen­light­ened, and labels those who dis­agree and who are Repub­li­can, extreme.
4. Law & Order. There was a time when I was child that if you did bad things, like steal­ing and assault­ing some­one, most folks want­ed you put in jail. Obvi­ous­ly in some lib­er­al peo­ples view, to think crim­i­nals should be pun­ished is to ignore social jus­tice and you are igno­rant, extreme, racist, and sim­ply anoth­er exam­ple as how a Repub­li­can MAGA per­son is a threat to democ­ra­cy.
5. Infla­tion. For most of us in ear­li­er years we learned that pump­ing more mon­ey into an over­heat­ed econ­o­my (gov­ern­ment spend­ing) con­tributed to infla­tion, it was called Eco­nom­ics 101. Infla­tion hurts the low­er eco­nom­ic group more than any­one. But today, well that is an extreme view. The cur­rent admin­is­tra­tion wants the poor to pay off some of the rich folks stu­dent debts, spend tril­lions in gov­ern­ment pro­grams to make homes more ener­gy effi­cient that the poor may not even own, and as our Pres­i­dent whis­pers from the podi­um, it will not cost one cent, zero. Tril­lian dol­lars not caus­ing infla­tion or increas­ing tax­es, or hurt­ing the most eco­nom­i­cal­ly strug­gling group in our soci­ety. If you dis­agree with this approach well you know you are a threat to Amer­i­ca, an extrem­ist, and obvi­ous­ly would now fail Eco­nom­ics 101 if your pro­fes­sor is a lib­er­al.
6. Free­dom of Speech As a child most of us were taught that Free Speech is a fun­da­men­tal and unique right of all Amer­i­cans. Today it only is only accept­able if what you say, agrees with the lib­er­al per­spec­tive. If you ques­tion vot­ing irreg­u­lar­i­ties, dont agree with no-cash bail, or think there are mul­ti­ple caus­es of cli­mate change, and you are a Repub­li­can, well you are just anoth­er MAGA extrem­ist and your Face­book and Tweet­er account will be closed down.

As a child do you remem­ber that the major threat to Amer­i­ca was for­eign coun­tries? Now accord­ing to the lib­er­als, its your neigh­bor down the street with who you may not polit­i­cal­ly agree. Some things we learned as a child we need to remem­ber. Amer­i­ca is Great. We all are cre­at­ed equal. We are one coun­try under God. We all have a right our opin­ion. How­ev­er, there are child­ish things we need to put away like call­ing folks names such as extreme, and a threat to democ­ra­cy, just because one may have a dif­fer­ent opin­ion. Of course, this is com­ing a Repub­li­can who our pres­i­dent and the cur­rent Demo­c­rat can­di­date for gov­er­nor has stat­ed I may be a threat to democ­ra­cy. That sounds awful child­ish to me!