First, let me wish a happy mother’s day to all those mothers out there. In my misspent youth, I tried hard to get pregnant but had no luck. I never did figure out why.

In truth, the thought of having a child petrified me. I did many things in my life but successfully raising an offspring seemed well beyond my skill set and certainly beyond my pay level. Therefore, I got a vasectomy early on to make sure that didn’t happen. However, I do salute all of you who were braver than I. We do need people though I generally find humans over rated. I still shudder at the thought I might have brought someone or something into the world that took after me. Yikes! You can thank me later.

Second, I am cringing at my last post. In my haste to get to my appointment for another Covid booster shot, I hit publish well before it was ready to go. Sorry about that. I would say it won’t happen again but that’s silly. Of course it will. I am who I am and can be no other.

Third, I believe one remedy to error-filled posts is to step back from a blog-a-day. While I have an infinite amount of BS to share, that is a demanding schedule. Perhaps if I could figure out how to edit out the many existing errors in my prior posts, I would keep up the pace. Then, I could occasionally take a full day and clean everything up so I don’t come across as a blithering idiot. On the other hand, why try to fool people. I am a blithering idiot.

Fourth, there might be a more compelling reason to scale back my blogging pace. It is clear I need more balance in my pathetic existence. Writing and napping (with an occasional book club thrown in) is not exactly a full and exciting life. I really should (gasp!) exercise more. Let’s be honest here, I should finally get off my fat ass and exercise just a little. And (aaargh!), I should clean up my hovel or what I call home. It is not good when the EPA declares your residence a toxic waste hazard. Time to bring in a Bobcat and begin excavating some of the debris … the first several layers at least.

Finally, I need some help. How is that for stating the obvious. Let us start with help in this one area. Can someone explain to me how MAGA types think, or whether they are capable of any cognitive activity at all? I used to be understanding of others. As a policy wonk I had conservative colleagues with whom I could work with even if I disagreed with them. As a teacher, the few conservative social work students studying at Wisconsin would thank me for being so balanced and accepting even when other social work faculty apparently were not. Then again, I felt my role was to teach them how to think and not what to think.

However, I am now a grumpy old man. Perhaps it is a function of age … we just get crabby as we enter our dotage, a threshold I passed over some time ago. Or, perhaps those on the other side of the ideological divide have gotten worse in recent years. After all, I can recall when Republicans represented sober and clean government, even if they favored the business classes. In my youth, Southern Democrats were the suspect types even as Northern Dems were my tribe as an ethnic working-class kid.

For a variety of reasons, all the whack jobs and nut cases have migrated to the current Republican Party. This has been a migration of several decades in the making but is now complete. Those intellectual conservatives I had worked with in earlier decades (the ones I still have contact with) have abandoned the party. More to the point, the Party has left them. As one former colleague who had worked on the Hill before migrating to the Brookings Institution said to me, ‘they (Republicans) have lost their way.’

That is putting in mildly. Conservative Republicans (and the clear majority now lean to the hard-right) could not find reality with an AAA Trip map, GPS, and a guide dog. When my late wife and I wintered in Florida, we would leave our liberal Madison bubble as Winter approached to live among a politically diverse group of neighbors until Spring returned. There were topics one stayed away from during our annual hibernation but that is virtually impossible now. Today, I would rather face frigid Winters but at least my blood pressure will remain controlled. My wife’s family used to be quite close and routinely have large gatherings of the clan. In recent years, they have splintered with the ideologically separate groups unfriending themselves on Facebook while those big gatherings are a thing of the past. The cultural gap is too wide, communication too difficult.

In my more conventional liberal youth, I usually could find some way to understand those on the other side of the divide, most of them at least. I would read what conservative thinkers had to say and seek out the logic of their positions. While I might continue to disagree (and usually did, but not always), I could see some logic in their positions. Those days are gone. Now, I look across the divide in total disbelief. It is as if I am looking upon an alien species whose brains are wired in a totally incomprehensible fashion. I cannot legitimately call them homo-sapiens, the sapien part appears missing.

How could anyone think that Donald Trump is the highest expression of Christian values and that Jimmy Carter is the opposite. How could anyone conclude that Barak Obama was a divisive force whose administration brought ruin to America while Trump’s was a glorious reign that brought us together. Or how could they cling to the fiction that Trump won the 2020 election or that voter suppression and gerrymandering somehow strengthen what remains of our democracy? How could any sensible person deny science and reason and facts in the face of overwhelming evidence of anthropogenic climate change? Or how could they argue that more guns will make us safer as America becomes the international poster boy for gun-relate carnage? I could go on and on but you get the picture.

George Orwell was spot on in his depiction of a future world where all was upside down … up would be down, black would be white, war would be peace, freedom would be slavery. That man was so prescient. He did get one thing wrong, however. The title of his classic work should not have been 1984 (though that is about when our descent into madness began) but 2016 (when our madness was fully expressed). That was the moment when we finally lost any touch with decency and with our national sanity.

If anyone can make sense of what is happening, please let me know for I am at a total loss.

I know I am not the brightest bulb on the marquee, the sharpest knife in the drawer, nor the swiftest arrow in the quiver. However, I have tried hard to understand the way today’s Repubicans think. I mean, I have tried very hard. But I am baffled at their total lack of logic. Even if rural America or working class folk feel threatened by economic challenges or changing demographics, why would they flock to a political party that clearly doesn’t have their interests at heart? Why would they cling to candidates that only serve the interests of a small economic elite … a group that has seen their situation overwhelmingly improve at the expense of the rest of us. Cannot they connect the most transparent or obvious of dots? Yup, I am totally baffled.

Please enlighten me.