I had my last conversation with my MAGA supporting cousin in November of 2020. Until that point, he had led me to believe he cared for my immigrant family enough that he wouldn’t cast a vote for a lying, treasonous xenophobe who had turned a call for violence into a campaign slogan.
But my cousin had been drinking and he let the truth slip out.
His final, slurred admission made me lose interest in anything he had to say. However, until that point, I’d been trying to understand his perspective.
Perhaps I was making it more complicated than it needed to be. His perspective was this: GUNS!
That’s it. There’s no nuance. There’s no complexity. There’s no hidden meaning. My MAGA supporting cousin wanted guns.
“I won’t live beneath the rule of a tyrant!” he declared.
“Okay,” I said. “But right now, your dear leader is claiming he’s not going to step down even though he lost. Without any evidence, he’s spreading lies about election irregularities that threaten to shake our country apart at the seams. He’s behaving like a dictator. If you refuse to live beneath the rule of a tyrant, will you march on Washington if your dear leader unlawfully attempts to retain power?”
“Er… the government listens in on these phone calls you know. So, I’m not going to say anything.”
“That’s what I thought.”
My MAGA supporting cousin’s personal mythology was that if he was in the possession of guns, he would be able to magically save himself from “tyrants.” He considers himself a “law and order patriot” but also firmly believes the government represents the greatest single threat to his freedom.
For some reason, he completely fails to recognize the danger of a billionaire who longs to become a tyrant, not just in practice but also in name. Why do conservatives have this blind spot? Why can’t they recognize that billionaires are tyrants already?
My cousin’s heart pills
My cousin thinks he’s free, but he can’t live without his heart pills. He’s always complaining about how expensive his heart pills are. Pills are more expensive in the United States than anywhere else in the world.
Why are life-saving pharmaceuticals expensive in the USA? It’s because the physical suffering of American citizens is secondary to appeasing the billionaires’ insatiable hunger for profit.
You may have a gun, but how free are you if your heart doesn’t work?
Billionaires control the price of everything. If working class people start to get ahead, billionaires have enough power to crash the economy. Inflation doesn’t bother them. They can just wait it out. They can hold on to assets until the economy recovers. It’s only working class people who feel the burden.
The whole idea that it’s possible to “get ahead” in the USA is an illusion. Billionaires dangle that carrot to keep us docile as we work ourselves to death while they reap all the rewards. Wake up! We’ve got the yoke of the tyrants on our backs. The government is supposed to protect us from “all enemies foreign and domestic.”
Why does the government refuse to protect us from the tyranny of billionaires?
The government is based on following the will of the people. We go through the charade of having elections, but in the end it doesn’t matter who we elect. Every representative from the state to the federal level follows the will of the billionaires, not the will of the people.
The result is that everything in the United States is unfairly tipped to favor obscenely wealthy sociopaths. These individuals who accrue massive fortunes are able to push through the laws that they want, manipulate markets, deny your access to health care… the list goes on and on.
We live under the rule of tyrants now
The government is supposed to protect us from tyrants, but conservatives have duped their followers into thinking the government is the only threat to freedom we face. Freedom has MANY enemies. That should be obvious.
Why can’t the American public see that individual citizens who are more powerful than the government are also a threat to our freedom?
We’ve all been disenfranchised by the fact that billionaires own every candidate that runs for office.
The truth is government isn’t a threat. Government is a tool. In the right hands, the tool can be wielded for good. In the wrong hands, the tool can be wielded for evil. It’s ironic because that’s what conservatives say about guns.
Right now, the tool of government is being wielded to establish a class of billionaires who think the “rule of law” shouldn’t apply to them. Just a few years ago, we witnessed a billionaire make an attempt to overthrow the government.
That’s a pretty blatant attack on your freedom.
Anyone who is paying attention should have seen this coming in 2016. The government isn’t our enemy, the billionaires are. Electing a billionaire to the highest office in our country was like making Freddy Krueger chief of staff at a nursery.
It should tell you something when the most tyrannical people in our society crack a smile at you and say, “You can keep your guns.” It’s because tyrants know guns in the hands of citizens do not represent a threat to their power.
The billionaire mentality
Billionaires have a gaping hole in their psyche that can never be filled. Our corrupt president has placed himself squarely in the spotlight, so he serves as an appropriate example. All you have to do is look at his life with unfiltered eyes and it’s obvious how detestable and miserable it is.
The way he chases attention is pathetic. What other word could you use? His behavior lacks any sign of dignity or self-respect. People only tolerate his company because they want something from him.
You don’t have to be a billionaire to see this unfortunate side of human nature. I’ve been in the presence of people who liked to flash money around. Every time they did so, a certain class of individual came crawling out of the underworld to shower them with intoxicating praise.
When people get in the habit of flashing money, every interaction in their life becomes transactional. They begin to delude themselves into believing that this is the only form of relationship that can exist. They think, “It all comes down to money in the end, there are no sincere emotions.”
