It is sometimes difficult for me to believe that any one at all could really be a Maga or even defend or support a Maga. Yet we know that about a third of the USA population are Magas, maybe more, even within our own personal families. It seems incredible that it could be true.
There are two literary quotes which I find to be helpful at such moments. One is from Nathaniel Hawthorne’s “The Scarlet Letter” and goes as follows:
“No man, for any considerable period, can wear one face to himself, and another to the multitude, without finally getting bewildered as to which may be the true.”
That comes to mind whenever I see the faces of the Fox News people, the Republican politicians and the Christianists. It’s clearly an occupational hazard of being a political leader or a priest in an imperfect world.
The other quote which is, to me, even more deeply helpful, is from Elias Canetti’s “Auto-da-Fé”:
“Whom the gods would destroy, they first make mad. Whom men would destroy, they first make sane.”
These people have a “war” - their term and their conception – against us which has burned away illusions about what they actually are. That has been a very helpful push toward our own sanity.
If any of you have a quote or two which come to mind dealing with this problem of believing what they really are, please share!