Here is another in my unintentional series of re-posting blogs I wrote a year or so ago because they are more relevant today. This happened last week.
Ellin and I have a boat. We’ve been at the same Marina for over 19 years. This is our happy place. We love it. We don’t come here to discuss politics or religion. We come here to relax and have fun.
Here’s a picture of my neighbor to my right. He flies an American flag.
Lots of boats do. It’s a thing with boaters. Why not? This is my neighbor two boats over to my left. 
A little more nautical, but still cool. And then there’s the chucklehead next to me.
I was down below when he came in. I went upstairs to say Hi and he say “Hey did you see my flags?” I looked up and before my normal filter could kick in all I could say was
“WHAT THE FUCK?!! ARE YOU FUCKING KIDDING ME???!!!”
He laughs and says “Oh, you don’t like the guy? I think it’s funny.”
Now, those that know me would be thinking I was about to explode. And they’d be right. I knew if I did this, the guy would never know what hit him.
I didn’t want to do that. The marina is my safe place. It’s where I go every day to sit in the sun and relax. I know that some people on our dock are Republicans and some are Democrats. But we are all friends and we keep it to our selves. We can agree to disagree. I’ve grown to know them enough that we can put aside our differences by simply not talking about them. This is the dock. Mellow out. Have a beer. Go to the pool.
We are all here to relax and have fun. Then yesterday another one shows up on the dock next to us with the same God Damn flag. The vast majority of the dock was appalled. Angry. Livid. WTF?!!!
My problem is I believe in the First Amendment. I will defend your right to say stupid racist shit, but I get to also say I think you are a racist piece of shit.
There are limits to the First Amendment. You can’t shout “FIRE” in a theater. You can stand on a street corner and be as much of an asshole as you want but you can’t do it everywhere. Like our marina! The manager of our marina, god bless him, went to both of these morons and explained the marina is a “politics-free zone.” Please take the flags down. Other people on the dock, almost all of them, were upset.
Well, chucklehead number two got all mad and outraged, but finally took the flags down. Chucklehead number one took them down but kept putting them back up until another boat owner got into a huge shouting match with him. He took the flags down.
Here’s the point. The First Amendment doesn’t mean you get to spew your racist hateful shit anywhere. Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube are all private entities. They can make their own rules and regulations about what you can and cannot do in their app and on their property. The Trumpers have decided that you have to listen to them. If I had put a flag up that violated the marina’s rules, I would have felt terrible and immediately taken it down. I would have been embarrassed.
They don’t. They have no respect for anybody else’s feelings or rules. They feel they have the right to shove their opinions down your throat.
THEY DON’T! They have the right to shout racist crap and you have the right not listen to them and call them a bunch of fucking morons. Oddly the upshot of this is that my neighbor is being shunned. Revealed to be the moron he is.
Really, he is not the sharpest pencil in the box and has no idea how to drive his 37-foot boat — which scares the shit out of all of us on the dock.
He seems to be stunned that he’s being treated like a minority. Like someone who is different from all the people around him. Like, even though we all believe in the First Amendment, we don’t want his kind around here. Karma’s a bitch. Here’s the original post. Making the same point.
Nazis are bad.
This isn’t an opinion. It’s a fact. We seem to live in a world where facts are considered by many to be identical to opinions. That still doesn’t make them any less ‘factual.’
The fact is, NAZIS ARE BAD! White supremacists are bad. White nationalists are bad. A Nazi by any other name is STILL A NAZI! 
Despite this, there has been a huge rise in Nazism, white supremacy, hate crimes, and massacres, the latest being the horrific massacre in New Zealand. Which, by the way, was live-streamed on Facebook. That was bad enough. What was worse was it was re-posted over a million times on Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube.
How many sick fucks are out there?
Turns out, way, way more than I ever imagined.
They always were out there, but up until two years ago, they had the decency to stay hidden beneath the rocks under which they lived.
What changed?
What made them come out from under their slimy rocks to proudly proclaim their hatred, their racism, and misogyny? Duh! The White Nationalist in chief, Adolf Twittler got elected president.
Since then, a Nazi nut job living in a van covered with alt-right posters and pictures of Herr Twittler sent pipe bombs to two former living presidents and all sorts of media folk. Another shot up a concert in Las Vegas. Meanwhile, another bunch of right-wing nut-jobs committed mass murder.
What a fine crew they are. Yup. Good people on both sides.
There are so many hideous crimes after a while the details blur together. No matter how horrible Cheesy McCheese Face behaves — like refusing to condemn Nazis who commit murder in Charlottesville and dumping on John McCain even though he has been DEAD for months — Republicans and “his base” continue to support him.
Well, there goes the neighborhood.
Although his base is a minority in the U.S., they comprise a lot of people. Too many people. So, the question remains, how do we (relatively sane) people deal with these assholes?
I disagreed when Hillary Clinton famously called these folks “deplorables.” Why? Because they owned it and started wearing tee-shirts that said “Proud Deplorable.”
She should have called them “Assholes.”
Why? Because how cool would it have been to see hundreds of thousands of these morons parading around in public wearing tee-shirts saying “I’m a Proud Asshole.”
Lately, an odd thing has started happening. The MAGA hat-wearing public is complaining they are being discriminated against. They are being publicly shamed. They are victims. They’re being picked on because they’re MAGATs.
There are even websites and apps out there that tell them what restaurants they can go to. Where they can be sure nobody will make fun of them. Sort of a “Green Book for Red Hats.”
This shaming is a good thing. If we’ve learned anything in the last two years, we’ve learned you can’t talk to these folks. No matter how many facts you present to these morons, they only believe what the Hater-In-Chief says.
They’re a cult. You can’t have a rational conversation with a cultist. All cults are essentially the same. They only believe their “leader.” Everybody outside the cult is “the enemy.”
Everybody not in the cult is out to get them. The cult leader has secret information that only he possesses. That information almost always is the same:
The leader was anointed by God to be their leader.
As often as not, the hidden information is that the leader actually is God. Everyone tends to forget that in most cults, the end comes when the leader goes stark raving mad, has sex with all female members, regardless of age, and decides everybody needs to kill him or herself.
The problem is this cult has more than 50-million members. That’s an awful lot of Kool-aid.
Shit, we’re gonna need more Kool-Aid.
So, what do we do with these MAGATs? These Nazis?
I say let’s treat them the way they treat other minorities:
* If you see them on the street, cross the street. You never know if they will become violent.
* If you see them in a store, follow them around to make sure they don’t steal anything.
* Don’t argue with them. It’s like teaching a pig to fly. You just frustrate yourself and annoy the pig.
* Shun them. Turn your back on them and walk away.
Give them all a message in the one language they understand:
And, the guy who is kite surfing as the hurricane hits …
