Seeing MTG’s most recent antics—screeching at a fellow Republican, Georgia election official about how fraudulent the Georgia election was, baselessly guffawing about dead voters and rampant fraud and not accepting any of his answers (this on the heels of calling for dividing the country in two)—I was reminded of a two-week trip I made to west and north west Florida some years back at this time of year with my old grad school fishing partner in crime, Steve. It was during Trump’s first spring in office, and everywhere we looked was the red flash of a MAGA hat, U.S. and Confederate flags snapping in the wind mounted on the tailgates of bad-ass pickups.
We camped in small, cheap campgrounds, kayaked with manatees, caught some decent redfish and sea trout out where the gulf runs through cuts and small islands and endless stretches of easy-to-get-lost-in inlets and coves. We smoked cigars and drank some pretty good single malt scotch and froze our butts off in our tents, temperatures plunging, unseasonably, into the 30s…. And we met lots of decent, friendly, warm people. We drank beer and played pool with them; they gave us fishing tips, told us what we had to see, what to stay away from, how to not die from hypothermia…. Their generous advice took us, ultimately, to my favorite place on the trip, Cedar Key, and the best fishing of our adventure.
All this in the reddest part of a red state.
I was left with the following insight: Despite the spiraling insanity of the modern Republican Party, red state dwellers are mostly still just good people willing to lend a helping hand, keen to tell a bad joke or laugh at one of yours, happy to play a game of pool with you, to point you toward a good fishing hole. This all despite MTG and Q and right wing media and most MAGA Republicans insisting Democrats and liberals are the devil’s spawn (I don’t think that’s metaphorical any longer). Going past the politics—though believing Dems are all pedophiles who drink the blood of babies goes way way beyond a mere “difference of political opinion”— is A LOT—but beyond/beneath ALL of that—the Hannitys and Tucker-Cs and MTGs and pillow salesmen and the walking dead (aka, Steve Bannon), Crazy Rudy…the orange-skinned Maestro of Madness himself (and sadly too many others to mention) who spin their loony soup of lies and conspiracies and outrage into the minds of many a decent citizen—were also ordinary, thoughtful human beings helping out a couple of bedraggled, northeast liberals looking to catch some fish.
*Photos by the author
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