ABC News photo: “President Donald Trump gestures after a rally at the Amway Center in Orlando, Florida to officially launch his 2020 campaign, June 18, 2019.”

Converting to conservatism

Becoming a Republican in the Time of Trump

Jeffrey Denny

Searching my tormented soul, betrayed by the liberal mainstream media, dismayed by the Democratic presidential debates, and heeding the timeless advice, “be for what’s going to happen,” I made a major life decision:

I’m switching political parties and joining Trump’s GOP.

Suffice that my transformation hasn’t been easy.

First I tried Liberals Anonymous. But they only wanted to talk about their gender and cultural identity and personal agency, Joe Biden’s racism, GMO food allergies, and how “balloons are brightly colored death balls responsible for 42 percent of plastic-related deaths for the birds who eat them.”

Praying to God also failed me. He reminded me His Son was a Big Liberal.

Then I mistakenly went to conversion therapy camp. After a few weeks I realized it was not about changing my political orientation using psychological or spiritual interventions. But I learned a lot from the Bible about stuff I won’t get into here, or ever.

Still desperate to turn conservative before the 2020 presidential campaign begins — or am I already too late? — I turned to reliable sources of information, knowledge, wisdom and insight:

Specifically, Fox News, right-wing media sites, and social media posts and memes by what I call Real Republicans in the Time of Trump©, or RRTT.

RRTT includes former tricorn hat-wearing Tea Party patriots; America-loving white nationalists and nativists; courageous Unite the Right neo-Nazi torch-bearers for Euro-Christian ethnic purity; Second Amendment gun-rights scholars; Constitutional originalists who know and want to protect exactly what the slave-owning Founders meant about God-given human freedom 232 years ago; and, independent-thinking Trump ride-or-die’rs. Also, victims of AOC, Hillary, Obama, Elizabeth Warren, Rachel Maddow and other America-haters with their big thoughts, words, facts, reasoning and people-helping policies.

Trump’s big-tent GOP now also welcomes traditional William F. Buckley standard-bearing, mob-resisting conservatives, and Reaganites who once believed America was a “shining city upon a hill.” (“And if there had to be city walls,” Reagan said, “the walls had doors and the doors were open to anyone with the will and the heart to get here.”)

The old-school Republican guardians of grace, culture and values would gasp in horror, clutch pearls (real and faux), and collapse with fantods on fainting divans, calling for smelling salts, with every daily fresh Trump offense to decency, decorum, gentlemanly manners and the Office of the Presidency. Especially if proffered by an unwashed Democrat. Now they swallow hard and ignore, dismiss or defend Trump’s sneering, gleeful, self-satisfying indecency on account of the good Dow and the bad Dems.

Conservative “Never Trumpers” such as Bill Kristol and ilk, with their highfalutin’ concern for how presidential pandering to the meanest populism is destroying America’s greatness, are now considered weak wet elitist silly-willies who refuse to set sail with the mighty MAGA wind that’s blowing, and blowing you and me.*

Back to me and my personal journey, as we said at Liberals Anonymous.

Since I’m tired of being invited to smart Democrat Washington book clubs and signings, cocktail receptions and dinner parties, I’ve been practicing how to talk Trump Republican. See if I get this right:

1. All Democrats are liberals, all liberals are socialists, and they all love taxes, government programs and job-killing regulations.
2. Democrats hate America, the flag, patriotism, freedom, the troops, the God’s truth, God, and of course, Trump. So they’re determined to take him and America down by any means necessary.
3. Trump is the best American president ever. We need to respect him and his incredible accomplishments!
4. The Democrat liberal socialists want to destroy capitalism that lets everyone create jobs, get jobs and get rich. Many Democrats are limousine liberals who already have nice capitalism jobs.
5. The Democrats look down on real Americans as a bunch of ignorant deplorables who cling to guns and religion. That’s how liberal Hollywood sees real America. Democrats are a bunch of rich coastal elites, unlike real-people Republicans.
6. The Democrats hate the First Amendment. Their PC police want to censor what Americans can and can’t say to protect sensitive liberal snowflakes from being triggered by the plain-spoken inconvenient truth they call racist, sexist and culturally insensitive.
7. The Democrats hate the Second Amendment. They want to take away our guns we need to protect against liberal-coddled criminals and liberal government tyranny jackboot agents coming to take our guns. They’re shamefully politicizing the tragic slaughter of school children. [Recite other NRA talking points.]
8. The Democrats love taxpayer handouts for lazy people who don’t work hard and pull themselves up by the bootstraps, but want a free ride paid by hard-working Americans, i.e., white.
9. The mainstream media (except for #1 most-watched network, Fox) is the enemy of the state that hates Trump because he’s calling out their Trump-hating liberal lies.
10. The government is a bunch of stupid, lazy, overpaid bureaucrats. When they’re not making stupid regulations that hurt real hardworking Americans, they’re sleeping at their desks until retirement on fat pensions paid by hardworking private sector taxpaying Americans.
11. I’m not racist! I have minority friends! Sure we don’t talk about my Republican views. But isn’t it true that a lot of poor people on welfare are minorities who complain about being oppressed?
12. What about racism against whites? Where’s my white privilege? Isn’t affirmative action racism against whites? Black Lives Matter? What about Blue Lives Matter? Don’t White Lives Matter? Where’s MY white privilege? Don’t ALL lives matter? Aren’t we all equal now?
13. The economy and jobs and the stock market are way up under Trump. (As David S. Pumpkin said, “Any questions?”) Even the so-called oppressed minorities are doing better under Trump. What’s their problem?
14. The growing federal debt and budget deficit don’t matter because Trump’s tax relief is making America and our economy greater.
15. Build the wall!!! The liberals and their media are exaggerating the caged children at the border thing. The illegals are bringing drugs and crime, taking our jobs, driving down wages and changing our communities too fast. They need to go back home and do it right like our grandparents did, and also assimilate and speak English like our grandparents did.
16. College liberal professors indoctrinate young minds to become Democrat liberal socialists, obsess about racism and hate America. Trump proves when he fires smart people for being stupider than his stable genius that a big fancy education, experience and expertise don’t make you smarter.
17. Isn’t it hilarious how the feminists hate men and don’t need men but want to be men? Like Rachel Maddow?
18. Liberals want to tear down Civil War monuments to erase our heritage. Liberals also keep harping on slavery, even though it was way back in Civil War times so it has nothing to do with me and they should get over it already.
19. The liberals want “Medicare for All.” Socialized healthcare! [Sidestep how a big Trump GOP voting bloc has Medicare and many have Medicaid and publicly tax-subsidized private healthcare.]
20. Climate change is a hoax. If there’s any climate change, it’s natural — humans, cars, factories, the oil companies and cows didn’t cause it. The weather’s not worse when you look at the real facts from my sources. Scientists are all a bunch of smarty-pants but clueless liberals who want to take away our American hamburgers.

If these informed, intelligent and nuanced Trump GOP points are too much for Washington Democrat dinner talk and policy panel discussions to handle, there’s a slam dunk: It’s Trump or socialism.

This is a lot of hard stuff for my tiny liberal brain to learn.

Reeducation isn’t easy, as millions of Chinese people learned the hard way under Chairman Mao. My liberal college professors brainwashed me pretty well.

So pray for me. Maybe Jesus would forgive me.

Jeffrey Denny is a Washington writer.

*Please see the 2003 mockumentary, “A Mighty Wind”.