A few days ago I posted this satirical piece I put to together with my imaginary new friend, Samuel K., and linked it to my Facebook page. Someone I've known for many years, but not kept up with over those years except cursorily on Facebook, responded to my post commenting "You do realize you are calling your friends stupid?"  I knew immediately her question was meant to be rhetorical.

I do know not all people who support President Trump are stupid, but took my Facebook friend's response to my post as mostly defensive. I have no idea if she'd only seen the photo at the top of the piece I took at a protest in Salt Lake City back in April which said that 1 out of 3 Trump supporters are as stupid as the other 2 and not read the satirical piece below it, but admittedly wasn't particularly curious about that.

I couldn't necessarily blame her for not reading my post as i was mostly playing around entertaining myself in these times of daily what the hells and reallys!!? 

I found the protest sign funny at the time I made the photograph, but in no way did I feel obligated to take the sign literally as the truth. Unlike my Facebook friend, I haven't completely lost my sense of humor.

I can easily offer evidence that those supporting President Trump are many other things too like dull or willfully ignorant or selfish, self-serving pricks (See Also:  Trae Crowder here). I offered up some alternatives, not those, to "stupid," all true, but she responded she was "none of the above." I'd even offered that I assumed some of the president's supporters "may be good people." 

So it goes.

Welp, I figured I should again consult with my new friend Samuel K. (a composite of Mark Twain and Kurt Vonnegut whose voices would be helpful in these times) and ask them to offer a defense of President Trump's supporters. After not a few exchanges with them, here's what my new imaginary friend has to say.

By Samuel K. Von Twain

It is a remarkable thing to watch the last tattered remnants of the American experiment flutter like a moth around the golden hair of President Donald J. Trump. The people who still support him—God bless their sturdy skulls—are proof that loyalty is a powerful glue, particularly when poured directly into the ear and allowed to harden.

I say this not in judgment, but in admiration. It takes a special sort of tenacity to cling to a man who has been impeached twice, indicted more times than a back-alley loan shark, and yet claims persecution so convincingly you’d think he’d just been dragged from a Roman coliseum in chains.

The President’s admirers are not merely his voters. No, they are his apostles, each ready to spread the gospel that the man is both America’s last hope and the world’s richest underdog. And in the spirit of Mark Twain’s suggestion that we give the people what they want—and Vonnegut’s suspicion that humanity may not deserve better—allow me to defend them.


The Education Problem That Isn’t One

You might think our national tendency to elect con artists, carnival barkers, and snake oil merchants has something to do with the quality of education in this country. But that’s just elitist talk. Education, as it once existed, tried to cultivate curiosity and critical thinking—two dangerous traits for a democracy that now treats reality as a choose-your-own-adventure book.

We don’t really have public education anymore; we have a system of glorified babysitting where the main lesson is how to sit still for standardized tests that measure compliance rather than intelligence. And now, thanks to the administration’s noble attempt to dismantle the Department of Education altogether, we are spared even the pretense that young Americans should learn inconvenient things like history, science, or why “irony” doesn’t mean “made of iron.”

See, indoctrination is when the other side teaches their version of events. Education is when our side teaches ours. The trouble is, without referees like the Department of Education, there’s no one to argue about which is which—meaning the loudest voice wins. And my, does the President have a loud voice.

The Dunning-Kruger Waltz

The Dunning-Kruger Effect—named for two men who discovered that the less you know about something, the more certain you are that you’re right—should be etched in marble outside the White House. In the current age, ignorance isn’t a handicap; it’s a form of patriotism.

And why not? If you believe you know as much about epidemiology as a virologist, climate science as a meteorologist, or geopolitics as a diplomat—because you once saw a Facebook meme about it—you are exactly the kind of citizen the President cherishes. Experts are a nuisance, always reminding you that two plus two equals four, when the President assures you it equals whatever will make you feel better about yourself.

The Truth Is a Luxury We Can’t Afford

In healthier times, knowing the truth about an issue was considered necessary for a functioning democracy. Now it’s treated like contraband, available only to those who can afford the mental risk of changing their minds. The rest are happy to outsource reality to whichever cable network speaks their language—Fox News, Newsmax, OANN—all of which have become the presidential press office in everything but official title.

This arrangement is efficient: the President says something, the network repeats it louder, and by nightfall it’s been baptized into Truth. If evidence to the contrary emerges, it is either ignored, or more elegantly, recast as “fake news” cooked up by the “deep state,” a phrase that conveniently applies to anyone who isn’t already on the payroll.

 Faith as a Feature, Not a Bug

Evangelical pastors now preach the gospel of Trump as if the Book of Revelation contained a hidden clause about tax cuts and deregulation. Here, faith and politics have achieved the perfect marriage: an absolute certainty that cannot be debated because it’s been stamped with divine approval.

Faith, in its pure form, can be a beautiful thing—a humble recognition of the limits of human understanding. But faith in politics often functions as an industrial-strength solvent for critical thinking. If you believe God Himself picked the President, it becomes downright rude to question him. Besides, who needs to fact-check when you can just faith-check?

Why I’m Defending Them Anyway

So yes, I defend the President’s faithful—not because they are correct, but because they are tragically, almost artfully wrong. They are living proof of the human brain’s ability to spin gold from straw, to find comfort in the arms of a man who sees them less as citizens than as useful props in a never-ending rally.

Twain once observed that “It’s easier to fool people than to convince them they have been fooled.” Vonnegut would probably add that humanity was designed that way, perhaps as a cosmic joke. The faithful prove both points.

They may not be helping the Republic, but by God, they are making history interesting—like a train wreck viewed from a safe distance, except the train is on fire, the engineer is golfing, and half the passengers are insisting that the flames are a liberal hoax.

So let us salute them: the steadfast, the unshakable, the willfully misinformed. They are the guardians of a new American tradition—where truth is optional, ignorance is a virtue, and the President is whatever we need him to be in the moment.

And when the whole thing comes crashing down, they’ll still be there, hats on heads, hands over hearts, ready to declare with unshakable pride that none of it was their fault.
​

By Samuel K. Von Twain.

Well now, friends, it’s a curious thing about America — it’s the only country in the world that ever started out perfect and then worked diligently every single day to ruin itself. That’s progress for you. And wouldn’t you know it, we finally got ourselves a President who saw the problem clear as daylight: America wasn’t failing because of corruption, greed, or neglect. Oh no. It was failing because nobody had yet figured out how to make a killing off it properly.

Enter Donald J. Trump, President and CEO of The United States of America, Inc., a wholly-owned subsidiary of The Donald J. Trump Organization, with minority stakes held by friendly billionaires, two Saudi princes, and a televangelist who once sold blessed garden hoses as a cure for gout.

Narrator’s note: If you think this is an exaggeration, you haven’t been paying attention. The truth is like a live chicken—pluck it and it’ll still run around headless for a while before it drops.

The business model was simple:

1. Acquire assets.
2. Sell to friends.
3. Call it patriotism.​

The National Parks — “America’s Best Idea,” bless ‘em — got their budget cut until the rangers had to rent out Yosemite for Monster Truck Week. The Department of Education was sent to live on a farm upstate where it could “run free,” which is to say it was shot in the back of the head. Renewable energy subsidies? Cut down to nothing, so coal could be brought back like it was an Elvis comeback special.

Narrator’s note: Coal is America’s nostalgia drug — it kills you, but it makes you feel like you’re in a simpler time when you knew who your enemies were and could cough without thinking about the air quality index.

Project 2025 was rolled out like a new chain of drive-thru brainwashing stations. The mission: sweep away all that bureaucratic “rule of law” nonsense and replace it with the good common sense of whoever had last spoken to the President on the golf course.

USAID? Gone. No sense sending money to poor foreigners when we had so many poor Americans who could be ignored much closer to home.
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The Bureau of Labor Statistics? The head was fired after reporting an unemployment number that didn’t match the one the President had invented that morning. “Facts,” the President explained, “are like steaks — the rarer the better.”

And then there were the white evangelicals — God bless their untroubled minds. They were the preferred voting bloc because, as one strategist put it, “If the Lord told them the sky was plaid, they’d start knitting matching sweaters.”

Health care for the poor? Cut, because it only encouraged them to keep on living. Free speech protections for non-citizens? Ended. As the President said, “If you want free speech, you have to earn it — like my father did, when he inherited it.”

Masked and armed men with no identification began collecting immigrants — and a few unlucky citizens — right off the street. They didn’t bother with due process because that would mean paperwork, and paperwork meant the Department of Justice might have to admit it still existed.

Narrator’s note: People kept asking, “Isn’t this against the Constitution?” which is adorable. That’s like asking a wolf if it has a vegan option.

Universities were called “breeding grounds for enemies of the people,” so budgets were gutted, faculty were smeared, and any law firm defending such institutions was targeted for “special review” — which is to say they were sued into bankruptcy by legal teams paid in Trump steaks and casino vouchers.

The Epstein Files? Locked away. “For national security,” said the President, which is what every government says when the real reason is “because it would be embarrassing to me personally.”

He accused Barack Obama of treason so often that foreign leaders began to think “treason” was a kind of honorary title. Criminals were pardoned wholesale — provided they’d kissed the ring or had the good manners to commit crimes in the right ideological direction.

​Our religiously-inclined Supreme Court was the keystone investor. These robed market-makers had figured out that the Lord’s work could be done quite effectively by rubber-stamping the CEO’s mergers, acquisitions, and hostile takeovers of the Constitution.

And through it all, the President lied. Constantly. Not the cute lies politicians tell to keep Grandma hopeful, but big lies, lies so loud and brazen they became part of the weather. People stopped fact-checking, the way you stop checking for rain when you already live underwater.

Narrator’s note: This, dear reader, is how a hedge fund works. You take something alive, you strip it for parts, you call it lean and efficient, and when it finally collapses, you say, “Well, it was failing before I got here.”

In the end, America became exactly what it had always secretly wanted to be: a brand. And like all brands, it was only as good as its last quarterly report. The stars on the flag were replaced with little gold dollar signs. And somewhere in a penthouse in Florida, the CEO smiled, knowing the merger was complete.

After all, The United States of America, Inc. had finally turned a profit — for the right people. And that, friends, is the only statistic that counts anymore.

I've considered writing about our mode of transportation when we're not traveling in our Leisure Travel Van (LTV) over the years, but put it off, I suppose, waiting for the right time. After being without my bike for almost two weeks recently and missing it acutely, now's that time.

When we left Birmingham seven years ago in January 2019, trading four walls for the sleek, compact comfort of our 25-foot LTV, we made a decision that still shapes our daily adventures, especially when we are actively traveling: no tow car. At first, I'm sure friends thought we were crazy—how would we get groceries, explore trails, or navigate small-town streets without one? The answer, as it turned out, came on two wheels, humming quietly beneath us: our Trek electric assist bicycles.

These aren’t mopeds or scooters. Our bikes have no throttles—no twist of the wrist or button push to propel us forward. Instead, they reward our pedaling with a boost from the motor, the level of which we can adjust with a simple handlebar control. Each bike has a small digital display that tells us speed, battery level, mileage, and, most importantly, our “assist level.”

Motor off means we’re fully human-powered—a reasonable choice for a gentle cruise on relatively flat rail trails or, maybe most importantly, when conserving battery because you got lost in your revelry, but, honestly, our bikes are not geared for longer rides without battery assist. Mine weighs 55 pounds, more with panniers. Level 1 offers just a whisper of help, making it feel like we’ve had an extra cup of coffee that morning. Level 2 turns headwinds and hills into mild inconveniences. Levels 3 and 4, the highest settings, make climbing a steep coastal road in Nova Scotia feel like coasting along a flat multi-use trail in Tucson. The motor engages only when we pedal, giving us the sensation that our legs are younger, stronger, and more resilient than they actually are.

Over the years, these bikes have carried us through towering redwoods in California, through farmlands on the Leelanau Trail in coastal Michigan, into bustling small towns in Vermont, and along the salt-kissed shores of the Maritime Provinces in Canada. In Nova Scotia, we camped in Shubie Park in Dartmouth and rode into Halifax on the Shubenacadie Canal Trail, took in the Halifax Public Gardens and had a nice brunch near the Gardens. In Maine, we pedaled from our campsite on a friend's property near Point Francis into Acadia National Park across the way from Bar Harbor, taking in Schoodic Point along our way. We've ridden the Carriage Trails in Acadia National Park to lunch in Northeast Harbor.

The real beauty of these bikes, however, goes beyond convenience. For people in their 60s, 70s, and beyond, electric assist cycling offers remarkable health benefits. The steady pedaling keeps joints limber without the pounding stress of running. The adjustable assist means we can maintain a steady heart rate, getting cardiovascular exercise. I liken it to a good spin class with scenery and the possibility of lunch and a beer along the way. It keeps muscles engaged, improves balance, and helps maintain bone density—critical as we age. Just as importantly, it keeps us moving every day, not only physically but mentally.

There’s a joy in knowing that we can ride farther than we might have on traditional bikes, yet still return to our campsite pleasantly tired rather than exhausted. The electric assist removes the fear of “what if I can’t make it back?” and replaces it with the freedom to explore without limits. We’ve met other riders our age who had all but given up cycling because of knee pain or declining stamina. After trying an e-bike, they’ve rediscovered the pure pleasure of the open trail.

For us, the bikes have become more than a mode of transportation—they are our bridge to places a van can’t go, to conversations with locals we might never have met, and to landscapes that reveal themselves slowly, at the pace of a turning wheel. Whether we’re pedaling along the shores of Lake Superior near Duluth or coasting into a small-town farmers market in Brattleboro, Vermont, we feel connected—to each other, to the road, to our environs, and to the simple joy of movement.
​
Nearly seven years on the road has taught us that freedom often comes with clever tools. For us, that tool has two wheels, a battery, and a quiet motor that reminds us—every time it kicks in—that age is no barrier to adventure, only an invitation to keep going, with just a little help.