I cannot fathom what you are thinking

Wake up, America!

Coffee's on, February winds are blowin' like stink, and every Republican senator in Congress has now betrayed you at least three times before the rooster crowed. I am America, and you have betrayed me by denying you know me. You now live in a fascist oligarchy.

It's enough to make you gag on that cranberry-orange scone, isn't it?

Now don't panic. Wrap this towel around you (nobody needs to see all that), have another sip of coffee and take a breath. We will survive all this, too. We're not the oldest nation, or the smartest, and maybe not the best, and yet we've come through a lot of bad stuff.

Remember World War II? Korea? Vietnam? Yeah, that inhaled deeply and rapidly (because it's so gauche to say "sucked," am I right?).

It isn't a small thing that we've re-elected a traitorous, lying resident-in-chief who arrived on Day One hell-bent for revenge.

That surprised you, you say?

Huh. Interesting.

Well, I'll just say it's hard for me to imagine how this surprises anyone. But you know, we all have games to attend and movies to watch and pickleball tournaments to organize. While we were livin' the life, a rodent chewed through the tent and ate all our Oreos.

No, no! … Chill out! It happens.

And they're only Oreos, for pete's sake. Don't be alarmed unless the stores run out of them. Then you can freak out, because that will be a real existential crisis. Right?

The "richest man in the world," they say, is not quite rich enough. Or maybe he is, but maybe the power he thinks he has is not very satisfying after all, so now he wants to just go around toying with us. And our money. And all our cherished institutions.

I don't know the guy. Maybe he was one of those kids, growing up as he did in proudly apartheid South Africa, who tortured fireflies by tearing off their wings. (Do they have fireflies in South Africa? I haven't been there. Never mind, you get my point.)

So let's get this straight, and please tell me the truth. Did you invite this guy to come and commit raids on American institutions like the National Park Service, the U.S. Treasury and the Internal Revenue Service? USAID? The Department of JUSTICE?

Did you say it was cool to lay off federal employees with thousands of years of combined experience and knowledge of how we run everything, how we fund and fuel the engines of commerce and industry and compassion in the United States of America?

You've read the news. You did that?

No?

Oh, wait. Congress! Specifically the Republicans in the Senate, who now wield their majority status with the same dignity and grace as a chimpanzee flinging his dung. They could stop this vile malignant narcissist and his flying monkeys. But they won't.

Because … immigration? … vengeance? Or are they simply bought and paid for by the invisible and menacing oligarchy?

Please take no offense at my questions. I hate to be rude or insulting, but are you actually certifiably insane, or just unconcerned or ignorant about how government and society works when it does work?

Because, not to put too fine a point on it, we did give you a free public education. We did have vaccines that kept you from getting the worst childhoood diseases — measles, mumps, polio, influenza, smallpox … you know, the ones that killed or crippled millions back when your grandparents were making out in a car or a carriage that isn't safe to drive on the road anymore.

Oh yeah, we did roads too. The most obvious, the most expensive and the most endlessly useful to all of us was the Dwight D. Eisenhower National System of Interstate and Defense Highways. You just call it the interstate.

It takes money to maintain that vast network of roads. Your money and mine. But the richest guy in the world probably knows better than us how to fix our stuff, right? Yeah, right.

Have you seen that thing he calls a truck? Have you seen how much that sucker costs as it repeatedly fails to do what any truck made in America, Japan, Canada, Germany or Sweden can do? Sorry, but I ain't buyin' it.

I mean it. I'd be happier driving my daughter's hand-me-up 2012 Honda Civic, but what do I know? Just yesterday some guy called me a "woke" snowflake. He must be right, because I can't sleep and there's a profound chill in the air.

But all the name-calling and all the blame-baiting are just details to distract us from what this guy thinks we should really be doing, and that's hating each other. How did we get fooled so easily?

I know, I know, there was the pickleball, and if you didn't play along or play through or whatever the hell tickles your pickle, you'd forfeit the whole game to that guy who lives over on the West Side. You hate that guy. Why do you hate that guy?

And why do you hate America? What did we do to you? What poison did we hide in your school lunch as you marched the long road from kindergarten to senior prom? Was it the fluoride in the water that protected your teeth from looking like you were a pith-helmeted British rajah in the generation of empire led by the Great Nations of Europe?

You want to Make America Look Like That Again?

No, I really want to know. Because it's not Congress that has the power, though they very much think they do. It's you.

Now get up and do something about it. How 'bout another scone?

Jeff Seager is a native West Virginian who returned to the state in 1991 after a long absence and against stern advice to the contrary. He lives in South Charleston, where he awaits the invasion of the MAGA horde with an arsenal of marshmallows to slow their progress up the steep steps of his hillside home.