Reconciling, Albeit Briefly

OVER AT THE SENIOR CENTER, where the most recently employed team of kitchen workers has elevated the food to culinary exquisiteness, a small but undeterred group of democrats holds forth valiantly, amid a crushing mass of evangelical Trump supporters. We are discreet. My compromise is that I only discuss politics with people with whom I agree. One of my friends is an eighty two year old gentleman with an eighth grade education, who, when he was quite young, suffered the indignity of having a collar laced around his neck, and being tied to a clothesline, just to keep him out of trouble. They ate what they could hunt, catch, or grow. He gets his news from something called "Free Speech TV", and me. One day recently he showed up at the center wearing a MAGA ball cap, black in color. He was unsatisfied, preferring a red one. One of my fellow Trump despisers, an intrepid lady, was able to approach him from behind, and without his noticing, place a strip of duct tape across the MAGA, reading "Make America Smart Again". I wrote the message, doubtful of whether the word "Again" was appropriate. When the lady who assaulted him suggested that I should place the tape on head, I abstained, with the excuse "he would kill me". She had more courage, being female. The racist, right wing evangelical gentleman who supplied the black hat finally got in a batch of red ones, and gave him one. He was pleased, indicating his intent of relegating the black one to the back shelf. So I decided to take advantage of the opportunity. I thought he might give me the black one, which I could then wear to the senior center as a show of conciliatory intent. After all, who among us disagrees with the notion of making America greater? All along my contention has been that wearing the MAGA cap is a sure sign of a traitor, since we on the left generally consider our country to have already been great, if greatly flawed, long before this conservative populist disease took hold. I could wear the thing for a day or two, then dispose of it according to the HAZMAT protocol. But it was a cold day, and we both thought it better that he don the black one beneath the red, atop his misguided head. All that Free Speech TV, for nothing. My consolation is that a single MAGA is too flimsily made to offer any protection against cold, and thus holds the promise of decomposing, in the biodegradable dustbin of history.