I take your civil war seriously, MAGAs, even if you don't

Climate change or foolish development or God inflicts hurricane and fire disaster alike, on lib and MAGA alike. But only MAGA sends civil war, too. Decent people will have to fight for peace.

Incompetent and feckless “red state” leaders depend on billions of dollars annually in hurricane relief welfare from the federal government to mitigate their failed state development and disaster relief policies.

The map above provides a rough idea of how that welfare breaks down by state — based just on FEMA direct relief to families. Now check out this spending tracker from 2017-2024 of the $146 Billion tied just to the disasters of 2017 (which included hurricanes Harvey, Irma, Maria, and more California wildfires).

This annual hurricane welfare ritual is a big reason those of us who live responsibly inland (and have never filed an insurance claim in 53 years of inland Florida living, despite dozens of hurricanes) subsidize the Crypto bros who came to the beach during COVID to party with Matt Gaetzes — through our absurd home insurance rates, which make future Florida unlivable for most kids born here.

Tax donor “blue” states like California cough this DeSantis/Naples/Crypto Bro/MAGA welfare up without complaint — because they’re fundamentally decent.¹ They don’t lie about the people trying to fight the disasters in Florida or North Carolina. They don’t pretend to blame women because storm surge wipes out American Beach or Fort Myers Beach — as if a few more brilliant ‘roided up Aaron Rodgers Rogan bros in charge would have shut down the 100 mph Santa Ana fire winds over Pacific Palisades.

Nice lib politicians from Vermont don’t go “Hey, let’s make fun of Jennifer Canady and Lakeland city politicians to discredit Florida because the people on Lake Bonny felt abandoned for weeks” after Hurricane Milton caused unprecedented flooding just last summer/fall.

Of course, to say the DeSantis/Naples/Crypto Bro/MAGAs do not return the favor is a woeful understatement. They actively seek to ratchet up the harm and pain as the disasters are happening. Listen to them.

This is what civil war actually looks like: California should be prepared to take Florida hostage, too

The entire point of MAGA is to exploit the vulnerability of others to 1) Feel a personal gratification in their pain. 2) Exhaust them into a kind of civic submission. 3) Extort money and power from decent people, whose instinct is to help and protect vulnerability, not use it for cheap advantage.

People are obviously quite vulnerable when tides or flames take their personal capital. And that’s why MAGA attacks — the reek of vulnerability. That’s what all the noise and tweets this week are about. MAGAs smell opportunity in L.A.’s misfortune across all three points above.

You will see the next step play out when MAGAs impose extortion demands on California when it comes time for Congress to fund relief. (Actually, it’s already happening.) It’ll really start with a bunch of stupid “anti-woke” stuff; but who knows what else they’ll demand for their hostage. This has been the pattern for a while; it will get more brutal and explicit.

Yet, California has 52 U.S. House members. The balance is 43-9, Democrat to Republican — and several of those are in vulnerable L.A.-area seats. Lose one or two of them on a vote — or if House flips, which it probably will in 2026 — and it would become impossible to dole out the regular red state coast hurricane welfare.

If I were a political representative under opportunistic attack while trying to address my own disaster, I’d be making all that very clear to any shit-talking colleague from Florida, Louisiana, or Texas.

Vulnerability is not the sole property of blue states; but until now, at least, the endurance of extortion at the hands of MAGAs and tech bros is.

We have been in the midst of a non-shooting (for now), one-sided American civil war for quite a while. This is what it looks like, not the movie Civil War. It’s tit-for-tat over helping each other in our time of need. It’s violent rhetorical assault on how and where we live — over who is really a citizen (or human) worthy of basic respect.

Our MAGA friends and neighbors vastly escalated their war against us in November. I wish they didn’t; but they did. They freely chose to come for our vulnerabilities and to push us out of own societies.

To survive that escalation — and work toward some sort of lasting peace in the civil war we don’t want — we decent libs have to understand the vulnerabilities of our friends and neighbors and use them to our advantage and protection. This is not an instinct that comes naturally to us — because it is gross and sad. But that doesn’t change its necessity.

Indeed, I’ve been making myself do it for years. And it’s worked out pretty well so far. My soul and my capital are mostly intact — especially for a dirty lib in Red Florida.

Of course, one day, if the civil war ever ends, we’ll all likely need to reckon with the unpleasant fact that arid L.A. and coastal Florida (and many other places) share an acute and massively expensive unsuitability for mass human habitation — now and into the future. War is easier, probably.

One lib’s strategy

If you’re interested, my own personal strategy in meeting November’s escalation in the Civil War is two-fold, local, and intimate.

On the one hand, I’m de-emphasizing connection to formal civic institutions and responsibilities for creation. I’m engaging more with informal and flexible networks, communities, friends, and human connections as the vehicles for shared affirmation, civic action, and moral momentum. That is going pretty well in early moments — both personally and civically — here in Lakeland. The articles below embody that spirit — and praise a couple of local institutions for taking real civic action.

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In praise of un-canceled Christmas singers, Gilbert King, and institutions actually making good trouble

Scenes from a good night for Leo Schofield, Voctave, and Lakeland, Florida

To that end, I’ll be experimenting with this community — of Public Enemy Number 1 readers — the more than 2,100-and growing people who choose to have my thoughts delivered to them for some reason. We are not an institution; but I wonder what we can be. Anyway, I hope to foster some new physical connections with people who seem at least vaguely like-minded and like-moraled. Stay tuned if that interests you.

The less pleasant second part of my strategy seeks to exploit the chief vulnerability I see in our local MAGAs (and you’re all MAGAs now, after November): they don’t want to personally fight their own civil war. In fact, they deny that November represents any escalatory act of aggression against their neighbors at all. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

The MAGAs I talk can’t even articulate a clear reason why they’ve sicced the whole MAGA Freak grifter menagerie on their neighbors, their communities, and themselves.

They rather pretend that nothing has happened.

They haven’t personally imposed brutal and stupid forced birth health risk on pregnant women for no “pro-life” benefit at all. They won’t personally pardon the Capitol Lynch Mob. They haven’t personally taken a strong economy and injected crippling chaos into it before they even have power. They haven’t personally sent their guy to touchdown dance on the charred corpses of L.A. buildings and people.

In short, they don’t take their own civil war seriously.

Well, I do — even though it directly threatens me much less than it does even most MAGAs.

I don’t have the personal luxury to ignore it, if I want to remain true to who I am. And I do; because I like myself.

I’m not exhausted

Thus, I’ve been having many aggressively personal running conversations with MAGAs to remind them about their war, intimately. My goal for them in that is either: A) constructive acknowledgment of their war leading to personal action and potential peace; or B) Exhaustion.

I’ll take either; but A is better.

As I’ve said before, MAGAs are going to retreat from me; it won’t be the other way around — at least not until they’re ready to back up their bullshit with illegal force. We’ll see if that ever happens.

I had a victory along those lines with the emblematic “MAGA Fluid” I sometimes highlight. I last wrote about him in commemorating January 6.

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Happy belated National Lynch Mob Day

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You may recall he’s the guy who likes to hang out with creative and civically-constructive libs, who claims he doesn’t like MAGA, personally, you know, it’s just “policies” he “prefers.” And then, of course, he can’t name any policies. It’s all just dirty libs, who I use for company, like trans people too much and no vaginas should lead fire departments. (Those are paraphrases. He can publish anything he wants if he disagrees with them.)

The no vaginas part was the gist of his comeback when I asked if he was joining his buddy in the L.A. touchdown dance. We had a little back and forth, which he is welcome to publish in full if he wants, and then he declared me “exhausting” and said he was done talking to me.

To which I answered:

You’ve inflicted a lot of exhaustion on people much more² vulnerable than me without any thought for them. My goal is only to even the personal score a little. Seems that I have. Feel free to block me.

My dear MAGA buddy pretending to be otherwise, if you are exhausted before Kash Patel and brainworm Kennedy even start cranking on law enforcement and vaccine and health “policy,” before the next round of hostage-taking starts, it’s gonna be a very long, unpleasant, and tiring four years for you.

I, for one, am not exhausted.

And no one should expect personal moral mercy or quarter from me until they’re ready to get serious about peace — which is far more than politely avoiding personal awkwardness at Publix.

1. Florida is also a donor state; but not as generous as California.

2. I actually wrote “less” because my brain scrambles in quick text convos. I meant “more.”