Category / 2024 Election

by Edward Champion

The One Way to Hurt the MAGA Cult: Cut the Bastards Off

There is one guaranteed way to inflict a lot of damage to the MAGA Cult right now and it involves cutting the bastards off. Start doing it today. They don’t deserve to break bread with you during the holidays.

After four days of being hit with death threats, pledges of violence directed towards me, one incident of doxxing, and outright hate from hundreds of MAGA cultists, I’ve noticed that they have started to make attempts to cozy up with me this weekend — as if telling me only a few days ago “Why don’t you kill yourself, you bald Commie?” (one of dozens of threats) never happened. These monsters are trying to squirm their way into our good graces and pretend as if everything is normal.

Well, I am here to say: FUCK NO.

We live in a new nation. A nation in which there is now a permanent divide between those who support democracy and those who want to kill off the rest of us.

Cut the bastards off.

Cut the bastards off. Even family and close friends who voted for Trump. Cut them off. All of these evil motherfuckers. Cut them off even if they share your blood. Do not go home for the holidays. That’s one thing you can do this month. Say no to Thanksgiving. Have a fun time with your true friends and family. (If you need Thanksgiving recipes, I’m happy to share. Email me.) Say no to FOX News-Watching Uncle Harry’s Turkey Day fiesta and Aunt Matilda’s covertly misogynistic Xmas party. Leave the fascists off your invite lists. Cut them out of your life. Tell them that they are not welcome because they do not stand for basic humanity. Cut them off because they stand for hate, violence, and intimidation.

Cut the bastards off.

Let them suffer the crippling loneliness of social isolation and of not having your majestic presence in their life. Because it will hurt them. It will hurt them when they are not invited to your wedding or your baby shower. It will hurt them when they fully understand that they are missing out on the most amazing moments of your life. They are not deserving of that. So cut the bastards off.

Cut the bastards off. Let them know that you fully understand that they do not love you. Because if they did love you, they would never have voted for a maniac who has made everything extremely unsafe for you and so many others. Let them understand that their vote had far more of a consequence than they understood.

This is one real act of protest you can do right now. The MAGA cultists may be full of bluster and arrogance as they take their weirdly spiteful victory lap, but they will feel pain if you ostracize and condemn them and you tell them that they are no longer a part of your life. I mean, remember the pain you felt when you came out to your right-wing parents and they told you that you were no longer welcome? Well, payback’s a bitch, isn’t it? Cut the bastards off. Because their only purpose in life is to cause pain and spawn hate. They literally have nothing else. So cut the bastards off.

Do not socialize with them. Do not be friends with them. If you have doubts, remember that they will soon sell you out to save their skin. So cut the bastards off.

Do not get into a relationship with them. Close your legs if they want to take you home. Before you go on a date with them, ask them who they voted for (along with some followup questions to determine if they are lying through their teeth) and if they say Trump, immediately block them and do not associate with them. Let them suffer in the same way that they are making us suffer. Cut them off and watch them from afar on social media as they are reduced to a puling and braying mess. In the same way that you are probably quietly feeling right now.

Cut the bastards off. These mouthbreathing motherfuckers are unworthy of you. You’re special. They’re not. They mindlessly bob their heads up and down and sputter a 24/7 froth of dehumanizing hate. So cut the bastards off.

A bartender cuts off a drunk who has one too many at a bar, right? Well, why should fascism any different? Cut the bastards off. They’ve had too much of Trump’s repugnant swill and I’m telling you that they are never ever coming back.

Cut these evil fuckwits off. Tell them that they no longer exist in your universe.

Cut the bastards off. Let them feel the wincing pain of standing on the side of hate. Let them know that they signed up for a new world in which high school boys are now telling high school girls, “Your body, my choice.” That’s unacceptable and unthinkable to anyone with a moral compass. So why would you want these sociopaths in your life? Cut the bastards off.

Let them know that suicide hotlines for LGBTQIA people have hit unprecedented levels and that they made this happen. And there is no coming back from that. It shows that your moral values and theirs do not align, even if they profess to be Christian.

Cut the bastards off. They stood against human rights. They signed up for unhinged harassment and violence, even after they won everything. Would we have done that? Fuck no. So cut the bastards off. Cut the bastards off because make no mistake: win or lose, the MAGA cult will always call for our dehumanization. So cut the bastards off.

Boycott their businesses. Why should they get to profit in any way when they have just ensured that prices next year will be higher than any inflation falsely ascribed to Biden? Cut them off before the tariffs and the boycotts from other nations kick in. Don’t buy any book written by a fascist. Do not support them. Do not show up to their events. Cancel your subscriptions to the Washington Post and The New York Times. Delete your X account. Cut the bastards off.

Cut the bastards off. By cutting them off, you will condemn them to a life in which they will only hear the tedious mantras of fascism and white supremacy. You will deny them the very civility that we believe in, but that is completely beyond them. And they will not have our humor, our kindness, our creativity, or our smarts. They will lose access to all of that and it will slowly destroy them. And they deserve it. So cut the bastards off. If they voted for Trump after being “on the fence,” they will swiftly understand that they are dead to us and that they are doomed and that they crossed a line which is unforgivable.

Cut the bastards off.

Unfortunately, you will have to consort with some of them. Particularly the fascists at your workplace. Well, give them nothing but the bare minimum. Cut the bastards off. Say nothing about your lives. Because they will use any and all details as weapons against you. But you can also cut them off without them actually knowing that you have cut them off by significantly reducing how much you are willing to share about yourself. Because they’re not very bright.

Cut the bastards off.

You do not need this drama in your life right now. You do not need additional people who will prevent you from being who you are. Because being authentic is going to be very difficult starting next year — especially when the arrests start. So why should they get even a second of what makes you special?

Cut the bastards off. I know it’s going to be difficult. I know you’re going to have to say no to a lot of people you presently love. But if you do this now, you’ll save yourself a lot of hurt in the long run when they start ratting you out. If you cut them off right now — while we have ten weeks until the Orange Monster becomes President — then you’ll get the pain out of the way now and save yourself a truly unsettling plot twist of Cousin Jim reporting you to the New Gestapo.

Cut the bastards off. Because we need you strong so that we can all fight and resist. We need you to be you. We need you to be authentic. And we will listen to you and provide a supportive ear. Because we’ve also cut the bastards off. It wasn’t easy for us either and we know how awful this is. But unfortunately this is what American life has come down to.

So cut the bastards off. Because we need you alive. And cutting them off will improve your probability of survival.

by Edward Champion

America is Dead, But We Are Not

The United States of America, as we have known it, is now dead. Here is what we must do to survive.

America, as we once knew it and as we once lived it, is now dead. The idiocratic will of a vastly illiterate and uneducated populace expressed itself yesterday at the ballot box. They opted to throw the great American experiment into the dustbin of history.

We had a good run.

Like many of you, I never thought I would see the day in which fascism would rear its ugly head in our once great democratic republic. And I am not going to sugar coat this. What we are about to experience will be more awful than even the most devoted cynic or the most prescient scholar can possibly imagine. There will be cruel and repugnant wars on people who are not white, male, hetero, cis, and wealthy. Women will become second-class citizens. We will see arrests and iniquities beyond our wildest imagination. We will see injustice and barbarism meted out on an unprecedented scale. And it will be ugly and callous and shocking.

We will see many people we love die and disappear. Some of us, including me, may not be here in five years. Because they are going to go after the most outspoken voices. Be prepared for many of the prominent figures you now trust to sell out to the new order. Because they will do everything they can to stub out the most vital lights. And they will succeed to a large degree.

All this is going to happen, whether we like it or not.

The vile chowderheads and uninformed fuckwits who decided to destroy the considerable promise that our nation once possessed will also feel the evil implications of their flippant choice. Even after it is too late, they will fail to understand how we got here. But make no mistake. They were the ones who got us here. They are the ones who are the true enemies within. They are the ones who cannot be trusted. It is now abundantly clear that there are two Americas. Those who are on the good side – and there are still many here — are now the minority.

Most people will keep their heads down. They will not be up to the new challenge. And they will come to accept the new state of affairs. Many of these self-serving cowards will casually report anyone who sticks out to the new authoritarian regime and it will be as natural as the manner in which they voted for this unhinged madman, who will likely die before his term is completed and who will be replaced by a younger and more dangerous bastard legitimized by the likes of Ron Howard and the mercantile opportunists at HarperCollins.

But we must not remain silent. Yes, the new American existence will be fraught with peril and danger and disaster. Prices will go up. MAGA brownshirts will roam the streets looking for enemies, even in blue territories. People will be detained. But we cannot remain silent. We must continue to fight and speak out, even if it means losing our lives.

Yeah, that’s the new American existence. I’m not happy about it either. But if the alternative is pledging fealty to a despotic felon and rapist who possesses no guardrails, then I can think of no other way to live. I would rather die than capitulate to the Evil Orange Menace. They can torture me and cut out my tongue. But they won’t take away my spirit. This is because I am a patriot. A patriot of the old America, which died on November 5, 2024. Don’t let them take away all that is good about you.

We must live to fight. I cannot possibly predict what the nature of this new fighting spirit will be. It could involve crossing into territory that was once unfathomable and distasteful. It could involve forging the unlikeliest alliances. But it is our duty to keep the memory of what we once had alive so that we can rebuild something beautiful after the chaos that is about to come. And that means being fiercer and more provocative in the name of good. It means sticking up for the weirdos and the outliers and the marginalized. It means supporting all the people who are telling us things that we do not want to hear. It may involve secretly hiding people in our homes.

But we must do all this.

History reminds us that fascism never lasts. Fascism is a repugnant ideology that is incompatible with all that is good about humankind. But while it exists – and it will thrive here in deeply unsettling ways for at least five years – we must do everything we can to support each other and to uphold the remaining virtues of the commonweal.

We must also be extremely careful and cautious about who we invite into our inner circles. There will be traitors eager to rat us out. There will be ravenous lowlifes quite happy to destroy our lives to save their own skin. And the people who betray us will include our families and our closest friends. Not all of us will make it. But most of us can stay alive, with our spirits intact, if we keep fighting.

Silence is not an option. This is precisely what the new order wants. They want you to feel helpless. They want you to feel fear. But you must not give it to them.

This will be the most difficult time that you and I have ever lived through. I am not being hyperbolic here. It’s all outlined in the Project 2025 manifesto. What I can say is that all the in-fighting on our side needs to stop. Because the only recourse we have is strength in numbers.

Do not let them destroy who you are. Do not let them stop you from living or being kind or cracking jokes. We are in for some deeply unpleasant times, but it will not last. It cannot last. It is very possible that the United States of America will fracture into territories. We will be tested in ways that we never imagined, but I can tell you this much. We are up to the challenge. We are stronger than we know. All who believe in basic decency and kindness and humanity must come together and be fearless in fighting these jackals. The bastards won the election and ended this nation, but I promise you that they will not win the long game if we fight indefatigably for the greater good.