DAY ONE OF RECOVERY

One of three men perched on the grammar school's small stage smartly lifts himself from his seat to address the gathering.

Welcome to MAGA GONE. You can call me Richard and I'd like to extend good wishes to all of the first-timers here today.

Richard raises his arms, gesturing either a wide open welcome, or somebody just kicked a field goal.

Give yourself a hand!

The group neither enthusiastically nor unenthusiastically applauds.

Yes, all of you, give them a hand!

Hands. Hands. And even more hands. It's virtually a reunion of Dutch Cousins.

All of us, I guess, we're about 35 or so here tonight. There's quite a few more than the usual number of newcomers this week. Understandable that.

All us old timers know what it's like stepping through these doors the first time. It can be a frightening experience. This is one hell of a decision you've made. We know. We've been there. We know. So welcome!

Again with the "Good Kick" signal.

You first timers are the bravest folks I've seen all day! Welcome!

Stand up and let us all take pride in you!

Richard encourages all of the newcomers to rise and they stand up. Count nears a dozen. Many nod, appreciating these warm welcomes.

All right. As you probably already know, this chapter of MAGA GONE, Make America Great Again But Just Don't Tell Anyone How We're Doing It, meets right here every week at 7:00 on the dot.

Of course we discourage tardiness but we also know life goes on outside this room, so, do your best to get here on time. But know you'll be welcome whenever you arrive. You've got enough to worry about without worrying about us.

A smattering.

Good. Now just settle in.

We've got coffee and some snacks in the back and the restrooms are, well, just follow the signs. Or the cosines. Not to go off on a tangent. Or anything like that.

Some small smutted groans.

Right. Sorry. Yeah, the jokes get worse every week but at least they all add up.

No rim shot. No rims.

No more Math, Rich.

Scattered calls from audience. Your call. Feature an identifiable face isolated from the rest?

Well thanks. That's just about sums it all up.

A gentle almost silence.

Anyhow let's get down to the business of what we're doing here. Why we're all here. And will probably be here for a while.

WE FUCKED UP

WE LISTENED AND NODDED

WE LET IT ROLL ALL OVER US

WE ACCEPTED BY NOT OBJECTING

Silence with a cleared throat. Too much?

And if you have any doubts as to why you're here, remember how much you, and maybe whoever you live with, contributed to the shit show we're all living through right now.

Some approving noises.

Thank you. And thank all of you for coming tonight. We've got a lot of work to do. A lot of cleaning up. Harry, the floor is yours.

Polite recognition and general agreement. Mumbling? Or clear verbal responses?

Hey guys, You can call me Harry and I've been with MAGA GONE for over 5 years now.

I gave up on the Chump and the rest of his clown show after he'd been in office about a year. Took me a while to connect to this group but I sure am glad I stayed looking for others who'd also tossed their little red caps into the trash. Reminds me of Mao's Little Red Book, but that's something else entirely.

Let me give you my reasons for being here.

Harry has the group's attention.

NUMBER ONE: let's start with something I think we agree on. Just about all government officials and politicians in powerful positions are crooks. Maybe there's one or two out there who isn't getting rich off the public dime, but they're rare. And a lot of us are here because we realized there is a big difference between a cop getting a free lunch at a diner and the children of their "lord and savior" on Earth's daughter and son-in-law getting billions of dollars from the Saudis. Just a little bit of a difference. A couple of billion. We all know that, but some still haven't realized what it means. Telling your barber to take a little off the top is a whole lot different than having him shave your head bald.

Mostly attentive silence?

NUMBER TWO: Which leads into my second point. There are way too many MAGA extremists. There are way too many of them willing to execute members of my own family who had an abortion. You know it's true. These folks are rabid. I mean it's one thing to post something online, it's another thing altogether to fire bomb a city because you think there's too much litter. MAGA is just too full of way too many crazies. Damn they are dangerous. Owning a rifle is one thing. Owning a couple of dozen machine guns and the makings for a bunch of IEDs is another.

A couple of "you bet brother"s. And possibly a woman's voice is heard. Yes/No?

NUMBER THREE: They claim to be all pro-American and America first and all that but MAGA leaders will sell out to foreign interests for a dollar. It takes a bit of time to realize just how much all those MAGA corporations are basically controlled by foreign oil money. Hell, the oil companies themselves are pretty much run by Middle Eastern money. The MAGA leadership wants corporations, foreigners, to control this country. MAGA's leadership has been bought and sold to those foreign aliens I don't even know how many times.

Preach.

NUMBER FOUR: Life isn't professional wrestling. It's ain't the WWE. Village idiots shouldn't be in positions of power. You know it's fun watching everybody throw chairs at one another on a Saturday morning but you also have to know when it's time to hire somebody to pick up the garbage once a week, you don't want somebody whose skill set is knowing how to beat their own chest, throw chairs into the ring, and scream and cuss at their opponent. Choosing somebody who's done the job, or at least something like it, before should be taken into account before hiring them. It's our goddamn tax money they're throwing away when they put total incompetent a-holes into places they have no place being.

NUMBER FIVE: We're not racists

Amen to that, here and there. Or something less religious?

Democrats talk down to people. Trump told us lots of horrible shit but he never called us or our family "deplorables". It sure is real easy not to like Dems. But...

But pardoning cop killers? I know this was the last straw for some of you newbies here tonight. Cruds who beat up cops trying to protect the Congress? Are they frigging kidding? If a bank guard dies from a heart attack after a bank robbery the same way those cops did following the attack on Congress, those robbers are prosecuted for murder. The maniacs who broke into the Capitol should be tried for murder the same way anybody is if someone dies while they're committing a crime.

Serious applause? Stunned silence?

We're not racists. Not the way people think. Sure maybe we're not found fond of blacks. We don't like ghetto shit. Boy. But it's more like we don't like different shit. We were raised with white people, for the most part. So we're used to the white way of doing things. Hell, I've only had jerk chicken once in my life. It's the strange that bothers us. Black, brown, yellow, most of us don't care. As long as you don't serve food that's not steaks, burgers, and all the fixings. And we don't mean to get any more bad off financially than we might already be. Keep the cheap seats away from us. Poor people of any type probably want what we already have.

My mother's older brother, my uncle Phil, didn't get shot and killed fighting Germans so some foreign punk can stand next to the President of the United States and act like he's the richest Nazi who ever lived. Take your heil Hitler salute and shove it where the sun don't shine, you little piece of shit.

Applause and some whistling. One or two"Fuck 'em"s.

Here's Jake.

Harry sits down

Usual response.

Jake moves to center stage. Microphone or no?

Both parties are wasting our time on insignificant shit like checking passport boxes for sex orientation. Only 17,000 people a year are affected by that. 17,000 out of something like 350 million. That's one out of every 20,000 people. Why are they wasting our time? Both sides screaming constantly about little crap. Wasting our time on something so insignificant and at the same time in our country and around the world it's the hottest ever. I want my grandchildren to live in a world where the temperature is under a hundred degrees all the time. Who gives a flaming whatever if somebody you will never meet checks some stupid government form?

I'm old enough to remember when Los Angeles had the worst smog outside of India. We fixed that pretty much even when the oil companies said smog was bull hockey.

And all this abortion crap. We know we're not going to have our 14 year old daughter have a rapist's child. Ain't going to happen. No way. It's time we came to decisions like that and let other folks know how wrong they are.

We're tired of people thinking it's all our fault. It isn't. Most our families weren't in this country before the damn Civil War. We couldn't have owned slaves.

Our families worked their asses off just to stay alive. Like everybody else's families. Maybe we got helped a little more than most but we never had any say in all that. We're working like everybody else.

Just give me a slice, a beer, and let me watch the game on a big screen. What's the matter with that? I know it's not that simple. But all the money is going into the hands of people who just want to keep us down and us never looking up to see how good things actually could be.

This is America, damn, and the people taking our money aren't the people who have nothing. They really are not the real threat. It's the people who already have it all and just want more and more and more who reach into our pockets and take what they want.

I hope no one in your families ever gets real sick and the hospital expenses just wipe you out. I've seen it. I've been close to that being me. It's bad news. And Black Rock and the rest of them just make more and more cash for each one of us who just dies before the insurance companies shell out to pay for your real needs. I don't know. I don't know. Thanks.

Jake sits.

More enthusiastic or more sympathetic responses?

Rabble roused or hearts touched?

Richard stands.

Remember, we don't want you to do anything rash now that you've come to understand what MAGA really is. We've heard stories of guys, mostly guys, who realized what idiots they've been. How much harm they've done, and they've gone to either hurt themselves or blown up a building or something really stupid.

No, Sir.

None of that here. None of that. And if you ever get to feeling like, like you want to hurt yourself, or hurt something else, or somebody else, you just pick up your cell and call that number we gave you when you walked into this auditorium.

That's why we're here tonight. We're here to help each other get through this and maybe help some others along the way.

Remember there's coffee in the back.

Half stand. Some begin quiet conversations with their neighbors. Small groups?

Richard.

Well, we've been here a while and you old timers know how to make the newbies feel right at home. So anybody else have something to say?

Public silence? Private voices.

OK. Then coffee and snacks in the back, like I said. I know some of you guys will be heading over to the Roadhouse later on so that's about it.

Some from the group leave the auditorium.

Next week same time same place

We'll all help America be great again but this time without MAGA.

Have a good night folks.

Close or continue?

END