This Is EVERYTHING

The Bill for MAGA is Due

By John Pavlovitz

The bill for MAGA has come due, Trump supporters.

It’s time to pay up.

The deferred invoice for you selling your souls is here.

It’s time to pay for every incendiary campaign boast you cheered,

every factless diatribe you vigorously applauded,

every nonsensical middle-of-the-night tweet you boosted,

every dehumanizing stereotype and slur you shared,

every callous and cruel rally insult you passionately amen-ed. 

Its time to pay for every denial of Scientific evidence,

every terminated qualified conscientious objector,

every attack on factual, responsible journalism,

every vicious assault on objective reality,

every star-spangled dog-and-pony show distraction,

every lazy xenophobic caricature,

every tired racist tirade.

This is how your beloved capitalism works isn’t it: someone was always going to pay for services rendered? Nothing is free, isn’t that what you’ve been saying—no handouts? Well, dig deep friend because you are on the hook for this.

Many people have been footing the bill for a long time: migrants and Muslims and transgender people, young black men, refugees, the sick and the poor, already vulnerable communities pushed all the way to the brink—and now past it.

You were paying too of course, you were just too willfully ignorant or intellectually negligent to realize it. Over and over we tried to tell you about the cost: the civil rights you were sacrificing too, the environmental protections you were losing as well as we were, the safety and security you were relinquishing alongside us. We tried to tell you that this hardship was not a partisan expense, that his moral bankruptcy would eventually hit you hard too.

But your Fox News bubble and your white Evangelical echo chamber and your America First, Don’t Tread on Me, middle-finger affinity clubs left you certain you were insulated from it all; that the only tears that would fall would be liberal ones, that the only people suffering voted for Hillary, that all of the pain would be isolated to people who vote Blue.

You felt immune from the spreading sickness. You felt invincible, because your messiah told you that you were winning and that was enough for you. 

He was lying to you as he always does, but you preferred to believe the lie because it felt warm running through your veins even as it was poisoning you—the intoxicating, cheap high of making America great while owning the Libs. That was a costly drug, that arrogance—and you were slowly going broke in your addiction.

Now, in the middle of a burgeoning pandemic and a precipitous market crash and a hopelessly fractured nation, the bill is coming due.

You can’t avoid paying anymore. 

You’re here with us.

I think even you realize that now. 

This President didn’t create this virus,

but he ignored it,

denied it,

minimized it,

joked about it,

weaponized it,

politicized it,

exacerbated it.

He systematically removed qualified people and replaced them with genuflecting, sycophantic traitors—or with no one at all.

He generated a steady stream of partisan attacks and conspiracy theories and abject lies created in the moment, and the kind of “I am smarter than anyone in the room” sermonizing that cult leaders bellow all the way to the terrible and tragic end.

He is culpable for the chaos and the unnecessary illness, and yes the preventable deaths because of it—and you are too.

This is the human cost of the MAGA cult delusion, and we’re all paying for it now equally, however we vote and wherever we live and whatever we value.

Pandemics don’t choose sides or spare voting blocks or respect affiliations.

He will pay for it in November and in the unflattering, incorruptible light of History.