Do you really want to elect someone to national or local office who actually believes in witches, and that angels and demons are constantly at war, kept at bay only by the actions of prayer warriors?

Do you think that people with such extreme religious views should dictate whether you can marry the person you love, or whether you or your female partner should be forced carry every potential pregnancy to term, even if it’s against her will?

Do you think it’s a good idea for a large number of voters to be so willfully and deliberately mal-informed, by just a single news source, that they reject all facts or issues that don’t support their very narrow-minded and intolerant world view?

Do you think it’s a good idea to de-fund education, cut social services to the bone, and hobble effective health care for all but the well-off? Especially since your children will grow up and be educated under such a crippled system?

Do you think it’s okay for the middle and lower socio-economic classes in this country to shoulder the greatest burden of taxes for the least share of the wealth, while a tiny percentage of the super-rich controls the greatest bulk of the nation’s purse-strings?

Do you really think that it’s a good idea to elect people who are prepared to bring our economy down just to prevent their political opponents from fixing the mess the previous batch of reality-denying conservatives left behind?

Do you actually believe that it’s perfectly all right if corporations feel free export jobs to other countries, shutter factories and technology companies, and corrupt the very leaders you consider to be such spiritual paragons? After all, the companies must make a profit for their shareholders. Not that you know anything about the stock market or investments, because you lost your job when the plant closed and money’s tight. Just hold on, and eventually something from above will trickle down on you — no matter how bad it smells.

Would you like to hear about a wonderful opportunity? It’s a sure-fire chance to get in on the ground floor – all you have to do is drink the Kool-Aid, stop thinking, and above all don’t question authoritarianism wearing a crisp dress shirt and professorial hornrims. You, too, can have a steaming load of hypocrisy and propaganda delivered to your home — and if you act now, you can get a fresh supply straight from the horse’s ass. Just pick up the phone to start investing in your golden, glittering future… operators are standing by.

If you and a lot of other people ignore the lessons we learned from history – the kind of history that actually happened as opposed to the kind that gets re-arranged by people who control and manipulate your opinions for their own financial gain – you can have your imaginary country back.

That’s right, that fantastic and immeasurably powerful country you long for, where everybody looked like you and believed like you. Where you lived without paying for any kind of social service, public utilities, food and drug safety agencies, Federal law enforcement, highways, or health care. That country you dream of, that didn’t need to concern itself with “human rights” or international trade, or poverty, or natural disasters. Those things just aren’t your problem, or shouldn’t be.

You can have that country back, and arrange it into the kind of “populist” theocracy that worked out so terribly well for the Puritans, and all the “witches” they burned at the stake.

You can have that country back, but only if you promise to give it back again when your cynical leaders betray you and ruin it with war, incompetence, greed, and corruption (again). If you get that country back, it won’t be what they told you it would be, over and over again. Eventually, you’ll come running back to reality crying out that they lied to you and you were temporarily insane, or mesmerized by spiritual flim-flammery, sex appeal, and snake oil.

But to get it, you have to drink the Kool-Aid, get indoctrinated, and soak up all the propaganda you can to inoculate your mind against the onslaught of facts, policy statements, corrections, logic, and that dreaded rhetoric.

Those so-called “progressives” will try to appeal to your better nature, can-do spirit, compassion, and sense of fair play – those old fashioned American virtues that have no place in the good old USA! USA! USA! you so desperately want back. Who needs progress? Who needs roads? Who cares about poor people? Jesus sure didn’t… did he?

You’d better get yourself an infusion of thoughts and opinions, in the company of other people who need validation just like you do, before you remember how to think for yourself. Then you can have your American dream back – and the nightmare begins for everyone else.