I happened to be out in the country the other day, about forty minutes west of downtown Milwaukee. It’s beautiful out there in what’s known as the Kettle Moraine part of Wisconsin. It is here that the glaciers did some of their most beautiful work during the ice age, and the countryside rolls in a way that would make you forget you were in the Midwest. It’s the part of southeastern Wisconsin where people own horses and their yards almost look as if they are part of a pine forest. Some of the homes are modest, some far from it, and one in particular was a festival of excess larger than a small office building.

I started to reflect on who might need that much space. I wondered if the escape into such space might be an attempt to isolate themselves from a world they is afraid of, yet from which they extract a rather exorbitant living. Then I happened to stopped at a home with a rather large American flag, under which flew an equally large Trump 2020 flag, making America great again by flying in a yard so protected by tall pine trees that nobody could possibly see it, an insulation against the intrusion of a far less idyllic but far more real world that contains a diversity the home’s owner simply cannot tolerate. MAGA is a prison of its adherents’ own construction, and with it comes only the illusion of freedom. An ironic prison is still a prison.

It is easier to understand moats and draw bridges when you see homes like this – homes with slightly more subtle but no less real barriers to intrusion by those perceived to be the enemy. The acquisition of material goods has not brought happiness but rather fear that someone will come along and take those goods. The god of materialism then compels the construction of a fortress to protect the goods, which itself requires even more materialism to pay for the protection,resulting in more anxiety for fear the protection will fail. When will the condom of materialism burst, and rather than semen mad hordes who want our stuff will come rushing in? This is the picture of the contemporary American dream, a dream that if someone is not careful leads to early departure at their own hand.