I haven’t written much recently. From time to time, folks have asked me why. I have asked myself the same thing.

The answer I came up with was really a question. Was it worth the effort to try to present largely middle-of-the-road observations of the passing national political scene in one of the reddest states north of the Mason-Dixon Line, in a town that just voted in an entire slate of local GOP candidates? What were the odds of changing minds and hearts, or encouraging an outbreak of critical thinking rather than blind tribal allegiance in such a equivocal political atmosphere?

Don’t get me wrong. I’m not slamming our local winners or their supporters, many of whom I count as friends, or at least as honorable sparring partners. For the record, I wish them all well in their efforts over the next few years. After all, I live here too.

No, my frustration is with my fellow citizens who have apparently swallowed the hoodoo voodoo of a second-tier real estate hustler named Donald J. Trump.

Unlike Tiki-torch-bearing neo-Nazis, there really are good people in this group, like the nice folks a few doors down with their Trump 2020 banner (undoubtedly made in China) fluttering in the breeze.

I have, I really have, tried to understand the phenomenon of absolute loyalty to a man who has shown no loyalty to his associates, or to those members of the public who would willingly march into Hell at his request. Most distressingly, I can’t understand the blind adulation of a man who swore to his fellow Americans – of all political stripes – that he would, to the best of his ability, “preserve, protect and defend the constitution of the United States.” Try as I might, I can’t square his subsequent actions with the promise he made to all of us that chilly day in January of 2016.

I must allow for the possibility that the lack of understanding might lie with me, and not with those around me. I am jealous of the certainty of those who appear untroubled by such a possibility. Life would be easier if I had their clarity of faith, rather than having to entertain my own reservations.

I must admit that among the reasons for my case of writer’s block, there is a sense of “what difference does it all make” when we are all the victims of political beliefs set in concrete – unable to change minds or win over hearts?

Why bother?

Then a few days ago, I sat down with an old friend for breakfast. (Yes, even the town liberal has friends, be they ever so few!) He chided me for my withdrawal from the public forum. He argued that I was leaving the field to the president’s apologists. The measure of success, he said, was not in changing minds and hearts but continuing to provide a counterpoint to the blarney propagated daily by spokesmen whose only loyalty is to perpetuate this chaotic administration, and their own employment, beyond 2020.

I felt rather guilty!

Today I came across a quote attributed to Garry Kasparov, a former World Chess Champion and a current Russian political dissident, “They know that, you know, they can get people exhausted, they exhaust critical thinking.” Kasparov was talking of Putin’s Russia, but it occurred to me that the template is the same one currently being utilized by our own administration.

I’ll be darned if I will play along, because enough craziness, if left unchallenged, becomes the norm.

So, for what it’s worth, here in the soybean belt, I’m jumping back in into the debate.

And if I never change a mind, or capture a heart, at least I will have had my say.

While it’s still possible to do so.