By: Diane Benjamin

In the land of Progressia, the ruling faction had a problem. Their grand policies kept producing the opposite of what they promised: taxes that crushed working families, cities where shoplifting became a protected lifestyle, borders that functioned more like welcome mats, and schools more focused on gender ideology than reading. Energy prices soared while blackouts increased. Men kept winning women’s sports. And yet, every election cycle, they needed to win.

So they developed the ultimate strategy: forget defending the results. Just attack the opposition with an ever-expanding dictionary of shame.

Whenever anyone pointed out the failures, the response was swift and merciless. Concerned about open borders and the resulting chaos? Xenophobe. Noticed that crime rates spiked in certain cities after bail reform and defund movements? Racist. Questioned why boys were taking medals and scholarships from girls? Transphobe. Suggested that men cannot become women no matter the surgery or pronouns? Bigot. Wanted parents to have more say in what their kids learned? Fascist. Preferred lower taxes and less government spending? Greedy. Worried about election integrity after seeing drop boxes, extended deadlines, and censored stories? Election denier and threat to democracy.

The list grew like mold in a damp basement:

• Opposed to race-based policies? White supremacist.
• Supported biological reality? Science denier
• Favored secure borders and legal immigration? Nazi.
• Wanted school choice for poor minority kids stuck in failing public schools? Enemy of public education.
• Criticized endless foreign entanglements? Isolationist Putin stooge.
• Simply wanted cheaper groceries, gas, and housing? MAGA extremist.

It was brilliant in its laziness. No need to fix crime, inflation, or energy policy. No need to explain why the previous solutions made everything worse. Just deploy the labels like a verbal minefield. Every debate became a game of “Name the Heretic” instead of discussing results. Polls dipped? Time to roll out semi-fascist, ultra-MAGA, garbage people, or the latest invention: weird.

The strategy worked for years because it turned policy discussions into moral purity tests. Why defend printing trillions and calling it “investment” when you could just call the other side heartless? Why address the reality of biological sex when you could brand dissenters as bigots? Lying became normalized—distort the opponent’s positions, smear their voters, then act shocked when people grew tired of being called evil for wanting basic competence.

But eventually the spell weakened. Too many families watched their grocery bills double. Too many women saw fairness erased in sports and locker rooms. Too many working people noticed the disconnect between elite lectures on climate and their own skyrocketing utility bills. The endless name-calling started sounding less like righteous truth-telling and more like a tired script from people who had run out of working ideas.

In the final stretch of one particularly bad election season, the faction doubled down hardest. Every speech became a laundry list of insults rather than a defense of their record. But the people had heard it all before. The adjectives had lost their power. When your only consistent platform is calling half the country deplorable names to avoid defending your own governance, eventually the audience stops listening.

The moral? When a political side’s main weapon is an arsenal of slurs instead of successful policies, it reveals more about the weakness of their ideas than the wickedness of their opponents. And once the public tires of being slandered for noticing reality, no amount of creative labeling can save the day.

In the climax of yet another election battle, the faction poured everything into the insults—semi-fascist, ultra-MAGA, garbage people, weird—hoping volume would substitute for vision. But the public had grown weary of being called deplorable for preferring competence over slogans.

They hate MAGA (Make America Great Again) because they never thought America was great. The local left still has nothing, so expect history to repeat.

Candidates running in November should look them in the eyes and say: “Still got nothing to run on?”. They don’t.

Trigger alert: