The Church of Donkeys & Elephants By BR Wilson Guitars & Cigars, The Bipartisan Patriot

The Church of Donkeys & Elephants

By BR Wilson Guitars & Cigars, The Bipartisan Patriot

The country feels overcooked.

Not collapsed.

Worse.

Functional.

The lights still come on. The drive-thrus still work. Kids still chase foul balls at baseball games while the national nervous system jerks underneath everything like a dog twitching in bad sleep somewhere under the porch.

Politics used to mean roads. Taxes. Sewer lines. Whether your grandmother could buy insulin without quietly pawning jewelry nobody in the family talks about anymore.

Now it feels religious.

Not real religion either.

Something thinner than that.

Meaner.

Franchised.

Like spiritual fast food for people who replaced neighbors with comment sections and low-grade adrenal exhaustion.

I watched a guy in a diner down in Daytona nearly blow a gasket over a bumper sticker while powdered sugar drifted off his French toast like forensic dust. Tiny white clouds everywhere. Man kept saying “these people” over and over with the intensity of somebody trying to warn the town about wolves nobody else could hear.

Couple stools away some college kid with dead aquarium eyes and a sociology vocabulary was talking about systems and power structures so hard his face looked physically tired from carrying all that certainty around.

Nobody listening.

That part sticks.

The arguments aren’t even arguments anymore. Everybody already knows the verdict before the first sentence lands. Facts just show up afterward wearing little team jerseys.

You can hand somebody evidence now, real evidence, photographs, recordings, receipts, God Himself descending through nicotine-stained ceiling tiles holding notarized paperwork in one hand and a sweating bourbon in the other... does not matter. Their side remains sacred. Yours remains evil. End of sermon. Pass the collection plate.

That’s the disease.

Not disagreement.

Dogma.

The kind that crawls inside people quietly.

The Left has saints now. The Right has prophets. Everybody quoting politicians like they’re part philosopher, part wrestler, part televangelist screaming beside a healing tent off Interstate 95. Three halves somehow. Arithmetic died a while ago. Nobody held a funeral.

Every election cycle now feels like a county fair built directly beside an open grave.

Flags everywhere.

Grease smoke.

Old men sweating through folding chairs.

Somebody yelling.

Always somebody yelling.

Cable news humming in the background like an appliance you forgot to unplug three presidencies ago.

Then the internet gets involved and the whole thing catches mange.

People wake up angry now before their feet even hit the floor. Thumb already scrolling. Looking for the next heretic. Next outrage. Next tiny pharmaceutical burst of certainty to drag themselves through another warehouse shift or another breakfast sitting across from somebody they technically still call a spouse.

Nobody wants truth.

Truth costs too much.

Truth asks people to amputate pieces of themselves in public and Americans would rather swallow battery acid than admit they got conned by somebody wearing the correct color necktie.

So they smoke emotional cigarettes instead. Tiny nicotine drags of confirmation every seven seconds while the country slowly transforms into a strip mall with surveillance equipment.

I watched families destroy themselves over politics that wouldn’t fix one pothole in front of their own damn mailbox.

Brothers stop speaking.

Mothers erased off Facebook like Soviet officials disappearing from old photographs.

Grown men in Oakleys calling each other traitors beside propane grills full of burned sausage links and Bud Light cans sweating into card tables.

Honestly there’s something almost beautiful about it if your brain’s damaged in the right places.

Something deeply American.

Like fireworks reflected in flood water.

The parties know exactly what they’re doing too.

Fear organizes people.

Outrage keeps them hydrated.

A calm citizen might start asking dangerous questions. Like why every crisis somehow survives long enough to become a fundraising campaign. Funny system. Like hiring arsonists to sell fire extinguishers door to door afterward while the neighborhood still smells like melted wiring.

Everybody belongs to a team now.

That’s the rule.

Wear the colors.

Repeat the phrases.

Boo on command like trained sea lions balancing ideology on their noses for expired sardines and social approval.

Doesn’t even matter when your own side contradicts itself anymore. Contradiction used to damage credibility. Now it just gets absorbed into the doctrine somewhere between the memes and the prescription medication commercials.

I watched a man defend a politician he previously called a criminal because the criminal switched parties.

Just like that.

Whole moral framework folded inward like wet cardboard left in the rain behind a convenience store.

No pause.

No embarrassment.

The room barely reacted.

That’s what lingers with me lately. Not corruption. Human beings have always been corrupt little monkeys with paperwork and blood pressure medication. Governments too. Every government on earth basically held together with coffee, fluorescent lighting, and somebody quietly crying in a parking garage at 6:40 in the morning.

No.

It’s the loyalty.

The appetite for obedience.

That part feels newer.

People used to distrust politicians naturally. Instinctively. Like used-car salesmen or carnival rides assembled by a shirtless guy named Rick with cigarette burns on both hands.

Now they defend politicians with medieval intensity. Full emotional surrender. Plague-saint energy. Executioner energy. Same face sometimes.

Somewhere along the line citizenship became fandom.

Then fandom metastasized into theology.

Now half the country walks around waiting for instructions on who deserves hatred before lunch.

The clocks keep moving though.

Coffee getting cold.

Phones glowing in dark bedrooms.

Little electronic chapels humming beside sleeping people who don’t even realize they’re kneeling anymore.

Somewhere a television is still talking.

Nobody in the room.

Still talking.