On July 8, New York Times columnist David French strained to apply a human face to Trump-supporters, but I don't think I am giving him too much credit when I infer a connection to Biden's vicious attack on Pres. Trump and MAGA Republicans of September 1, 2022.  The writer summed the Trump years (from 2015 to the present) this way: "Everything is normal until, suddenly, it's not."

Early in his Philadelphia remarks, Biden said:

Too much of what’s happening in our country today is not normal. ... Donald Trump and the MAGA Republicans represent an extremism that threatens the very foundations of our republic.

It seems to me that for Biden and French, political dissent from the radical-left aim of Tearing Down America is not to be allowed.  That is to say, dissent is not only "not normal," but not to be permitted.  And so, Biden engages in what U.S. district judge Terry Doughty in Missouri v. Biden called "a massive effort ... to suppress speech."  French repeats this attack in the penultimate paragraph, in italics, as if said by a family member: "My father (or mother or uncle or cousin) is lost to MAGA. They can seem normal, but they're not, at least not any longer." 

"Lost to MAGA"?  Might as well say lost to the spirit of American liberty.

Nearing the end of his column, French cited "the excesses of the Trump movement," without specific examples.  Ignoring the obvious excesses of government practiced by the Biden administration, French claims that MAGA people turn leftists into caricatures — a case of the columnist projecting his own biases onto others.  But of course, this is the normal practice of today's media that foist its hysterical caricatures of "Donald Trump and MAGA Republicans" onto the American people every day.

On to the latest column from Peggy Noonan, "May Trump Soon Reach His Waterloo."  Bizarrely, Noonan professes to say she is not comparing the former president to Napoleon, "who was a serious man."  She went on to compare a Napoleonic "cult" to the MAGA movement.  (Cult, apparently, is the invidious term one applies to a disfavored political movement.)  Clearly, Noonan would like to see the former president, per Napoleon, sent into exile on a speck of land in the south Atlantic.  She gave herself away with this statement she would like to hear from Biden: 

"'After long thought, I judge that I have done the job set out for me by history: I have removed Donald Trump[.] ... [Now] pick a president.'"  Behold Noonan's incontrovertible admission that it was not enough to defeat Mr. Trump in 2020; he must be "removed" as a 2024 presidential candidate — by one prosecution after another.

Why?  Noonan explains, by way of quoting herself, "at a party" recently, to a New York Trump-supporter: "He [Trump] is a bad man."  (The Trump-supporter should have replied: "This is just mindless political hate speech" and walked away.)  And that, dear friends, is supposed to end the discussion in favor of uniparty rule over the people: a summary attack on patriotic Americans from a Noonan or a Biden, or a nuanced insult from a David French.

To describe MAGA as a "cult" is to resort to political caricature for invidious purpose.  Yes, David French was right to perceive a sense of "joy" and "fun" at the core of MAGA-supporters.  How could it be otherwise?

MAGA is the political movement of the 21st century to revive the American spirit of freedom that Madison, in The Federalist No. 57, said nourishes, and is nourished by, the people.  To call MAGA a "cult" is tantamount to accusing the Founding Fathers of establishing a political cult to replace King George III.

To those anti-democracy Deep Staters like Noonan who make such argument, one word comes to mind: "disinformation."

Image: Donald Trump.