Following my hip replacement in July, I decided to take a few months away from penning op/eds for Colorado Politics and focus on getting back up on my skis by early next year. The physical therapists seem to think this is a reasonable goal. If Gerald Ford could continue skiing at Beaver Creek into his ninth decade, why not me? My double-black diamond days are  surely behind me, but there’s nothing that beats a crisp, groomed, early morning blue descent. To my surprise, acquaintances started inquiring why they weren’t seeing my by-line. This fan club, such as it is, may be small yet it apparently remains loyal. As a pundit,  you never know who is actually reading your stuff. My biggest surprise a few years ago was when our host at a Palisade wine country B&B asked, “Are you the same Miller Hudson who writes for the Gazette papers?”

Who else? It’s been decades since another, fake Miller Hudson would submit vile letters to the Boulder Camera using my name. It required considerable exertions with its editors to bring this game to a halt – the culprit never identified. Speaking of culprits, the White House began claiming George Soros was paying the “terrorists” attending the first No Kings rally this past summer. If you do the math, estimating it takes at least a hundred dollars to pry butts from their doom-scrolling obsessions, the Soros payroll would have reached three hundred million  dollars — a hefty pricetag by any standard. It’s strange not s single one of his 3 million shills have stepped forward to wave their paychecks. If the FBI could infiltrate the Jan. 6 mob with 274 provocateurs, how hard could it be to slip a few MAGA zealots into the No Kings rally?

I keep checking the mailbox for my own check. I attended the first “insurrection” earlier this year waving a sign with the tag line, “Fighting Redcoats then. Fighting Red hats now!” It drew sufficient attention to be worthy of a Benjamin, perhaps even more. I was hoping I could bargain with George for a regular stipend if I placed op-eds critical of the MAGAverse. No luck. Although both the vice president and the White House’s Grey Eminence, Stephen Miller, insist participants in the second No Kings march will be paid once again, I no longer trust them. Fool me once, shame on them. Fool me twice, shame on me. I’m reluctant to call these scumbags (a presidentially approved pejorative) bald-faced liars. After all, they have access to intelligence from both the FBI and the National Security Agency. Even Kash Patel denies there were FBI agents in the Jan. 6 crowd.

I keep checking the mailbox for my own check. I attended the first “insurrection” earlier this year waving a sign with the tag line, “Fighting Redcoats then. Fighting Red hats now!” It drew sufficient attention to be worthy of a Benjamin, perhaps even more. I was hoping I could bargain with George for a regular stipend if I placed op-eds critical of the MAGAverse. No luck. Although both the vice president and the White House’s Grey Eminence, Stephen Miller, insist participants in the second No Kings march will be paid once again, I no longer trust them. Fool me once, shame on them. Fool me twice, shame on me. I’m reluctant to call these scumbags (a presidentially approved pejorative) bald-faced liars. After all, they have access to intelligence from both the FBI and the National Security Agency. Even Kash Patel denies there were FBI agents in the Jan. 6 crowd.

I’ve spoken with dozens of protesters among my friends and extended family and not one ever received a payment from Soros. They seem to be, as Bernie Sanders asserts, just Americans who believe freedom is a bedrock democratic principle. I‘ve abandoned my hopes for a payday as a terrorist scribbler. Vanity alone has drawn me back to my keyboard. We know for a fact, of course, the Tangerine Terror did compensate unemployed actors to create a boisterous crowd during his 2015 glide down the golden escalator at Trump Tower when he announced his presidential candidacy. They cheered wildly right on cue. Presumably, the president’s retinue conceives the only way to seduce voters out of their easy chairs and on to the streets is with a few dollars.

Their motives may be somewhat darker, however. Labeling peaceful protesters as terrorists who hate America seems like a message aimed at roiling the fetid juices of their fringiest supporters. As I write this, I worry there will be violence on No Kings Day 2 – violence that can then be used as an excuse to justify expanded repression, even martial law. Every despot in human history has been carried to power on the shoulders of his or her true believers who fail to question anything they are told. The truth tends to be complicated, while lies travel at the speed of rumor. The real haters are those who despise their fellow Americans.

You may have heard the story in recent weeks of the MAGA zealot experiencing a problem pregnancy in a blood red state. She was informed by her gynecologist that his best medical advice was for her to flee and give birth in a blue state — where doctors could save her life. It would be illegal for him to save her if there were complications during the delivery. She was shocked to learn reproductive health isn’t the right to kill your infant after it is born, as she thought mothers did to their newborns in blue states. Infanticide is, as you would expect, illegal in all fifty states. She knowledges she is reconsidering everything she thought she knew about childbirth.

If otherwise reasonable people can believe Democrats murder their newborn babies, what must they think ‘left, lunatic terrorists’ are capable of? There’s a reason we’re hearing the word insurrection used to characterize the constitutionally guaranteed right of citizens to petition their government for grievances. I would also advise you to research the meaning of the president’s “plenary powers”  recently claimed by Stephen Miller. I turned 80 at the end of September, much to my surprise and unsure how I reached the same age as actual, old people — thanks to artificial joints and bypass surgery. We will soldier on.

Attending my natal anniversary were my three, teenaged grandchildren. I explained to them I have developed no tightly reasoned theory for how our country has reached its current political impasse. I reminded my friends and relatives that I have only learned democracy demands active civic participation — that freedom must be guaranteed by those who value that freedom. I told my grandkids I planned to “Rage, rage against the dying of the light,” as Dylan Thomas so eloquently recommended — alas, ignoring his own advice, he drank himself to an early death at 39. 

If asked one day, “What did your Granddad do during the struggle ahead of us?” I want them to be able to reply, “Gramps went and got himself arrested.” Their future is my fight, our fight — a contest they are not prepared to win alone.

Miller Hudson is a public affairs consultant and a former Colorado legislator.