Dear Leftists,

Stop seeing Nazis under your bed. Yeah, I know, the rally at Charlottesville has proven there are real Nazis and KKK in America, and you’re all very scared that the nonsense you’ve been talking for years is true.

I’ve heard the rally by Unite the Right (a misnomer, and yes, we’ll get to it later) comprised around a hundred people. Sources trying to make us really scared have increased that to four hundred, but I am sure they’re also including the self-named Antifa.

So a hundred, maybe four hundred, in the South, in what you guys consider (ignorantly) to be the bastion of racism/sexism/other isms that might occur to you. … Out of a nation of three hundred million.

Whether or not this turned into a fight, whether or not the hilariously ineffective law enforcement was ordered to stand down, whether or not in the confusion a woman was murdered or at least killed, I want you to think about those numbers. Use your fingers and toes, if needed. Let’s make this clear: if there were four hundred neo-Nazis (and that’s assuming some of them weren’t just stupid) there, which there probably weren’t, that’s one in every seven hundred and fifty thousand people in America.

To put this in perspective, the number of people in the U.S. who believe in Big Foot, the number of people who believe in UFOs, the number of flat-earthers, the number of people who believe Star Trek is “all true” and probably the number of people who believe that you, yes, you, Mr. Smith from Main Street in Centerville USA are a dinosaur in disguise — all these numbers are far more than four hundred.

In fact, you can’t name a belief stupid enough that it doesn’t have at least four hundred adherents somewhere in the USA. And this doesn’t mean that we’re particularly crazy or stupid, no. It just means that in a nation of three hundred million, you’re going to find a lot of crazy, off beat, and strange people.

However you, dear leftists, have decided that this “show of force” by four hundred people who, btw, were completely outnumbered and also incidentally beaten and otherwise attacked by “Antifa” (who must have named itself by opposites, since wearing masks and beating people in the street is the game of the fascists, not the anti-fascists) means that we live in a “White Supremacy” and that anyone saying it ain’t so is a “neo-Nazi.”

Over the last few days, my friends — who range from soft-left to in-your-face Libertarians — have been getting in fights and otherwise losing friendships because they tell their leftist friends to keep their hair on, and also that no, there isn’t a sudden upsurge of Nazis ready to take over the country.

The truth is, dear leftists, that you’ve been scaring yourself with fables. It started after the election of Donald Trump. Yes, I know, mentioning that Hillary didn’t win still gives you PTSD, but I need you to focus and listen to me, okay? You can have your coloring books and crayons after.

You were so convinced that if only you attacked Donald Trump as racist/sexist/homophobic, Hillary – the unindicted felon we all know her to be – would win the election, and you were so happy that he, brash and not really very political as he is, stumbled into your myth making that you actually convinced yourself that he was racist, sexist, and homophobic. That’s right, you convinced yourself that a fairly crass man, who has been in the spotlight his whole life and about whom the worst complaint that could be made vis a vis treatment of women was that he once made some nebulous remark about “grabbing women by the pussy,” is “a serial rapist.” You convinced yourself that Donald Trump, the first man to hold a rainbow flag on stage, at a rally, is homophobic. You convinced yourself that wanting to end illegal immigration is racism.

You ran around like a chicken with its head cut off, right after the election, talking about camps and how the Trump Police (doubtless in fabulous gold uniforms) would be coming to put all of us who are a little non-standard in camps. Yes, that’s right, camps. Because we weren’t lily white and all.

When nothing happened, you MIGHT have taken a step back from the ledge and thought: “Hey, he’s just an old-fashioned New York Democrat, and if we’re nice to him, he will govern from the left.” Thank you for not doing that, btw. Thank you for continuing to attack him. He’s egotistic enough that this means you can’t get your stuff enacted under the cover of a nominally GOP president.

But then you got crazier. You started putting signs in your yard about how you refuse hate, or something like that. Does this mean you want to give shelter to illegal Mexicans or Muslim “refugees”? Or are you just running your mouths, as usual? You do understand that not wanting your country invaded is not hatred, right, just self-defense? If you don’t, I suggest you review the immigration policies of Mexico. Ours are far easier than theirs. Why do the Mexicans hate so?

And you flooded Twitter with #resistance, and imagined yourself very heroic, like some kind of hero in Casablanca, standing up against the evil Nazis in power. Even though Trump is not a Nazi (he’s leftist, but not that leftist) and the only group taking to the streets in masks and breaking things were the Antifathugss, whom you seem to idolize.

Now, in Charlottesville, you think you found proof of secret Nazis. Finally, you can browbeat the rest of America. Finally, you can get everyone to see that Nazis exist and are evil — and turn with relief to socialism/communism. You probably think you found the secret weapon that will elect Bernie Sanders or — heaven help us — Hilary! in 2020.

Only it’s not working the way you expected. A lot of us refuse to look at a fight between neo-Nazis and communists, both in minuscule numbers, and see the Ragnarok you’ve been predicting.

A lot of us, starting with Trump, say something like “a pox on both their houses” and “those idiots are wrong, and this is terrible.” And we mean both sides, the Nazi idiots and the Antifa idiots who showed up armed and ready to intercept them.

Here’s the thing, dear left: A lot of us hate Nazis but think they’re covered by the First Amendment. A lot of us hate communism but think that if all the Antifa thugs did was show up and shout, they’re covered by the First Amendment. A lot of us laugh at your safe spaces.

Dear leftists, the truth is that the election should have served as a wakeup call. You should have looked at how your handpicked woman lost to possibly the strangest GOP candidate ever – one whose choice you helped influence and whose image you helped mold – and thought: “Oh, boy, they really are pissed. They’ll take anyone but the person we and our allies in the media and entertainment tell them to take.”

Instead, you chose to run around like crazy people, imagining collusion with Russia, and impeachable offenses that never happened (some of them before he was even sworn in), and Nazis coming to take you to camps any minute now.

This latest effort: tarring everyone who doesn’t find the Antifa — with their baseball bats, and their bicycle chains, and their masked faces — cute and cuddly as neo-Nazis is only making things worse.

No, not everyone who isn’t a communist is a fascist. In fact the two movements had more in common with each other than with anyone else.

If you go on calling everyone from Libertarians to social democrats “Nazis,” you will be surprised again in 2020. And then you’ll decide you’re really surrounded by Nazis.

Or you could come out of the bunker, open your eyes, and start thinking.

I understand it’s unlikely you’ll listen to any of this. After all, “racism/sexism/homophobia” and “Secret Nazis” are such great excuses for all your failures — both personal and political. How could you let go of it? You might have to embrace – gasp – personal responsibility.

So, you probably won’t do it. But I thought I’d warn you. Because you’re pissing off a bunch of people who aren’t even particularly political, the vast middle of the country which only tunes in before elections.

What that means is that in 2020 you’ll get more Trump. Or far worse than Trump. If that’s not what you want, I’d advise you to stop and think.

Or not. It’s just that those of us on the freedom side of things are afraid of what monster of the Id you’ll conjure with your obsessive hatred of phantoms.

And, you know, we live here too.