I had quite the weekend.

Two of the Groms have birthdays during the same week at the end of April and beginning of May, so we celebrate them together. This year the festivities involved parties at a local skating rink on Friday and up here at the Grom Ranch on Saturday. These did not go exactly as planned.

My youngest, who just turned 6, wanted to have a roller skating party, so we invited her friends from kindergarten for an evening of skating down in town. What we did not know was that the skating rink is evidently under new management that thinks it’s sound business to cater to the 0.001% of the local population that goes roller skating to promote and celebrate socialism and alternative lifestyles.

It was, unbeknownst to me, LGBTQ+ night when I arrived with a bunch of 5- and 6-year-old girls in tow for a birthday party. Posters for the usual lefty dumbassery and adult-themed paraphernalia had replaced the photos of cartoon characters and kids skating in goofy costumes that used to decorate the entranceway. The only thing missing were rainbow Che Guevara T-shirts.

I am a live-and-let-live kind of guy. I absolutely do not give a d*** about your lifestyle. Really, I just don’t—so long as you are reasonably discreet and cause no harm or undue annoyance to me or mine. It’s just not up to me to approve or disapprove of your lifestyle, habits or mores.

That’s it. Do your deal—just leave me out of it.

If you want to waste yourself with drugs or alcohol, spoon with the same sex, fret that you are trapped inside of the wrong body, feel like a victim of capitalism, be a fan of the Cubs, Cardinals, Brewers or Pirates, be motivated by religion (traditional or secular), or be disenfranchised by anything other than extreme progressivism, conservatism or whatever, you go knock yourself out. You and I aren’t going to have a problem with any of that because I make it a habit to mind my own business. It’s very difficult to get me off of that.

The only time we are ever going to get crossways over ideology or lifestyle is when you insist on making your business my business. Get in my wheelhouse about your business, and then we have to talk—at that point I reserve the right to moderate that discussion as I see fit.

The problem with a laissez-faire approach to getting along with others is that my credo of noninterference in the wishes of others is rarely met with reciprocation. You can’t just leave crusaders alone or ignore them; you either embrace what they embrace or you are an enemy to be obliterated.

So, there I was, the only adult in loco parentis responsible for chaperoning a group of 5- to 8-year-old girls in a place that had been appropriate a week ago, instead surrounded by a large, aggressive crowd of queers, queens, and people who wished death to MAGA, Israel, and people like me. After some thought, I did the only thing that any reasonable person in my position would have done; I stuck to my guns. Forget those idiots. I told the girls to have fun, since leaving would have broken their hearts, but check with me before going to the restroom.

This advice was prescient. Over the next 90 minutes, a stream of biological men (20 and up) were continuously in and out of the women’s bathroom at a rate that defied any normal urge on the part of humans to relieve themselves. This was an obvious show of contempt for the recently enacted Idaho HB 752, a trans bathroom bill, which takes effect in July, at a playplace for children.

Fortunately, none of my charges needed to use the restroom during our time there. It’s the only reason I didn’t join other fathers across the nation who’ve ended up in hot water sorting things like this out. I’m generally not looking for trouble, but if I catch a grown man dressed like a woman entering a bathroom full of little girls I’m responsible for, someone’s getting dinged.

That’s what happens when you insist on making your business my business. You couldn’t leave it alone and use the who-gives-a-shit bathroom; you had to be in everyone’s face. OK, my turn. That’s exactly why I vote for people who drive you crazy.

On Saturday I went to pick up a cake that I’d pre-ordered from a local bakery a few days earlier. Because we were celebrating two birthdays, the kids wanted a half chocolate and half vanilla cake. I was assured by the friendly and helpful young woman we ordered the cake with that this would not be a problem—as long as we were willing to order two quarter sheets, one chocolate and one vanilla, and pay a special order fee for decorating it half and half.

When we picked up the cake an hour before guests arrived, we found it was not remotely what we’d ordered. The person at the bakery this time was a woman in her 50s who looked for all the world like she’d come to work straight from a protest replete with a nose ring, purple hair, and a rainbow “No MAGA” tee. I had to restrain myself from asking if the “No Kings” sign was behind the counter.

I told her that the cake was wrong; she insisted that it was not. I reminded her that we’d paid a fee for a special order and asked to see the original written instructions. She pointed out that the cake had “happy birthday” on the top, which constituted a special order fee of $15 all by itself. I showed her the instructions with exactly what I’d asked for and my phone number in case there were any problems.

Her response? “Bruh, what you asked for would be a really special order.” Only the presence of a newly minted 6-year-old excited to see any cake kept my head from physically exploding.

We had, nonetheless, a wonderful birthday weekend. Pro tip: A llama piñata full of Hot Wheels is a huge hit among kids.

Cluelessness is one of my principal objections to modern progressivism. When you can’t decorate a $60 birthday cake properly with step-by-step written instructions, I’m completely uninterested in your opinion on national politics. To be fair, there does exist a clueless zone at the other end of the political spectrum. But at least those people can decorate a cake and choose the appropriate public restroom 100% of the time.

Ceding authority to angry, clueless people like these isn’t a great strategy for making it to our nation’s tricentennial. About the only trait among modern progressives more alarming than cluelessness is their ambition. Right now progressives are licking their chops about the days to come in which they will gerrymander a permanent Democratic majority in the House, blow up the filibuster in the Senate, and pack the Supreme Court.

What they are not counting on is the civil war that starts the next day. My way or the highway has its limits. I think we are about to find out. Life during wartime.

We might be there already. Since 2016, there have been between 6 and 12 serious attempts on Donald Trump’s life, depending on exactly how you define “serious.”

Were Trump any other political figure, particularly one from the left, the media and policymakers would be in a state of overwhelming hand-wringing and angst. Instead, we get the minimum public decorum required for yet another political assassination attempt, along with why it’s Trump’s own fault.

There’s more. The Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC), a reliable left-wing legal pit bull, currently stands accused by the DOJ of defrauding donors by funding racism on the down low while asking them for money to fight racism. Funding both sides of the war, if you will. Funds allegedly went to the Ku Klux Klan, the National Socialist Party of America, and at least one organizer of the deadly 2017 “Unite the Right” rally in Charlottesville, Virginia.

I’m not a fan of the SPLC for several reasons, one being that they’ve attempted to blacklist several journalists of my acquaintance over stories they found objectionable. And while I doubt that anything in the DOJ indictment sticks (if lying to donors over politics could be successfully prosecuted, we’d need at least 535 more prison cells), the indictment is useful all by itself simply because it exposes the SPLC asshats for what they are.

On top of all this, as I was lying in bed Saturday evening, waiting for kids to finally pass out after stoking themselves with cake, soda pop, ice cream and a trampoline for several hours, I came across the infamous CNN interview with Taylor Lorenz concerning Luigi Mangione. Killing political foes, according to Lorenz, is kinda sexy.

I’m not what you would call a fan of the corporate health care industry in any way, shape, form, manner, or style. I mostly despise big pharma and hedge fund-driven healthcare. One of the reasons I so detest “Obamacare” is that, despite the lofty rhetoric from Obama and the left, it was a payoff to the donor class in the form of perpetual corporate welfare at taxpayer expense. Obamacare solved nothing wrong with health care in America beyond kicking a can down the road at enormous cost.

The difference between me, the Luigi Mangiones of the world and their fandom is that I’m not for death to infidels unless they declare jihad first.

After that, bring it.

Associated Press and Idaho Press Club-winning columnist Martin Hackworth of Pocatello is a physicist, writer, climber, skier, motorcyclist, musician, and retired Idaho State University faculty member who now spends his time raising four kids. Follow him on X at @MartinHackworth, on Facebook at facebook.com/martin.hackworth, and on Substack at martinhackworthsubstack.com.