My darling daughter gave me two dramatic blinks of her Aryan-blue eyes and flipped back her pure, naturally blonde pigtails. "What did you do during the Trump Wars, daddy?"

It felt like a fever dream.

What's that, evil libtard? I don't have a "Children of the Corn" daughter? Or any daughter at all? Who are you to say that to me, a Patriot Hero of the Trump Wars? You, who don't even know the difference between a man and a woman? How would you be able to tell whether a beautiful young girl like my imaginary daughter exists?

Back to my story.

"Unlike some of my fellow Americans," I told her — let's say her name is/was/could have been Stephanie — "I answered my nation's call at her time of greatest need."

I sunk into my recliner. "As everyone knows, the United States was being horrifically terribly tragically outrageously attacked by domestic terrorist cells of far-left extremists. We were seconds away from Marxism. Gulags, Soviet everything, Medicare for All. So, when President Donald Trump called for loyal MAGA patriots to fight, of course I jumped at the chance."

Stephanie tugged at my sleeve. "You went to war against the Radical Left? Were you scared?"

"I won't lie," I replied. "I was scared. The Radical Left was everywhere ... hammer-and-sickle flags draped at Taco Bell, Mao posters at school, Courtney Love on Spotify. But only stupid people wouldn't have been terrified. We were scared and we went anyway. We had a job to do."

"What's that for?" Stephanie asked, pointing at one of my combat medals.

"That was for fighting in the Battle of Chicago," I said. "I don't like to talk about it."

"Come on, daddy! Tell me about the evil Latinos!"

She was old enough to hear the unvarnished truth. "I was serving with the 1st Unmarked ICE Battalion, Anti-Nanny Strike Force. We covered ourselves with COVID masks and Kevlar and stormed onto the shores of Lake Michigan in amphibious sports utility vehicles festooned with Trump flags. The Hispanic nannies swarmed us by the tens of thousands, shooting and bombing and nuking. I can still remember their blood-curdling war cry: "It's Taco Tuesday!" They had their kids and their employers' kids and, in many cases, U.S. citizenship. We knew we could all be doxxed. We had to be pitiless. We killed them all."

"Thank you, daddy. I love you."

"I love you too, sweetheart. Unless you join the Radical Left."

"I would want you to kill me, daddy, if I did that. Did you kill any antifas?"

"That was in Portland, honey. These monstrous hipsters dressed like ninjas, all black, terrorizing tens of the city's residents for minutes at a time. What was really ominous was how normal they acted, biking and riding the tram system and paying their fare — all as a cover for their nefarious anti-American agenda."

"Anti ... fa. ... Fighting fascism?"

"Exactly. Can you imagine?"

Stephanie's eyes were as vacant as they were blue.

"What is 'imagine,' daddy?"

"Something you, as an American, will never have to do, unlike those of us in the so-called Gratest Generation. Sometimes, at night, I can see the contorted, agonized faces of the Lyft drivers, the restaurant kitchen workers and the antiwar marchers we slaughtered or sent to the camps. I hear the screams of my fallen ICE comrades. My best buddy was standing right next to me, bravely beating up a dad picking up his kid from school when a 5-year-old Tren de Aragua drug kingpin blasted him away as he whizzed by on his Big Wheel, cackling in Spanish."

"Your sacrifice saved us, daddy."

"Thank you, Stephanie. I know."

"Daddy," Stephanie demanded, "tell me about the drug cartel wars."

"Well," I explained, "a drug called fentanyl was killing lots of Americans in flyover country, mostly young white guys who would have probably certainly been fine MAGA patriots had they not become drug-addicted degenerates. Fentanyl was coming from Mexico, so we bombed random Venezuelan boats in the southern Caribbean and blew up the people on them, whoever they were."

"Were the Venezuelans bringing fentanyl to America?" Stephanie asked.

"No, they don't make it there. They might have been carrying cocaine."

"To America?"

"No, to Trinidad."

"Is Trinidad in America?" she wanted to know.

"No. It isn't. Not yet. But we had to do something. So we made up something to do, and then we did it, and it was over, and we saved America."

"I love you, daddy," Stephanie replied, giving me a kiss on the tip of my nose. "You have enough imagination for the both of us."

"I know, sweetie."

Ted Rall, the political cartoonist, columnist and graphic novelist, is the author of the brand-new "What's Left: Radical Solutions for Radical Problems." He co-hosts the left-vs-right DMZ America podcast with fellow cartoonist Scott Stantis and The TMI Show with political analyst Manila Chan. Subscribe: tedrall.Substack.com.

Photo credit: Jon Tyson at Unsplash