This is clearly a very well-adjusted person.

"What can you do about the Trumpites next door?"

Something needs to be done? What did they do?

Aside from existing, I mean.

IN AN ACT OF KINDNESS THEY PLOWED HER DRIVEWAY.

It's just like the January 6 attack on the Capital, only with more snow.

I'm not entirely kidding.

On Jan. 6, after the insurrection, Sen. Ben Sasse (R-Neb.) issued an aw-shucks plea for all Americans to love their neighbors. The United States, he said, "isn't Hatfields and McCoys, this blood feud forever." And, he added, "You can't hate someone who shovels your driveway."

At the time, I seethed; the Capitol had just been desecrated. But maybe my neighbor heard Sasse and was determined to make a bid for reconciliation.

Or, and mind you I'm just spitballing here, it snowed, and they just thought they'd do something nice?

You know who else does nice things?

Terrorists!!

Hezbollah, the Shiite Islamist political party in Lebanon, also gives things away for free. The favors Hezbollah does for people in the cities Tyre and Sidon probably don't involve snowplows, but, like other mafias, Hezbollah tends to its own — the Shiite sick, elderly and hungry. They offer protection and hospitality and win loyalty that way. And they also demand devotion to their brutal, us-versus-them anti-Sunni cause. Some of us are family, the favors say; the rest are infidels.

I suppose this could be a mafia-like ploy to inculcate Heffernan into their brutal cause.

But probably not.

Given her background, a masters in English literature, Ph.D. from Harvard, a career spent writing for liberal magazines in New York City, I'm guessing Heffernan hasn't known many people with snowplows. This is what they do, in part because they feel a certain neighborly obligation, and in part because people with snowplows really like to use their snowplows. You have what, three or four good months of snowplowing a year? It snows, you're plowing it.

You're plowing your neighbors' driveways, you're plowing the street, you're plowing the entrances to the local church, and if you have enough time, you're probably going to plow the parking lot at the Home Depot, too.

Of course, on some level, I realize I owe them thanks —

That would be the human level. Hold on tight to that, don't let it slip aw...

— but how much thanks?

Too late.

These neighbors are staunch partisans of blue lives, and there aren't a lot of anything other than white lives in the neighborhood.

Coincidentally, this white neighborhood is the very same neighborhood Heffernan, a very white woman, also lives in.

But at least she feels guilty about it.

This is also kind of weird. Back in the city, people don't sweep other people's walkways for nothing.

I lived in the city, New York City even. People do nice for things for each other without expecting anything in return. Really, they do. I'm an eyewitness.

I wonder if it has occurred to her that maybe she's the only one who doesn't "sweep other people's walkways for nothing?"

A "teachable moment," as they say.

Maybe it's like what Eddie Murphy discovered in that old "Saturday Night Live" sketch "White Like Me." He goes undercover in white makeup and finds that when white people are among their own, they pop free champagne and live the high life. As Murphy puts it: "Slowly I began to realize that when white people are alone, they give things to each other. For free."

I remember that skit. It was hilarious.

It was also a joke. Saturday Night Live is a sketch comedy show, not a Netflix documentary.

She knows that, right?

Of course, Heffernan is a consummate professional and so adheres to the mainstream media's style guide, and eventually gets around to comparing her Trump-supporting neighbors to Nazis.

When someone helps you when you're down, or snowed in, it's almost impossible to regard them as a blight on the world. In fact, you're more likely to be overwhelmed with gratitude and convinced of the person's inherent goodness.

You might end up like the upper-middle-class family I stayed with in France as a teenager.

They did not attend a citywide celebration for the 100th birthday of Charles de Gaulle, the war hero who orchestrated the liberation of his country from Nazi Germany in 1944. They did have several portraits of Philippe Pétain, Nazi collaborator, on their wall.

When I screwed up the courage to ask how it was for them during the occupation, the lady of the house replied, "We were happy because the Nazis were very polis." I didn't know the word, so I excused myself to consult a French-English dictionary. I was in tears when I found the entry: "polite."

I don't see how you escape the logic.

Nazis were polite.

Her Trump-supporting neighbors were polite.

Ergo, HER NEIGHBORS ARE NAZIS!!!

So when I accept generosity from my pandemic neighbors, acknowledging the legitimate kindness with a wave or a plate of cookies, am I also sealing us in as fellow travelers who are very polis to each other but not so much to "them"?

Loving your neighbor is evidently much easier when your neighborhood is full of people just like you.

This is "lack of self awareness" supercharged with NOS and running racing slicks.

She is accusing her neighbors of having difficulty loving people who are not like "them," in the middle of an article the entire premise of which is her struggle loving people who are not like her.

My neighbors supported a man who showed near-murderous contempt for the majority of Americans. They kept him in business with their support.

She doesn't see support of Trump as a difference of opinion or a disagreement over policy because she has fully bought into the notion that Trump is the devil incarnate, "kids in cages," "Russian asset," "very fine people on both sides," she believes it all.

So here's my response to my plowed driveway, for now. Politely, but not profusely, I'll acknowledge the Sassian move. With a wave and a thanks, a minimal start on building back trust. I'm not ready to knock on the door with a covered dish yet.

Imagine thinking this way.

I also can't give my neighbors absolution; it's not mine to give. Free driveway work, as nice as it is, is just not the same currency as justice and truth. To pretend it is would be to lie, and they probably aren't looking for absolution anyway.

"Justice and truth."

And no, they are not looking for absolution, they're probably looking for lunch. They haven't given more than a minute's thought to this since they finished plowing your driveway.

But I can offer a standing invitation to make amends. Not with a snowplow but by recognizing the truth about the Trump administration and, more important, by working for justice for all those whom the administration harmed

The only way her neighbors can "make amends" is by agreeing with her politically.

Make no mistake about it. That is the left's vision of "unity."