The MAGA hat

Here's you're trigger warning: I'm going to be serious today. If that's not you're cup of tea I understand. I like my lighter blogs better too. Yet today I find myself incensed enough to be serious, but I hope rational as well.
Most of us know the MAGA hat. It's a Trump supporters staple based on their political catchphrase Make America Great Again. Yesterday I was told by, not one, not two, but by three separate friends (and they are all friends) that MAGA hats are hateful, racist, intimidating, and provocative.
Well, well. Where to begin? Intimidating and provocative, perhaps? I will concede that but only in a mild form, along the lines of how wearing a Detroit Tigers hat to Yankee Stadium would be provocative and intimidating. But no more than that. To read anymore into a simple phrase on a simple red hat is just hyperbole. Nothing more.
I'm not sure I should even address, then, whether the MAGA hats are hateful or racist because, quite bluntly, those assertions are nonsense. They don't even rise to the dignity of error. They are beliefs superimposed over a rather benign political rallying point.
What troubles me the most is the friends leveling the charge are otherwise good people, long term and dear friends who apparently must believe (by obvious implication) that I am racist and hateful because I see nothing wrong with the hats or the phrase. Friends whom I would never accuse of not having the best intentions for everyone at heart even though I think they are profoundly wrong in what they think good for us. Friends whom I would never call whatever the progressive equivalent of racist and hateful might be.
How do you respond to that? In their worlds I'm essentially evil simply because I disagree with them on points (political issues) where disagreement is valid. I'm at a complete loss.
I think they are insulted by it merely because they want to be insulted by it. Well, okay. But such overwrought condemnation only tells me that they are unnecessarily melodramatic, as too many folks too concerned with politics tend to be. And that is the real danger in America today: too much of an emphasis on what should be non-issues, such as what is on our caps.