I mean, if I had my way... you'd wear that goddamn uniform for the rest of your pecker-sucking life. But I'm aware that ain't practical, I mean at some point you're gonna have to take it off. So. I'm gonna give you a little something you can't take off.~Lt. Aldo Raine, to German Col. Hans Landa, before carving a Swastika into his forehead. from Inglorious Basterds.
I've been noticing something, lately.
I'm starting to see a different kind of Trump Supporter, compared to what I saw around here in 2015-2016.
I parked behind this car on Friday night last week at work, presumably that of a second-shift person. On the back of it, there were three window stickers. A skeletal middle finger, a topless Anime-titties sticker (and how is that cool, even these days, especially if you say you're a conservative?) and a Punisher skull with a trump wig superimposed on it.
The vehicle in question was an orange Chevy HHR. I suppose the guy has to overcompensate somehow.
As I've said before, 20 years ago I was a conservative. Not just a conservative, but a rural Northern Michigan pickup-truck-driving conservative who ticked more of the proper boxes than most did.
And we laughed at cars like that, minivans and station wagons and the then-new idea PT Cruisers.
I haven't seen a pickup truck with a Trump sticker on it that wasn't driven by a very old person, and none of those stickers have been new ones, either.
Yesterday, when I pulled out of my parking space I noticed one of those Flex box-SUV's with a "Trump 2020: Make Liberals Cry Again" sticker on it."
In all of the 2016 election cycle I think I saw one Trump sticker on a car in the work parking lot. I've seen all of three Trump hats or shirts or anything on customers at work since, although we did have a pro-Trump Graffiti incident in one of the bathrooms last summer.
I've seen more Sikhs in Turbans than rednecks in #MAGA hats at work in the last three years.
The place you saw that type of shit the most was, naturally, Wal-Mart.
That's where you saw the typical, or perhaps I should say stereotypical, Trump Supporter in all of their full glory, along with whatever splashy dumb-ass Trump swag they had on.
I'm not seeing those this time, at least not so far.
What I am seeing is a few old nebbish-looking white dudes wearing "Trump 2020" red baseball hats, logic dictates there must be some young Trumpers still left, but I haven't seen very many in the real world.
I happen to know a lot of generic Republicans who voted for Trump. Almost all of them seem to regret it and a majority of them think he won't get reelected. Some of these people are pretty out there, outspoken about whatever opinions they have, tattoos of Bible verses or things suggestive of military service or at least support of it, obvious things about them for the most part, that provide clues to an alert observer where they stand and on what. And for the record, not all of them were white, either.
I'm not seeing a lot of those people still being pro-Trump, or if they are, they've gone quiet...and if they're still Trump Supporters a large majority of them have been real quiet about it since the spring of 2017 or so. Some of those people have in fact liked anti-Trump posts of mine on Facebook or Twitter.
In short, what we're seeing, is that like the changes in the attitudes and makeup of the Congressional Republicans, the nature of the Loud And Proud Trump Supporter has changed.
Bullshit.
This is about trying to define some American people as...not being Americans, and to do so even in the most tenuous and vague legal terms seems like a bad idea to me. Such things echo Apartheid South Africa, Nazi Germany, and yes, the Soviet Union.
Not exactly countries we should be emulating in any way. This is the kind of bullshit that got six million people incinerated, and millions more sent to Gulags, and made people slaves in their own country.
But then, it made sense. Trump and the Republicans have still got the cranks, the freaks, the greasy Congress-critters, the internet morons, the Prosperity Gospel preachers, and the talk-radio screamers.
But on the street level, they're down to the Good Germans, or at least the American equivalent thereof. The people who've thrown in with this crap because of ideology, or money, or racism, but aren't loud about it You know, the people who knew damn well what was going on at Buchenwald, and didn't care.
It doesn't matter that there are fewer of those people. That we have those people at all represents an existential threat to the American experiment.
Those aren't the people who, if Trump is Impeached and removed or voted out, will pick up a gun and try to shoot down their fellow Americans, despite all their big talk. They're the people who, if some state governments decide to back Trump when the shit hits the fan...and it will, partisanship in general and Republican bad actors in particular all but guarantee it...will enthusiastically support such things. They won't pick up a rifle and march off to fight, no, they'll get others to do it for them.
And when you factor in that there's a sizable minority of young people who don't vote or take much of an interest in politics but are vaguely sympathetic to libertarian ideas, you start to see where they could find those others.
These people don't have to win over the government, or the military...or at least not much of it. Hell, a rifle company or two, some cops and slapping uniforms on some lawyers and medical staff could be the basis of an army if they've got enough of the same type or at least caliber of weapon for a degree of standardization and effective logistics.
It's not that it doesn't take much...the really alarming thing is just how little it actually takes, if you think about it.
And we've had two mass shootings aboard Navy bases, plus an attempt at a third. Only one of the three was perpetrated by foreign nationals.
I can't help but wonder how much of that is due to the amped up nature of things right now.
Explosive as in people get killed and shit blows up.
They don't have to get the whole country, just a part of it, and with between a quarter and a third of Americans consistently behind this crap, the cultists and the Good Germans who don't question, it's not hard to see how they could populate whatever piece they break off. And really even the most tangential or temporary success in this regard is a horrific thing for everybody.
Even a short conflict where these fucking people get their ass kicked, does nothing but help this shit in the long term. While the common Collaborators suffered in the closing months of WWII and after, lots of Vichy French generals and lower ranking officers and one hell of a lot of the troops switched sides to the Free French and damn few of those were even questioned. Hell, a former Vichy General, Alphonse Juin, served on both sides during the war, switched sides during the North Africa campaign and went on to fight in Italy, and after the war he fought in Vietnam, ending his career as the last Marshal of France. Of such people and their descendants is the current French far-right made.
Let me put it another way; Do you think John Bolton wouldn't switch sides or join another faction just to save his ass?
And if that happens here, it's just going to go on and on.
But when you have people talking about an "American Nation" and alluding to the fact that it consists only of their supporters, and taking legal steps (however small) in the direction of making that so, and threatening the Apocalypse if they lose. It's not just that these people talk as if there will never be another Democratic President...they talk as if there will never be another President, period. As if they think Trump will both live, and stay in power forever...like the Emperor of the Imperium of Man in Warhammer 40K.
Imagine Trump's Chloroform voice, whining about "Fake News" forever.
It doesn't work that way, one way or another. And when it doesn't...
You do the math.
It's not that American democracy won't survive. It'll survive just fine in the Blue and Purple areas of the map, and probably a decent percentage of the red ones as well. It's that this autocratic bullshit *Is* going to win somewhere, and the fall that will bring that about is going to happen unless we find a way to change the trajectory of this and get enough people to come together and say No.
Because if we don't, it's just going to go on and on, not least because most of us don't want to live under this bullshit. I for one have had enough of these people and their puerile soul-crushing banality.
We need to stop this shit, and fast, or it's just going to go on and on, but with a switch from social media flame wars to actual flames and actual wars.
And the only people who will profit are the weapons manufacturers and the makers and sellers of coffins.
This crap needs to stop.
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