You’re right, and I haven’t forgotten about that stuff, whether it’s the Oklahoma City bombing or more recent events like the Pittsburgh synagogue shooting.
But at the same time the typical face of Trumpism seems to be morons who don’t really have their shit together. Of course you don’t really need to have your shit together to pull a trigger.
And it will be followed by conservative politicians making excuses, saying “false flag”, and ultimately blaming anyone but themselves.
The problem with this take is that it ignores how real this threat is to the country, even if it’s true. Law enforcement made this mistake for years with regards to white supremacist groups, and here is where we are now.
It does not take a high level of intelligence to overthrow the government. It’s about getting enough buy in from the population and enough force to make it possible.
It is only a matter of time before one of these armed rallies turns into a bloodbath. You might think that perhaps THAT would finally cause us to wise up about letting lunatics with guns march around and threaten everyone.
You might think that, but of course you will be wrong. It’s not going to stop…ever. If you want to see what the US is going to look like in the not-too-distant future, look at Syria. Once this Covid thing is over, I am leaving.
Not if we keep acting like it’s just a bunch of bumbling bubbas from the south, we won’t. We got to this point because we ignored it and treated the hard right like a joke instead of the threat it really is to a democratic society. These people have been allowed to organize for years under the guise of the ones that committed violent acts (whether that’s a high level terrorist attack or neo-nazis attacking random people on the streets) as “lone wolves” or “men with mental illness or economic anxiety”. We have not stomach for real analysis of white supremacy, how it continues to dominate our institutions, how we left the work we needed to do post civil rights bills entirely undone because some white people felt uncomfortable, how these groups sought to appeal to the moderate right using coded racism, and are now FULLY IN CONTROL of the GOP.
Lucky that you can do that. Many, MANY people can’t.
Do you have an idea of how to stop it? When there is a political party that is willing to go to really any length in order to keep it going? Do you think that these people haven’t noticed what has happened to the few of them with any dignity who objected and whose political careers are now over? It’s not going to stop.
And honestly, I am not completely sure that I can leave. It’s a nice fantasy, and it’s convenient that Covid pushes the possibility down the road. But it will completely overturn my life and while it’s nice to think about, I’m not sure I have what it takes to actually do it.
I’m not really talking about them and how they view themselves, though. I’m talking about how the rest of us discuss what’s happening are imagining them. It behooves us to take them seriously, even if they seem silly.
It’s basically hard, grassroots work. They are where they are today because of years of that kind of work by the hard right. Since the 70s, these groups have been steadily working to bring the country back, not to the 50s, but to the gilded age, where white supremacy was widely accepted, women had few rights, etc, etc. They got there by organizing and in the extreme committing acts of violence. But more importantly has been organizing and working themselves into the Republican party. Derrick Black, a former white supremacists, talks about this very thing, how they succeeded in getting so much influence in the GOP. The smart ones abandoned the more visible aspects of white supremacist violence so that they could look respectable enough to win over the rank and file.
The same needs to happen on the left, and already is. Look at what Sanders had accomplished. He’s someone who calls himself a social democrat and has a national platform. They are getting progressive candidates elected, to local, state, and national office. They are changing things from the ground up, in exactly the same way the hard right did.
There is also stuff like this, which shows how various groups came together to deal with the very real threat of white supremacy in Portland Oregon:
So, there is no simple answer, it’s just hard work that wins the day. They put in that work for years now and more of us need to do the same on the “other” side.
Many people really can’t. It’s scary what that can mean. And the people who can or do get out if things really go south would have to deal with years of survivors guilt.
It would be unusually out of character for a perpetual victim like Trump to stay quiet about something like that though. Imagine how much he could rile up his base with tales of the Radical Leftists who tried to murder him.
… are getting more expensive day after day, as idiots decide they need a third full pallet of the stuff in every caliber ever produced because ‘mah freedums are in danger from those libtards!!!11oneoneone’.
Absurd or not, people collect and accrue things. I am in the process of trying to reorganize and structure my Boba Fett collection. “Where does one even put it all?” is a valid question I am figuring out.
My dad probably has 30 guns. He is 75 years old. It takes up much less space than my collection of Boba Fetts. Though if I threw away the boxes it might be a similar footprint.
You expect me to believe this is real? They went too far. C'mon. The Joker hair? The "White Privilege" card, with "0045" and "Trump"? It's so obviously a false flag.
They’ve firmly established that he has pipe bombs. The MG-42 is not of interest because of thhe Nazi/Wehrmacht connection, but because it might be a full auto variant. The III is of investigative interest-- it’s otherwise a fairly common ideology. The card is talk radio swag, and one shouldn’t waste time with it, The large arsenal/collection is not in itself illegal.
we keep finding felons that require guns. I’m not saying it’s hopeless, but our current system doesn’t keep guns out of the hands of people who shouldn’t have them.
The fact that OK City still didn’t get media and law enforcement to stop calling these angry white guys “lone wolves from good families” instead of terrorists and then letting them continue to build camps in the woods is how we keep ending up here over and over. Imagine if an extremist Muslim person did all those things? Imagine if extremist Muslims were building militia training camps all over the Pacific Northwest? They’d roll in there with goddam tanks. Instead we worriedly fumble about, trying not to hurt the angry white guys’ feefees and hope they don’t do it again.
