You’re partly correct. What we get if we’re lucky is these folks wind up on a watch list. Too often, TPTB will watch them break the law, then let them go home and maybe give them a slap on the wrist after the fact. When folks like this don’t get enough of a group together, some of them will feel relatively safe going after other targets - like people at work, picking up groceries, on the street, or at church.
We’ve already seen the escalation in violence against BIPOC since the rise of Trump. There are a significant number of cases in the BLM thread that weren’t committed by cops. We’re still seeing it, and history shows the system tends to focus on cleaning up the mess more than preventing it. Prevention falls to those who try to educate and make an effort to change hearts and minds. Unfortunately, those voices continue to be drowned out by the hate, lies, and fear mongering that dominates right-wing media.
Guns + training + intelligence gathering services/technology + freaking drones + at least 75% of the population not being cool with being pushed around by these freaks > guns alone.
I agree. In the past year, these people have had ARMED protests at the Michigan and Oregon state capitols, staged a somewhat impromptu, poorly organized insurrection on January 6, and they’re armed to the teeth. Are they going to successfully overthrow the government? No, not anytime soon, maybe not ever, but they could cause a lot of problems, and could easily evolve into an American, White-supremacist Al-Qaeda. And if they ever find a standard-bearer more competent than Donald Trump, they could start a real civil war, or stage a successful coup.
There won’t be, but there could be much worse. He generated a cult of personality, but was corrupt, inconsistent and stupid. The next one might not be. Best we not give this hypothetical the chance to breath.
Personally, I regret not knowing any hard-coreTrumpers. I could have made a pile simply by betting them money on their own predictions! I am not a betting man at all, but this chance would have been too good to pass up. Shooting fish in a barrel and all that.
As for the danger of “civil wars”, I agree with the other posters: fascists are never keen on a mano-a-mano fight, and these fellas are waaay past their prime as “warriors” - they tend to be shaped more like bowling pins. Not optimal for combat, however much camo they may stuff themselves in.
There is a big danger, however, of some of them arranging mass shootings, THAT is what should have everyone worried.
That is exactly what the chatter would suggest. Talk of targeting truck drivers to strangle commerce and such. Mostly drawn from stupid fascist fiction I suspect, but some idiot will try it and people will get hurt.
Yeah, I don’t think that would work unless there was some kind of independent broker willing to facilitate the bet.
You on January 7 2021: “Ok, Biden clearly won the election, and it’s been certified and everything. That Trump landslide victory you bet on didn’t come to pass. Time to pay me that $100.”
One thing that covid and some of the ransomware criminals has taught us is that our distribution and logistics infrastructure system can be quite fragile. If they were able to successfully target certain rail-lines, and bridges in key areas, they really could wreak havok to the flow of goods into some cities. The likelihood of them actually being able to successfully pull that sort of thing off (coordinating attacks and successfully damaging enough infrastructure to actually have a significant effect) is open to question. the most vulnerable I suspect would be our fuel transportation system (which the recent ransomware attack has shown to be primarily dependent on pipelines) And the electrical grid, which is too spread out to be able to really protect.
Freight rail schedules aren’t published for this reason.
I recently tried to find a schedule for a rail line in my neighborhood for a construction project where time to cross the tracks was a concern. Can’t do it.
If there’s violence in August when Trump isn’t magically reinstated, then super-douches like Mike Lindell can take a big part of the blame for feeding angry people a bunch of paranoid bullshit. Mr. My Pillow said he “guaranteed” Trump would be back in office come August. How do you guarantee that? What is the recourse, everyone gets free My Pillows when it doesn’t happen?
The fact is, people like these love to rave on and on about the constitution, but there isn’t any way proscribed by law or the constitution to cancel an election and “reinstate” a previous president. I suppose they could argue the case through the courts all the way to the Supreme Court, and so far every case gets thrown out for lack of evidence (or incompetence on the part of Trump’s lawyers.)
Just to amplify on this point. It always slays me when these guys think their chest protectors and kevlar helmets will somehow keep them safe when their are people in the National Guard and US Military who can use a rifle to litterally take off either arms or legs with one shot. Clean off.
