Trump had 74 million voters , true enough. He also had more than 70% of polled Republicans agreeing in polls that he was really the election winner.
Let’s unpack this a bit. We live in a profoundly apolitical and I would argue politically underdeveloped society, at least when compared to other great industrial democracies. For the most part, Americans don’t care much about politics and tens of millions possess political knowledge that would barely fill a wine glass. Most Americans are not very ideological and cannot really explain in rational terms the fundamental or nuanced differences among conservatives, liberals, neo-liberals, paleo-conservatives, socialists or libertarians. They may THINK they now but they do not. I conclude from this, that among those 74 million Trump voters, there are probably a dozen subgroups. There are racists. There are xenophobes. There are Fox or Newsmax zombies. But there are also people who voted for him because their family has always voted Republican. And others who just didn’t like Hillary for the right or wrong reasons (on the first time around.) Others, especially white working-class voters, who voted for Obama twice, didn’t really see their lives improve, and thought that Trump might do a better job. Other culturally conservative but economically liberal mid-westerners might have been put off by the Democrats’ uncritical embrace of WOKENESS which is a much bigger hit in Brooklyn than it is in Boise. Lumping them all together as 74 million deplorables with blood in their teeth ready to kill and die for Donald amounts to a superficial miscalculation. Don’t ask me for any hard evidence as it is the sort hard to produce so soon after the election, but I am going to take an educated guess and figure that the hard-core, whack job, die-hards for Donald Trump are probably less than half of that 74 million cohort. That’s still a helluva lot of people who are bonkers. But an equal or greater number that are not crazy as much as they are confused or disengaged, or demoralized, or hopeless. Nonetheless, this hard core of 35 - 40 million is dangerous. Just a few weeks ago we have seen Trump’s high profile right-wing lawyer, Joe DiGenova, publicly call for the execution of Republican whistle-blower Chris Krebs. We hear from some local Republican officials that they fear not complying with Trump’s delusional propaganda will make them subject to house bombings or shootings. There was the armed Michigan militia with their black rifles also threatening the Michigan secretary of state. The Arizona Republican Party challenged its members to die for Donald Trump. And then there was that terrifying footage of armed cops with guns drawn and pointed barging into the house of the Florida state COVID whistleblower to arrest her and seize all her devices. We’ve seen a motley crew of morons, assholes and armed fascists across the country rally to protest the simple act of putting on a mask. On the same day the daily pandemic death toll hit a record of 3,103, we find the newest incarnation of American Brown Shirts menacingly protesting on the front lawns of Idaho health commissioners, successfully putting a halt to a meeting that was going to consider a mask mandate. The fear I have is that a part of this crazed Trump constituency will soon be led to enact what the FBI calls a “forced ending.” While elected Republicans are just playing along with Trump because they know that the first question that will be asked of any 2022 and 2024 GOP candidate will be to prove their pro-Trump bona fides, millions of their grassroots followers actually believe, even today, that the Supremes will intervene and Trump will rightfully be sworn in again on January 20th. Come that day, and they see Biden with his hand on the bible, just exactly what will the more agitated among that constituency do? I very seriously doubt they will fade into the woodwork, and just how many of them does it take to blow up another Federal Building or assassinate a local secretary of state here or there? Even if that sort of violence does not materialize, we will still be confronted with this amoral secessionist mass intent on blocking and disrupting everything in their reach, while being ever more integrated into this insurrectionary Republican Party. Finally, there are also more than 100,000 armed white supremacist and declaredly neo-Nazi militia members among us. While these militias in the past were decidedly anti-government no matter who was in power, they have politically shifted and morphed into an armed vanguard of Trumpism. To join a militia, you have to own and know how to use an AR-15, come to all “drills” in uniform and preferably be ex or even current law enforcement or military. Personally, I hope I'm all wrong about the latter part of my post and was only driven to paranoid delusions by isolation. -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=- Groups.io Links: You receive all messages sent to this group. View/Reply Online (#4911): https://groups.io/g/marxmail/message/4911 Mute This Topic: https://groups.io/mt/79243423/21656 -=-=- POSTING RULES & NOTES #1 YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. #2 This mail-list, like most, is publicly & permanently archived. #3 Subscribe and post under an alias if #2 is a concern. -=-=- Group Owner: [email protected] Unsubscribe: https://groups.io/g/marxmail/leave/8674936/1316126222/xyzzy [[email protected]] -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
