Sunday, June 02, 2024

Be Afraid. Be Very Afraid. 😱

According to the Guardian, that was borne out by avid Trump supporter and podcaster Dan Bongino proclaiming, "Pick a side, or YOU are next.” 
That, in turn, led one of his followers to comment they would rather die than see the country not back Trump by writing, "Dan, seriously now. I see no way out of all this mess without bloodshed. When you can rig an election, then weaponize the government and the courts against a former President, what other alternative is there? I’m almost 70 and would rather die than live in tyranny.” 
According to the Guardian's Rachel Leingang, "Calls for revenge, retribution and violence littered the rightwing internet as soon as Trump’s guilty verdict came down, all predicated on the idea that the trial had been a sham designed to interfere with the 2024 election. Some posted online explicitly saying it was time for hangings, executions and civil wars." 
Noting the rise in incendiary "rhetoric and threats," Leingang added, "the [felony] convictions provide another reason to take matters into their own hands during a time when support for using violence to achieve political goals is on the rise." 
Joining in on the furious reaction to seeing Trump found guilty by twelve jurors, fired Fox News host Tucker Carlson warned, "Import the third world, become the third world. That’s what we just saw. This won’t stop Trump. He’ll win the election if he’s not killed first. But it does mark the end of the fairest justice system in the world. Anyone who defends this verdict is a danger to you and your family.” 
"Talk quickly went to what Maga should do to stand up for Trump, and about how the verdict’s fans, and Democrats in general, would come to regret seeking accountability in the courts," the report notes before citing MAGA influencer Catturd writing on Truth Social: "This is going to be the biggest political backfire in US history. I’m feeling a tremendous seismic shift in the air.”
So the leaders of the violent uprising are:

Dan Bongino, whom I distinctly don’t remember seeing in public anywhere in D.C. on J6.

Tucker Carlson, reporting from his basement when he isn’t in Moscow being mocked to his face by Putin 

A guy known only as “Catturd”

And their army is a 70 year old man (no shade. I’m 69). 

Why am I not afraid?

A reminder: J6 was a coordinated effort involving two organized groups, the Proud Boys and the Oath Keepers. Their leaders are in jail, and won’t be out anytime soon.

What armed, reactionary group of loonies does Dan Bongino lead? Or Tucker Carlson, who doesn’t even have the audience he had before Fox settled a libel suit and cut him loose. And Catturd? Is he really expecting to influence his followers on Twitter to violence? And where? Against whom? And when?

J6 was a preordained event in a preordained place. Even the Civil War started at a place (Fort Sumter). Where is the Fort Sumter for MAGA? And more to the point, where is their army, and who’s organizing it?

Remember the truckers who were going to shut down D.C.? Or New York City? Or were going to the Texas-Mexico border to stop the “invasion”? Each group was as organized as the panic that overtook Houston and created a traffic jam from here to Dallas, a literal line of bumper to bumper traffic for over 200 miles. And about as useful as those poor souls would have been safe had the hurricane they were fleeing actually hit.

J6 worked at all because groups and persons organized it and had a time and place to focus their energies. Both factors are required. The imagined victory of people who think showing up is half the battle litter our recent history with their abject failures. Had they intended to be violent, would their plans have worked out better?

The lone gunman who simply arms up and wades into crowds usually ends in his (it’s almost always “he,” isn’t it?) suicide, if not death by police. A terrible thing, but I don’t think very many MAGAts have suicide in mind. Even the guy who stormed Cosmic Pizza to free the children held in the basement there, went peacefully when he found out how wrong he was.

I take the lone wolves seriously. I take the threat of violence by individuals, seriously. But civil war? Bongino the general and Carlson his Colonel, leading a war against…who? Where? When? Are you kidding? Catturd putting his finger in the wind and sensing a “seismic shift?” Even the metaphor is a complete mess. I mean, name three people who couldn’t organize a two-car funeral procession. Bongino, Carlson, and Catturd certainly fit those criteria.

Things are ugly, but that doesn’t mean they will get exponentially uglier.  Especially by the time Trump’s conviction has become old news.

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1 comment:

  1. ntodd3:56 PM

    This is just the flailing of an angry teen yelling, "I HATE YOU!" to their parents after they were grounded for wrecking the car.

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