If she’s in office, I hope we can start a coup. She should be in prison or shot. That’s how I feel about it. We’re going to have a revolution and take them out of office if that’s what it takes. There’s going to be a lot of bloodshed. But that’s what it’s going to take… I would do whatever I can for my country. —Dan Bowman, a true patriot who would do anything for his country except support its system of government.
Trump said to watch your precincts. I’m going to go, for sure. I’ll look for… well, it’s called racial profiling. Mexicans. Syrians. People who can’t speak American. I’m going to go right up behind them. I’ll do everything legally. I want to see if they are accountable. I’m not going to do anything illegal. I’m going to make them a little bit nervous. —Steve Webb, a true patriot who don’t need no stinking English.
We’re heading toward North Korea, without a doubt. —Grant Reed, a true patriot who knows more about the Dunning–Kruger Effect than anyone.
If people are offended by the sexual stuff, what do they think is going to happen when Muslims come here, implement Sharia law, and start raping our women? —Joe Cecil, a true patriot who is absolutely not a racist because he didn’t say “white women.”
We’re going to have a lot of election fraud. They are having illegals vote. In some states, you don’t need voter registration to vote… We can’t have that lying bitch in the White House. —Jeannine Bell Smith, a true patriot who knows you can trust Alex Jones.
All I know is our country is not going to be a country anymore. I’ve heard people talk about a revolution. I’ve heard people talk about separation of states. I don’t even like to think about it. But I don’t think this movement is going away. We don’t have a voice anymore, and Donald Trump is giving us a voice. —Judy Wright, a true patriot who sees that whites are totally marginalized in this country (which is not going to be a country anymore).
The NYT did a video of crowd comments taped at Trump rallies. It was as awful as you could imagine. It wasn’t the funny kooks Jordan Klepper highlights on “The Daily Show.” I didn’t even show it to the SO, it was too ugly. And that Globe piece reminded me of that video.
My hope is that this crowd gets older and feebler. Because if someone really organized them right now? We’d be in big trouble. Voter intimidation is illegal. How many cops would refuse to come down to polling places to enforce this? And I don’t know about the military now, but 20 years ago, the officers at my military school referred to Clinton as “commander-in-chief” with a sneer. No Democrat could really lead the military. I pray that attitude has changed, or become less prevalent.
The ages given for the people were 50s and 60s. One guy was actually younger than I. It’s sad.
I see this as a pair of linked problems.
The first is that, if you stop Trumping the GOP is left with nothing more than openly stooging for oligarchy, and I doubt that even the Molon Labe crowd is ready to go full-on D.B. Norton Motor Corps yet. But the “non-nuts” GOP leadership knows perfectly well that if they repudiated the open racism, xenophobia, Christian and white supremacy, and exclusionary patriotism (i.e. “if you don’t believe in every social credo I believe (open carry, anti-abortionism, kill-the-homos…) then you aren’t really an American”) then they’d be left with a handful of day traders and the Koch Brothers.
The second is that this strain of virulent white nationalism/racism/isolationism has always been a feature of We the People and it is unlikely to die. It could be killed…for a while, but look at the two salient examples we have; the American Civil War and WW2. In both cases the deplorables were burned with fire and killed with steel and still returned; hell, in the American South the resurgence of white supremacy took less than a decade. Even in Europe, where millions died fighting the German (and, lets not forget, lots of allies across continental Europe…) version, far-right parties have re-emerged. The French Fronte National has a legitimate chance to form a government and the neo-Nazis are IN the governments of Austria and Hungary.
What REALLY worries me is that Trump is gonna take these deplorables and when he launches “Trump TV” will mold them into an explicitly authoritarian National Front here in the US…and that assuming that economic conditions continue to worsen for everyone outside the 1% will be the wrapped-in-the-flag-and-carrying-a-cross movement that puts the bullets into the head of the Republic…
I think you are right: the Republican coalition is simply the Party of the Rich if it doesn’t have the white nationalists. And as long as there wasn’t a politician as blunt as Trump, they had plausible deniability. But I don’t see Trump TV starting a political movement for a couple of reasons. First, the whole Trump phenomenon is the result of a dying movement. It is a last gasp. That’s not to say that white nationalism won’t rise up later (although exactly what constitutes “white” will have changed). But this movement is primarily a bunch of old people. The other reason is that we don’t have a parliamentary system, so such a movement would be at best a regional party, and those tend to die off quickly.
I’m more concerned that all of this will be swept under the rug after the election. All the media will pretend that this never happened and that we have not seen with our own eyes that the Republican Party’s base of support is white nationalism. After the election, the media will treat it as a bit of temporary insanity and not indicative of anything more profound. That’s my concern. And this is why I was against Obama’s nonsense about looking forward and not back. I don’t think that torturers have to be punished. But I do think that they have to admit to what they did. Otherwise, they (We!) don’t grow. It’s as true for a country as it is for an individual. And for a country that is so harsh to individuals who make mistakes, it is amazing how unwilling they are to address their own country’s mistakes.
The parallel that jumps to my mind (and I’m not the only one, given the recent spate of articles about this…) is the rise of Jacksonism in the 1820s. And the reason that scares me is the damage it did; the next thirty years were dominated by Jacksonians and Jacksonian policies like internal minority genocide and external aggressive war. Plus the malign neglect of slavery (or the outright approval of and expansion-encouragement of it). A whole bunch of our worst Administrations were Jacksonian, culminating in Buchanan. Ugh.
The upside is that we no longer have a franchise limited to white males. The downside is that the GOP’s propaganda machine has done a helluva a great job pulling in the “white male allies”; Christian theocrats, people fearful of imaginary jihadis under the bed, the plutocracy into a coalition that looks like it represents about 40% of the public.
Do I think that we will see “another Jackson Administration” anytime soon? Probably – and hopefully – not. But I think that the GOP has become a self-licking icecream cone; I think that regardless of whether the media comes down hard on the Trumpeters that this hard core of Jacksonians will not dissipate, and the United States will be, in effect, dealing with the same situation that broke the nation in 1860; there will be a large irredentist minority that will never, NEVER accept the legitimacy of their opponents. No non-Jacksonian/Trumpter will be allowed to govern. Obstruction will be the order, not just of the day but of the week, the year, the decade.
Eventually the American public will look for a “savior”, and the possibility of a Man on Horseback seems all the more likely.
Hopefully I will bide safe in a ditch when that happens.
That’s a fascinating parallel. Slave states had a rich elite with one valid concern — losing slavery, which would make them very slightly less wealthy. Then a majority of voters motivated by irrational fears, a sense that they were the Real Americans, and a twisted interpretation of Christianity.
The main difference is there’s actually a lot more in the Bible supporting slavery than there is condemning homosexuality (very little) or abortion (none).
I’m more worried about the Republican elites. If Jackson showed anything it is that norms matter. And this year we’ve seen the Republicans break another norm by refusing to consider the nomination of Merrick Garland. That in itself isn’t so shocking. What’s shocking is how everyone just throws up their hands, “What ya gonna do?”! Personally, I think it should be like the Iran hostage crisis. The nightly news should display a number on the screen every day: America Held Hostage.
The reason I don’t worry so much about the Trump followers is that these are primarily people who’s lives are pretty good. They bitch and whine, but they have no real complaints other than that things ain’t like they used to be in terms of racial politics. (The base of Trump support is racial resentment. Now, of course, most of Trump’s electoral support comes simply from him being the Republican nominee. But most of those people don’t talk revolution.) The Civil War was started because southern elites were angry. So I suspect there will be a lot of talk but little action. That’s not to say that we won’t see a rise in domestic terrorism. But I don’t see civil war.
In the longer term, authoritarianism is always a possibility. We are really just an election away.