Michigan was on the march again yesterday.
Well, a few hundred, but they were heavily armed, more so than when they had marched on the Capital and caused gridlock on the streets of Lansing just two weeks ago.
Governor Gretchen Whitmer was the target of their ire, more specifically her stay at home order that had closed businesses and limited gatherings of all kinds in the state. They were marching for their individual rights and the rejection of the government’s authority to restrict them. They were a larger crowd that day of Operation Gridlock having been organized by professionals with ties to both the Koch and DeVos juggernauts.
Today was different. In the recent wake of the previous protest, the Governor had extended the “Stay Home” order through the end of May. This protest was the response of the deeply committed to the cause of freedom. It was just a few, and they were much more heavily armed this time. They entered the Capitol with their weapons. There was an edge to it, a potential that permeated the whole event that belied their somewhat meager numbers.
This is what was lying in wait. This was a warning shot. The truly faithful just don’t give a shit. These were what were left when they organized themselves, and they wanted everyone to know they were armed and dangerous.
Ok, so they are a subset of the larger group of otherwise normal voters that see the virus as the lesser of two evils vs. the collapse of the economy. How big a leap to imagine the subset within the subset that doesn’t just carry the weapon anymore. The imperative becomes too great, the options too few and the cover blows. There was lots of shouting in the Capitol that day. Not too hard to imagine there being at least one protestor who’s anger would be intense enough to let his finger apply less than 5 lbs of pressure to a lovingly calibrated trigger and change the dynamics of these gatherings forever.
Yes, this too will land at the President’s feet. He has been the bellows to the embers, blowing air into a smoldering stack of red coals, releasing their potential. He has discarded his own 3 Phase Plan, siding instead with the insurgents, the anti-science reactionaries yearning to be free. Pushing, ever pushing toward “Opening”, with no regard to his own administration’s best efforts, and I mean that. Not perfection, but the 3 Phase Plan had serious thought behind it, reasoned recommendations. It was our best path, and it was destroyed by the President.
He encouraged them openly. He said the protestors liked his arguments, they liked him, they seemed reasonable to him. No foul. Just folks fighting for their rights, wanting to go back to work like real Americans. We have to open the country! We had the greatest economy in the history of mankind! And then this! We have to get back to that from this. So let’s go!
So the fringe had a champion. A hero that would hate their enemies and even create new ones for them to villify. Yesterday he read (or more likely had read to him aloud) the intelligence reports that confirmed the virus had none of the biological markers of having been incubated in a lab environment, that it had occurred naturally and jumped species. He immediately denounced the intelligence and said he had seen things that showed it had been developed in Wuhan. He didn’t say what. He supplied no evidence of any kind. He didn’t have to. He never does. He had spoken it aloud, and for the AR-15 crowd, that would be enough. The truth had been revealed, and so had the Deep State, which is comprised of anyone that knows the Emperor is naked.
This is a recurring theme for POTUS. He sided with Putin over his own intelligence services on an international stage. He dismissed Dr. Fauci’s findings that our testing was insufficient to supply the data needed to wisely determine the safety of loosening of restrictions. Evidence is never forthcoming, just the pronouncement. These are done in real time, publicly, creating an alternative to truths that are inconvenient, that don’t serve a narrative of his greatness and perhaps divinity. There are, shockingly, about a third of the American population that believe Trump was placed in his current position by God. If He is with us, who could come against us?
That calculation will be tested in the coming months. It’s a maxim in fiction that the gun introduced in the beginning of a story will surely be fired by the end. Will life reflect art? It seems to me there is no doubt of it. This is an eventuality, and it lands directly at the feet of the President of the United States who consistently encourages his base to reject the findings of science and serious inquiry, to believe that they are the victims of a global cabal of… what? The accusations are of a Deep State working against their best interests, but it is never clear what the purpose is that the Deep State pursues.
Details.
They disagree with The Leader, and that is enough.
Trump is well aware of his powers to recreate the narrative. It really isn’t that hard now. The transformation of the base to walking intellectual zombies was completed some time ago. Nearly anything that comes out of his mouth will do to influence his adoring worshipers. It does not need to be rooted in… well, anything. As soon as something leaves his lips it is regurgitated on the internet as gospel, clear evidence that the Deep State is gaslighting us, a conspiracy so vast that it justifies the dramatic steps the President has had to take. Dear Leader has told us that he is the only one that can save us.
He must be defended. He will be defended.
This is what a Trump leads to.
Welcome to the jungle.