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In the 90s, Oklahoma City awakened many Americans to the existence of cells of such people scattered “out there” somewhere. Today, almost all of us live within a few miles if not blocks of such people. https://twitter.com/davidoatkins/status/1332574026409992198
It gives me no pleasure to retweet this. But I think it’s pretty accurate. https://twitter.com/lionel_trolling/status/1332667908087025667
In my mild-mannered, 50/50 Democratic/Republican middle class neighborhood in a small Oregon city, I regularly walk past driveways containing pickups sporting the decals of far right militias that train on weekends for the coming “revolution.”
This has been building for over a decade now. I’ll bet those militia neighbors of mine were Tea Partiers back in 2010. But Trump & a radicalized GOP has given them new focus and legitimized their calls to violence. The head of my county’s GOP is a big fan and promoter of the PBs.
Such folks are far from a majority in Oregon and the US more generally. But if they take over the GOP, then we are in a world of trouble. I wish the GOP had a more reassuring track record of keeping such forces and groups at bay.
This is from the FB page of the head of my county’s GOP.
These posts probably look “fringe” to you, like they do to me. But this is currently mainstream, fairly uncontroversial stuff amongst Oregon GOP voters, who comprise 40% of the population.
That same person is organizing, via FB, a protest today at the house of an OSHA bureaucrat who fined a local gym for not complying with public health regulations.
Much, if not all, of the grassroots energy in the GOP these days lay with a) Trump supporters and b) people even further to their right who are trying to make the GOP into an avowedly far, far right (i.e., fascist) party.
Many folks still vote GOP because they are single-issue abortion, gun, tax, or deregulation voters. Those are the folks who need to do some reflection on whether they’re ok with the broader party their votes are enabling.
