I used to be a fairly regular watcher of Doomsday Preppers, the NatGeo “reality” show profiling a motley assortment of paranoid goofballs preparing themselves (and their sometimes enthusiastic, sometimes resentful families) in their own unique ways for what they saw as the impending end of the world.
One thing that was striking about the show was that each of the doomsday preppers was preparing for a different doomsday.
Some were expecting fairly standard-issue apocalypses involving things like giant earthquakes, economic collapses or worldwide pandemics; others were more, well, creative, worrying about solar flares and, in one case, a shift in the earth’s magnetic poles, which the prepper in question thought would send the continents themselves skittering around the globe.
Now the folks at right-wing garbage site Return of Kings are talking about their own version of doomsday, which they think could be caused not by some giant natural disaster but by the assassination of Donald Trump.
In a post suffused with melodramatic paranoia, RoK contributor David Garrett Brown urges his fellow Red Pillers to stock up on guns, food and medicine in order to prepare for what he predicts will be a period of “panic and craziness that will follow an attack on Trump.”
Never mind that an assassination is highly unlikely, to put it mildly. Never mind that the United States has survived the assassination of several presidents, as well a civil rights giant Martin Luther King, without falling apart.
We survived 9/11. We’ve survived devastating earthquakes and hurricanes and a flu pandemic that killed more than half a million Americans in 1918-1919 (and possibly as many as 100 million worldwide, far more than the number who died in World War I). As awful as all these things were, our country is still here.
It’s clear that Brown’s doomsday scenario isn’t based on a sober look at history. It’s a histrionic reaction to the protests that have dogged Trump at most of his recent rallies:
[V]iolent mobs descended on Trump’s rally in Chicago. Psuedo-journalist Michelle Fields accused Trump’s campaign manager Corey Lewandowski of assault in a bid to stir up white knight antipathy against The Donald and even violence. Protestors in Arizona blocked highways and then complained about being “run over.” The list goes on.
Where to even start with that? It takes a certain amount of chutzpah to pretend that the violence at Trump rallies has been caused by “very angry leftist zombies hellbent on destruction” rather than by the Trump supporters who have been caught on film punching and pushing and otherwise manhandling peaceful protesters.
It takes something more than chutzpah to pretend that Lewandowski’s assault on Fields — also caught on camera — was somehow an assault on Trump and his fans.
Oh, and the fact that a small number of protesters blocked a highway for several hours does not portend THE LITERAL APOCALYPSE.
At various points in his post, Brown writes about the possible assassination of Trump as if it has already happened. In this remarkable and revealing sentence, Brown starts off by referring to an entirely hypothetical assassination, only to switch to past tense at the end, as if the murder had already happened:
If [an assassination] happens, leftwing luminaries and the media will be shown to have no control over their supporters, despite them stoking the very same hatred that ended up killing him.
There’s a reason for this, of course. Brown is so eager to affix blame for the (hypothetical) assassination that he has to pretend it’s a done deal — and that it was leftists (plural) who done it. (Never mind that it’s Trump’s enemies on the right who are far more likely to spend their Saturdays at the gun range.)
Brown, happily playing the victim on behalf of his audience of Red Pill Trumpists, seems to think that veritable pogroms will be unleashed against Trump supporters in the wake of the hypothetical assassination. And so he encourages his readers to stock up on guns for their “self-defense.”
Protecting yourself and your family will be paramount if Trump is assassinated, especially if you have not associated yourself with any leftwing cause … It is up to you to help secure yourself and those you love, including with legal firearms. …
[W]ith an assassination, things will get very bad very quickly. Violence against Trump’s person will beget more criminal acts against his supporters and those aligned even moderately with him (i.e. the Republican Party).
Like a lot of doomsday preppers, Brown seems a little too enthusiastic about the prospect of shooting enemies in alleged self-defense. Indeed, at one point he seems to suggest that Trump supporters should bring guns to future Trump rallies even if the billionaire is still alive and kicking.
In Chicago, leftwing hate groups insisted that free speech and freedom of assembly are rights reserved only for people like themselves. We had fists in this case, but expect far more lethal means going forward.
Great. In fact, other Trump fans have already started talking about forming Trump-friendly militias; RoK contributor and Roosh pal Matt Forney even suggested that Trumpists take guns with them to polling places.
Brown also seems to think that the evil leftists want a crisis as much as he does. Sorry, as much as he doesn’t, wink wink nudge nudge. Why? Because debt.
US government debt is currently at 20 trillion, significantly higher than annual GDP. Liberals and others, although most do not know it, need the crisis of something like an assassination on a controversial conservative figure to absolve themselves of the financial mess they have helped create.
If anyone can make sense of the, er, logic here, let me know.
In addition to buying guns and survivalist supplies Brown also encourages gun-toting, apocalypse-expecting Red Pill Trump fans to join up with “[o]rganizations such as (conservative) churches, gun clubs, informal Tea Party groups, [and] neighborhood watch programs,” because, clearly, what neighborhood watch groups need more than anything is a sudden influx of paranoid dickwads with brand new guns aching for an excuse to shoot “SJWs” and possibly black people generally.
Oh, and Brown also suggests joining veteran’s groups, but I can’t imagine many Return of Kings readers are veterans of any wars other than the ones that take place on Twitter.
In the comments to the post, RoK readers talk about how cool Donald Trump is and happily fantasize about the coming apocalypse.
League of Shadows celebrates what he seems to think will be the inevitable victory of the white man:
BLM and MS 13 discount the white man’s ability to wage war.
We are accomplished in this skill set beyond the capabilities of some feral street gangs.
YosarriansRight expects to see something straight out of a TV show:
It becomes a “The Walking Dead” survival scenario. Those that stick to “tea & crumpets” are dead. Those that improvise, adapt and overcome, survive.
Social Darwinism in action.
Bob Smith urges his comrades not to think small:
If sh*t hits the fan REALLY hard, we should prepare to become warlords so we don’t just survive, but so we can kick the SJWs’ asses and take our country back.
A few commenters are a bit less impressed. Someone called Kay dismisses the doomsday talk as “arrant nonsense.” He asks:
If Trump dies, so what?
Lincoln died and a nation wept, Luther King died and a nation wept, Demosthenes died and his people rightly wept, Timoleon, probably the greatest of them all died, and to this day, I read of him ,and bow in humble respect. …
I won’t be surprised if Trump himself arranged for this rubbish to further inflame his uneducated redneck simpleton crack crowd.
Hardcore Realist, meanwhile, declares the post
a sick joke. ROK’s articles have been on the decline since they start recycling old articles just to satisfy the readers. But this nonsense article is pure insanity. Nobody is conspiring to kill Moron Don since he prattles on about some YUGGGGEEEE wall that he’s gonna build on the border. …
Goes to show your abject stupidity in blindly following the Moron Don. As a white man to another white man, I tell you that Trump has skillfully played with your emotions.You are blinded by his vacuous speeches . Is it any wonder why uneducated jackasses form the majority of Trump-Tards?
Someone calling himself Danger responds:
so how long have you hated white men and western civilization?
Putting more guns in the hands of angry, paranoid bigots rarely ends well.
@Argle Bargle (formerly Carr)
No doubt that some of them have opined about “male disposability” in the past.
@ Bina: ‘Also, BLM is a peaceful movement, and MS-13 are a gang from a war-torn country that white guys from the US basically wrecked to the point where drug trafficking and street violence became the only means to survival for young Salvadoran males. One of these things is not like the other.’
Yeah, I too was struck by the incongruity of that pairing. Plus if there ever was a face-off between Red Pillers (who spend their time bitching on the Internet, and…maybe…trying to put their unpleasant ideas about dominance and control into practice in the ‘sexual marketplace’) and a Salvadoran street gang (who spend their time surviving and fighting for dominance over OTHER ARMED GANGS and possibly the police) I think I know who I’d put my money on.
Donald Drumpf/Trump as the last hope for Western civilization. Things have come to a pretty pass.
I love how the Republican Party is only “moderately aligned” with their own frontrunner for President.
The Republican Party isn’t aligned with Trump at all. Frankly, with both the Dems and his own party hating him, I can’t see him having an effective presidency if he (God forbid) wins or being elected for a second term. Congress will not let him do squat. They’ll oppose him every step of the way.
Besides, I’ve heard speculation it’s going to be a brokered convention and that they’re going to reject all the candidates in favor of Paul Ryan. That’s probably just someone’s wishful thinking, but it is going to be interesting to see what happens.
Someone shared a video about the Ohio incident where someone rushed the stage and in the comments, one guy said that it showed that Trump “had been” assasintated. describing some make of plastic comb that converts into a knife that was used in order to avoid being detected by the metal detectors. I asked had I missed something? and he then went on, and on about how stupid I was, the video clearly showed a knife etc etc, repeating the make of this convertible knife, the motivation of the assassin, how the press were covering up the truth etc etc. When I said that we seemed to be missing a body, he responded – just because there was no body – did not mean that there had not been a murder. How stupid was I!!!! There was no persuading him that this little conspiracy theory of his was just in his imagination rather than any kind of reality, but reason seems to escape these guys.
I hope that Donald Trump is not assassinated. I hope he lives for a long time. In fact, I hope he lives for fucking ever, long enough to see his world stolen from him. I hope he survives to see America become a Spanish-speaking country with a generous welfare state. I hope he lives long enough to see gender and race cease to exist as social concepts, and to see Keynes’s “Euthanasia of the Rentier” occur.
It is in the nature of pacifists to wish life upon our enemies.
No way. Nominating that perennial loser would be a worse choice than Reagan’s disinterred skull painted up to look like a Magic 8 Ball. Just a flat-out admittance that the Dems have already won.
@Saphira
What that really means is that Republican politicians aren’t aligned with their voters.
@EJ
I’m not sure Trump would care about any of that. He just cares about being right, which doesnt necessarily mean that he needs to have been right all along. He’ll just say that he was right. I honestly believe none of this makes a difference to Trump. If the US made a switch to Spanish as the official language, Trump could very well claim he’s been in support of the switch all along.
This is why Trump can’t really be attacked by any other candidate. He doesn’t care about being proven wrong, and neither do his supporters. He’ll just either maintain his opinion and make up “facts” to support it, or he’ll change his mind and pretend as if he never believed that other thing. There’s literally no policy that matters to Trump.
@SFHC
I’ve heard they might nominate Mitt Romney’s head.
For those of us who were adults in the 80s, and perhaps tried to minimize some of our Midwestern parochialism by reading Spy magazine, Trump really is nothing but a buffoon with some money. Even his “Apprentice” persona the buffoonery shines through.
I wouldn’t be happy if he were killed, and I don’t hate him as a politician – he’s the same clown he’s always been. It is kind of funny to see him so popular, to see that some people actually take him seriously. To me it’s so obvious that he’s the same bloviating fool he’s always been, talking out both sides of his mouth trying to say what his supporters want to hear. He doesn’t give a crap about his wall or any of his other weird proposals.
Even if he’s elected, he won’t be able to get anything done. And I promise you, he will not be elected.
Cruz is far more of a terror, but luckily I believe he is unelectable.
In what ways? I understand that he’s awful, but from where I’m sitting, Trump seems a whole lot worse. Dude would make sure I get punished for having a medical procedure done, for fuck’s sake. (He may have retracted that, but I still think that’s actually what he would try to do if he had the power.)
The worst of it is that most of these numpties actually want this to happen. I’ll bet they watch The Walking Dead, and root for Negan.
Check your local adult ed catalog. They should have an introductory course on how to translate your mall ninja and paramilitary woo skills into raising a private army and assuming control of local extractable resources.
Actually, scratch that. Wanting to be a warlord is really the only qualification you need. You’ve got the jump on those wimpy peacenik liberals who haven’t even thought about it, and are thus totally unprepared and vulnerable.
…I’m picturing these guys running around a blighted landscape with katana swords screaming “I’M the warlord! Not you! Me!” like kids fighting over who gets to be Batman.
This made me think of Doomsday movie where the a tiny band struggles to survive in a world filled with White-clad Arthurian Knights who run through anyone not in armor and on horseback.
With the Zombie Apocalypse now super played-out, perhaps the Arthurian Apocalypse will catch on with the trend-setters …… but probably not.
It just hit me why almost everything these guys say sounds so distantly familiar. I never understood until just now, reading them crow about how super tough and important they’ll be in the post-apocalypse: they’re Tunnel Snakes.
I also love how in their imaginary doomsday scenarios, the Army, National Guard, FBI, Red Cross, police, firefighters, and EMTs are rendered magically impotent. As if those organizations don’t spend 24/7 prepping for emergency scenarios. As if the Army is going to stare wistfully out the window at Trump supporters waging war in the streets and sigh, “If only we had tanks and tear gas and trained, experienced personnel and military strategists. We’re just no match for keyboard warriors and their stockpiled #10 cans of green beans. They’re PREPARED.”
Come on, David. You write to inform and entertain us.
Turning our brains turn into frazzled pretzels is not part of the deal.
@ Buttercup
One of the roles of The Inns of Court Regiment (a military unit comprising mainly of barristers) is to get an internet service up and running after the apocalypse. So even our friends ability to be keyboard warriors will be dependant upon the fact the military prepare for this sort of thing*.
(*Access to the system will probably be limited to useful people)
Let’s hope the RoK crowd doesn’t ever learn Manson’s technique for picking up women, which he honed during his career as a pimp.
^^^^They can’t be Tunnel Snakes because Tunnel Snakes Rule!
So a Trumpeter thinks he’s Nathan Holn…(house point for identifying the allusion.)
So if we save one does that mean He’ll admit we’re pretty tough and give us his leather jacket?
I love this idea that if you’re a good leftie you’ll have no survival skills at all. I grew up on a farm and am perfectly capable not only of growing food but of slaughtering animals as needed and perfectly capable of using a gun. I don’t really like guns but as a tool they are pretty useful and am grateful to have that skill should their apocalypse happen.
I’m also a card carrying socialist so I would be more than happy to share my bounty with my fellow post-apocalytic survivors.