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On TheDonald.win, the more-or-less-official replacement for Reddit’s now-shuttered The_Donald subreddit, Sunday is Gun Day, in which the site’s assorted mega-MAGAs post pictures of their firearms like proud parents passing around photos of their babies.
On this particular Sunday, the day after the race for president was called in Biden’s favor, the guns come with vaguely threatening captions and not-very-subtle intimations of civil war.
Like Trump himself, his fans on TheDonald.win refuse to accept his loss. And while Trump so far is calling on the courts to reverse the election results, his super-fans don’t seem to share his faith in peaceful election-stealing.
Here’s a post suggesting that assault rifles are the real “Keep America Great tools.” It’s garnered more than 4000 upvotes from the denizens of the site.
Here’s one suggesting that rifles are the proper response to Democratic “socialism.”
And here’s one — with nearly 6000 upvotes — raising the specter of all-out civil war.
In the comments the regulars share videos suggesting that their side would easily win in a civil war. One commenter names name the “enemy combatants” as “Democrats. All democrats. Politicians, media, supporters.”
A more, er, moderate commenter called PegasoSeiya replies:
Too broad. When an objective is too broad there is no way of winning. Specific objectives are way better. The first enemy is anybody involved in rigging the elections and therefore are guilty of treason to the country. The leaders that colluded to commit treason. Primarily those who made the decision to count ballots received late, those who defied the orders from the Supreme Court, those who found votes at 4am. Those who gave patriots sharpies for their ballots. Once you arrest and bring to trial anybody who committed these acts, then you can continue with others.
Apparently giving sharpies to “patriots” is an executable offense.
Still another commenter harks back earlier than the American civil war, writing that “the answer to Biden 2020 is 1776.” There are more than a few “jokes” about the need to water the tree of liberty with blood, and it’s clear whose blood they mean.
A commenter called Deo_Favente offers up a virtual manifesto:
Elections are the means of resolving differences in a peaceful manner – when the shadow of doubt is cast over this process to the point of disbelief, it removes the most vital tool for peaceable resolution.
It is said that there are four key facets to the American Republic: The Voice Box, The Voter Box, The Jury Box, and The Ammo Box.
Your voice has been stripped – you are not allowed to speak. You have been de-platformed, ostracized, and run the implicit risk of violence against your person for speaking your mind.
Your vote has been robbed – for every fraudulent vote cast, an honest one is shredded. You have been disenfranchised by rampant and unchecked voter fraud. Make no mistake — if swift and certain judgement is not brought to the offenders — this will not stop. They are empowered by our inaction.
Your courts are overrun by those that do not hold one modicum of respect for your Constitution or our rule of law. They undermine and slowly pick away at the very foundation of our great Republic — Are these then the same individuals we then trust to ensure a fair outcome of this election in which these scoundrels so brazenly and assuredly try to steal? Pray then that these judges do not then kick this box from under Justice and leave her to hang from the slowly withering tree of Liberty.
Disarmament has been a continuing and key talking point of the establishment and your fellow Countrymen – they wish to remove your final means of protecting your God given right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. They’ve stripped your voice, rigged the vote, and stacked the jury — Under no means should your arms be peacefully or willingly surrendered.
The removal of your voice and packing of the courts was the slide into a soft tyranny and the removal of your vote and armaments is the decent of our great republic into a tyrannical hell.
In these dark times, pray for deliverance through peaceful means but pray also for the strength and wisdom of our forbearers that we may establish and ensure the cause of our continuing liberty.
E pluribus unum.
A commenter called VetforTrump2 offers a somewhat more succinct version:
They are stealing our lives i seriously hope we fight back in the most violent manner possible.
These are the people some think we should be approaching with tea and sympathy in the wake of Trump’s loss.
Hold on — are you saying there’s a COVID cure?! Already?
After seeing the video of Trump supporters dancing to Rage Against The Machine’s Killing In The Name Of, I’m thinking it’s safe to say they miss the point of pretty much all creative output.
@Surplus
No, it’s a vaccine that is looking promising in trials but needs more research. Although it sounds good so far, it is still important to complete the trial and listen to scientists rather than politicians or CEOs about this.
@Alan Robertshaw
I saw that. Trump is already trying to take credit anyway, even though Pfizer did not receive aid in Operation Warp Speed.
@LindsayIrene
Unfortunately that seems to apply to their own former output for some. The drummer from System of a Down, John Dolmayan, has gone full Trump and now promotes all these conspiracy theories, despite the fact that his band’s music is very political and obviously left leaning.
@ surplus
Not a cure; but some promising results from trials.
https://www.pfizer.com/news/press-release/press-release-detail/pfizer-and-biontech-announce-vaccine-candidate-against?linkId=103978266
Apparently, there might be important logistic problems, since it need to be stored at -80°C and most pharmacians and doctors aren’t equipped for that.
Still, if everything go well, we could have a vaccine by spring 2021, which is, quite frankly, an absolutely astonishing feat.
@Naglfar
I can offer more than a few insights, especially considering my country has the highest amount of Trump supporters than any Latin American country:
1- Misogyny: macho culture and toxic masculinity are deeply ingrained into almost every aspect of latino culture. Although it has gone down over the past few decades, wife-beating, asserting dominance over others, and degrading women in general have been a staple of Latin American societies, which are very much patriarchal. Which is why the vast majority of Latin American countries also haven’t legalized gay marriage.
Even among indigenous Peruvians, gay marriage is seen as an extravagance or deviation of Whites and Europeans. Mind you, as opposed to Native Americans whom were mostly exterminated, the indigenous people of Spanish colonies were forcibly integrated and brutally made to adopt the religious tenets of christianity. And while I understand that genocide still took place, it’s not like reservations or such were made at any point in time, they were just made to discard their beliefs and adopt christian beliefs, including the bigotry.
And that particular bit can never be emphasized enough because indigenous people were, among other things, polygamous. Which was one of the reasons the catholic church came down hard on indigenous people and made sure they renounced all of their “deviancy”.
2- Socialism: I know that the common White progressive view on things is that all socialist and grassroots movements in Latin America have been sabotaged by the US and their European allies. And to some degree that is true, however it is also a broadly patronizing view of leftist movements all over our continent.
Socialist and communist movements, all over our continent, have shown themselves more than capable of collapsing all on their own. Precisely because of an element of Latino culture, which the US now has a fresh experience to grasp: caudillismo. Caudillismo refers to a cult towards a leader, whom is assumed to be infallible, and whom an entire movement is built around. If the caudillo falls then, in the view of their supporters, the entire movement loses legitimacy. Therefore there is a vested interest in making sure the leader is never, ever held accountable for their actions, no matter how overtly terrible they might be.
Caudillismo has ruined so many leftist movements in Latin America that it’s not even funny. From Hugo Chavez to that very near miss with Evo Morales, caudillos just don’t know when to quit and hand power to somebody else. Which is incredibly ironic, because the point of socialism is to build a movement around a community, and yet here are a bunch of people trying to prop it up upon a single individual.
And despite what anyone here, or on facebook says, Hugo Chavez was a dictator and so is Nicolas Maduro. Evo Morales also tried to perpetuate himself in power, despite the Bolivian constitution expressly forbidding him from doing so. Fortunately for Bolivia, Evo managed to built a movement which could survive his replacement, in spite of himself. If not, Añez would have remained in power.
Aside from that, we’ve also had terrorist movements, in Central and South America, that have been left-wing. Take for example the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) and the Shinning Path (Peru). The latinos who lived through and survived these movements were “cured” of their socialism in the 80s and 90s. I personally lost family members to the latter of these.
So there is a negative and almost traumatizing view of socialism in Latin America. Which is also why Cubans almost exclusively vote for republicans on Fidel Castro’s account. White progressives really aren’t aware that these regimes have been almost as bloody and as violent as some right wing regimes.
3- Policy: democrats have adopted this view, ever since Obama came into power with a clear mandate, that they shouldn’t upset the established order and that the only way to improve the working class’ material conditions is to simply work harder. Somehow the democrats have shifted their view to almost exclusively to identity politics, which is ironic because they almost never push for any meaningful policies and limit themselves mostly to representation.
As stated in the first point I made, Latino culture cares very little about LGBTQIA+ communities, so if you don’t propose actual policies that will improve their economic or material conditions, then they have very little reason to keep on voting for democrats. And whilst anyone can see that the republicans are much certainly worse, they come with the bonus of “religious values” and “hard work”, which is a message that does mostly resonate with Latinos.
If democrats expect to win Latinos, then they better stop fucking around and start proposing economic policies which will benefit the working class. AOC and the rest of progressives won their re-election without any problems. Hell, the Squad has even doubled to 8 members, because their policies do resonate with working class people of all sorts.
Unfortunately the democrat party is now spinning the narrative that being “too left wing” and “too friendly to transgenders” (and they didn’t even use that term, but a slur instead) is what cost them the election. They didn’t offer anything other than “we’re not Trump” and are still wondering why they lost? They aren’t, they know why. They just want to take over the republicans niche market, whilst maintaining a veneer of respectability.
@Ohlmann
That’s rather cold, but if we’ve gotten this far I think it should be possible to provide that. It can’t be that hard to get some dry ice.
@Diego
Thank you for your explanation.
In fact, I’ve seen quite a few white leftists (especially those of the Dirtbag Left persuasion) defending them.
This is yet another reason Pelosi has to go. The progressive candidates won, centrists lost because they don’t offer anything.
This is also why the party needs to stop listening to Republicans like Kasich or the Lincoln Project. The enemy of our enemy is NOT our friend.
@ diego
Thanks for that very thorough brief. You’ve put a really good structure on some topics we’ve been discussing elsewhere.
One point that came up, and it probably relevant even beyond this, is that the word ‘socialism’ gets used to describe very different things.
Like when American politicians describe European countries as socialist, when really even places like Scandanavia are social democracies by the usual European definitions; and that’s a very different animal to socialism.
Similarly, even Sanders would probably not count as a socialist by European definitions. He’s at best a social democrat; and of course Biden isn’t even that. By Brit standards we’d call him a ‘wet’ conservative.
And as you will know better than I, it’s probably unwise to try to attach simplistic labels to the various, and definitely not homogenous, governments in South and Central America.
@Nagflar : on one hand, frozen food shops have logistics quite similar to that, so it’s very doable. (and almost all actual hospital too ; the problem is more for non-hospital doctors and the like). On the other hand, it’s a real logistical hurdle, and it mean that in addition to vaccine production they will also need to expand the logistical network for medical cold product.
One of the french twitter I follow on that account say it’s somewhat likely that other vaccine candidates who don’t have that problem will be available sooner on the back of being that much easier to distribute despite being approved later presumably.
(I also like his take on the russian vaccine : “the trials are run by the only guys on earth able to make Dr Raoult and the Trump team look skilled”)
@Alan Robertshaw
In particular, in the United States Republicans tend to use “socialism” as a descriptor for anything at all to the left of them. By pretty much any other country’s standards, the Democratic Party is center-right to right-wing.
This also makes it rather funny to me that significant numbers of Trump supporters are talking about moving to Canada, a country that is significantly more to the left than the US. They just really don’t have any original ideas. I would say to go ahead, but it’s not fair to inflict them on the Canadians. Maybe they could take up the libertarian pipe dream of seasteading?
Nah. They’d be in a place where maritime law actually applies by doing that, so all their sovcit bullshit wouldn’t work. 😛
They complain about having no voice, but here they are…
@ north sea sparkly dragon
Ooh, you know when an idea suddenly pops into your head? Your post just did that to me.
Suddenly thought, what if there was an oppressed group so oppressed, no-one even knew about them? Their silencing being that thorough.
That probably couldn’t work in practice, but might give me a story idea.
My marine husband says half of these idiots are going to shoot themselves and the middle gun hasn’t been cleaned properly.
@North Sea Sparkly Dragon
Reminds me of this comic:
ETA: Oops, that’s bigger than I thought it would be. Sorry!
@Alan Robertshaw
Non-binary people were pretty invisible in Western public discourse until pretty recently, so that might be an example. There are a few other gender or sexual minorities that I can think of that would fit that, and I’m sure there are others I don’t know of. As well, there are certain neurodivergencies that are more or less unknown to most people. I can’t think of any ethnic minorities would qualify, but that doesn’t mean it doesn’t exist.
@Naglfar A standard deep freeze is about -18 C. I believe the Pfeizer vaccine needs -70 ºC / -94F which is the coldest temperature ever recorded at the north pole (the south pole is colder) That’s a lot colder than dry ice and way colder than most vaccines that need a cold chain. I don’t think it’ll prevent the vaccine being rolled out, but it will slow things down and make it more expensive. I’m still really pleased to hear about it.
@Sheila Crosby
I don’t know the details of this vaccine, but dry ice (solid CO2) freezes at -78°C so if it only needs to go to -70° then dry ice should work. Of course, there still would be other issues in transportation and storage that could make it harder.
Wouldn’t most of the blood used to water that Liberty tree be THEIRS?
They are a pretty bloodless lot, so it’s take very, very many – sort of like squeezing blood from the proverbial stone, actually.
IF they succeeded, what sort of rancid fruit would the Tree then bear?
It doesn’t matter, 98% of them are utter cowards, only a few of whom would even join a lynch mob when masked and backed by the local police force. The other 2% are insane violent criminals already.
Every Republican voter is a baldly lying, racist traitor, over 71 million of them. Every Republican and “conservative” is a racist traitor, with not even the excuse of honest ignorance or stupidity.
Every single one of them.
Re: Trump’s support in 2016 vs. 2020
It was explained above why the US Hispanic “community” has some substantial support for Republicans generally, and why this support hasn’t been much swayed by Trump’s exceptionally racist rhetoric.
I gather that Trump’s voter turnout has increased in most demographics, in absolute numbers and even slightly relative to the Democratic opponent. I think in 2016 there were plenty of Republican-leaning voters who didn’t bother to vote or voted third party. This would be because Trump was an unknown quantity, and generally problematic even by conservative standards. Now, his presidency has been largely normalized to the conservative audiences.
The exception to above are white men, especially the less educated ones. I think it’s because they already very actively turned out for Trump in 2016. Meanwhile. many Democratic-leaning white men didn’t bother to vote for Clinton, but did turn out for Biden. Therefore, Trump has lost some relative popularity among white men. The surge for Biden was more white and allowed him to win back the “blue wall” states. The surge for Trump was more POC and allowed him to keep Florida and Texas and maybe Arizona.
Still, Trump’s support is disproportionately white and male.
@ Ohlmann Parts can be important for any gun. Sometimes things break, sometimes they don’t. There are reccomended parts to replace after X number of rounds fired, that sort of thing, but ultimately many firearms owners don’t do enough shooting to worry about it, and oftentimes most firearms will happily continue running long after, say, a recoil spring should be replaced.
Although I am a firearms owner, I have little experience with ARs. I doubt for the most part our excited M&P owner would need replacement parts, but you never know.
@ Alan Robertshaw
Can’t really tell myself. I imagine different wood parts, perhaps parts from different rifles as you suggest. Could be like my 1903A3 Springfield, which surprised me when I bought it and found the upper forearm piece was black plastic. I did not know they even made aftermarket all plastic stocks for those things, but they do.
@ Moon Custafer
Hmmmm… You’re probably right, but I like my story more. It makes the guy look bad. ;D
Ironically, and it makes me ashamed to say it, Argentina is sucha racist country that there’s a myth here that there aren’t any black people living (let alone being born) here. Like, none at all.
It’s a mix of denialism, confirmation bias (“I see a black person right in front of me, must be a tourist!”) and complex social developments that would be too long to expand on.
But yeah, basically fucking racism.
Also there were literally hundreds of indigenous cultures in our territory. Some never made it through the genocide. Some were mixed among each other and “reeducated” by the Spanish and their descendants during the colonization. Some still exist beyond the public eye’s reach.
I’m sure most people around me will not even know the name of most of them. Hell, I’m unable to name most of them.
@Luzbelitx
I didn’t know that about Argentina. I was aware that indigenous people in many countries had been wiped out or forcibly assimilated, but I didn’t know that part about Black people.
A whole lotta whites in the U.S. believe that there’s no Natives left in the US, especially back East where the genocide got started earlier.
@Naglfar:
I read a book years ago called The Lost Cosmonaut, by a travel writer who visited lesser-known former Soviet satellite republics to see what was there, and at various times he encountered members of ethnic groups that were pretty much unheard-of outside the immediate area. Some of that was due to geography, and some due to Stalin and his successors perpetrating cultural genocides (and plain-regular genocides) against peoples who’d never had large populations to begin with.
So yeah, any group nobody’s heard of qualifies by definition, but identifying the unknown unknowns is famously difficult to do.
Oh – also some intersex conditions aren’t externally obvious, and generally no one gets karyotyped unless there’s some reason to bother doing so; so probably there are a lot of people walking around perfectly happy with their assigned gender and no idea they’re part of a minority.
@Moon Custafer
That was why I had a hard time coming up with groups that qualified: because by definition if I knew, it wasn’t unheard of.
Since intersex people are estimated to be about 2% of the population (and we don’t know exactly for the reason you mentioned) and only a small fraction of intersex variances are externally visible, that leaves likely millions in this situation. One of my favorite case studies to throw at TERFs who insist that XY always = man is one about a cis woman with XY chromosomes who developed typically, had children, and only found out in her 50s that she was XY.