Post #50: Trump's Armed Militias Could End up Gunning for Him

Other than loving my wife even more every day and rediscovering the joy of finding a maraschino cherry in my del Monte fruit cup, there really isn’t a damn good thing to come out of this fucking pandemic. If I survive it, I’ll include myself in that statement.

Even Trump’s political struggles give me no pleasure, mostly because I know the worse it gets for him, the worse he’s going to try to make it for us. Yesterday’s “liberate Virginia,” “liberate Minnesota”, “liberate Michigan” tweets, egging on all those armed nutjobs, were flat out dangerous. If flying bullets don’t kill someone, the virus will. 

The major irony about these protests is that if Trump had done his job early and recognized the need for the federal government to get involved in testing, there would have been no cause for the protests (although Trump would have invented another excuse to push them).

Anyway, there has been one odd positive development that probably I’d be the only one to appreciate. Up until the virus broke out, my Twitter feed was filled with wingnuts screaming about the worst human being in the country’s history. That person, was of course, Alger Hiss. Over the last few months though, Hiss rarely breaks into the top ten on the Bizarro World’s List of American Traitors. He doesn’t even rate being on the list. Even among those who have been chased by men in white coats waving butterfly nets have Trump rated No. 1. That’s quite an accomplishment when you think about it.

It’s also a moment of rare clarity. Yesterday’s tweets were not only unseemly, but were in effect encouraging armed insurrection; they were traitorous. And, if people get sick and die as a result of the gatherings, they were murderous. Nothing in Whittaker Chambers’ pumpkins can even be compared with that.

As I see it, there are only two or three outcomes of Trump’s game (I wouldn’t call it a "decision" to support the protests because that would imply some thought went into it), and while the short term impact will be nasty and negative for those trying to do the right thing, the long term effects can only be disastrous for Trump.

The most obvious is that you get a few hundred extreme right-wingers together in a small area, holding hands and swaying to “Springtime for Hitler,” and one of them is going to already have the virus, and by the end of the rally, ten or twenty will be infected and probably come down with symptoms and will go on to infect their friends. If all they did was make each other sick who am I to argue, but they wouldn’t, they’d go out and infect grocery workers, food service workers and more. Then those people will go out and infect others. Soon you have a hot spot.

At that point, a few things could happen, neither good for Trump. For one, you have a bunch of rightwing Trumpists home in bed, coughing their brains out and thinking, “Hmm, maybe Rachel Maddow has a point." Worse, they get a look at their hospital bills, and they start thinking that when it comes to healthcare, that socialist Jew, Bernie Sanders also might have had the right idea.

Back in the ‘60s, racists used to have a saying, “How do you define a conservative? It’s a liberal who has just been mugged.” That was usually followed by a smug, “harharharhahr.
Maybe a liberal is a Fox News acoylyte with a cough and a fever.

Now, what if the protests have their intended effect (although the most recent ones in Texas, seem more like people just need to get out of the house. After all, wasting time hoping  Gov. Greg Abbott will do something stupid is like trying to convince Mike Pence to credit Trump for great leadership.

Trump has a bunch of GOP governors at his beck and call. Kristi Noem of South Dakota, Pete Ricketts of Nebraska, Ron DeSantis of Florida and Brian Kemp of Georgia don’t even look for a chair when he orders them to sit. None will need a lot of convincing to drop even the loosest of restrictions they had imposed — or, more accurately, suggested. And for sure, without testing, there’s no way the virus doesn’t come roaring out of Florida’s beaches or Sioux Falls’ factories. It has to. As of this writing, Florida has some 26,000 cases. If the number of sick doubles because of DeSantis’s toadyistic fecklessness, do DeSantis and Trump really think when November comes around, voters are going to look at photos of their dead friends and relatives and blame Obama? That’s 29 electoral votes right there.

And in states where there are Democratic governors? Will pressuring them have the intended effect, whatever that is (Seriously, what is he trying to accomplish, exactly). In Louisiana where New Orleans has been devastated by the virus, leaving Governor Edwards to beg for ventilators. Are voters going to forget that, especially with Democratic leadership in the state to remind them? That’s another eight electoral votes. And while he thinks he’s destroying the political career of Governor Whitmer of Michigan, her stay-at-home orders are actually helping, and despite the number of protesters at the state house, polls show that some 80 percent of the country believe that the stay-at-home orders make sense. Trump won Michigan by all of 11,000 votes in 2016, does he really want to piss off most of the electorate? That’s 16 more votes down Trump’s gold-plated drain. Maybe Mitch McConnell should show him a few photos of all those people in Wisconsin, risking their lives to get rid of a Supreme Court judge, and not primarily because they hated the judge — although they did — but because they hated Trump more

This is a guy who people describe as being cat-like, and not just because if he could, he’d spend his days cleaning himself and licking his own balls, but because of his supposed nine lives. It seems to me if he continues on this path, he just might use up eight of them. Then, his former admirers, if they can tear themselves away from MSNBC, will take care of the last one come November.