BIG MAD - COUP THE COLOR OF MAYONNAISE (1.10.20)
There was a coup this week! Sheesh!
There was an attempted coup this week. In America. Or as I am now calling it, The Mayonnaise Revolution. Thousands of Americans wearing Oakleys with “patriot 🇺🇸 ” in their Twitter bios descended on Washington DC to protest the fact that Big Wet Leader isn’t as popular as he led them to believe.
Donald Trump and his ilk have spend the better part of two month claiming that the 2020 Presidential election was “stolen” in favor of Joe Biden and the Democrats. The aggrieved Trumpers have pointed to inconsistent testimony from an intoxicated midwestern wine mom, QAnon drops on 8chan, and their own fundamental misunderstanding of how elections or simple mathematics work as legitimate grounds to throw out the entire democratic process and simply declare Donald Trump the winner.
Donald and his minions have never let facts, reason, evidence, or spelling and grammar get in the way of a good ol’ self-serving conspiracy theory. So rather than just accepting defeat and moving on, they doubled down. Concocting an elaborate conspiracy that has embroiled virtually every human being in America who did not vote for Donald Trump. I am both impressed and horrified at the mental gymnastics, cognitive dissonance, and sheer creative firepower required to construct a fantasy world of that scale and magnitude. George RR Martin hold ya head bitch!!!!
This right-wing fever dream culminated at Donald Trumps January 6th rally to Stop the Steal, where the president urged them to march down Pennsylvania Avenue to the Capitol, in which congress was in the throes of a contentious joint session to certify Joe Biden’s victory, and give them piece of their minds. Much like a horde of zombies or a Target shoppers on Black Friday, the protestors overwhelmed (or were simply let in by) DC security forces and overtook the Capitol building, declaring it a Revolutionary Cosplayer Autonomous Zone. Once inside, the protestors-turned-terrorists proceed to treat the most symbolically-important building in American democracy like a second-rate frat house, vandalizing property, destroying priceless artwork, and breaking into private rooms. One man made off with a podium in an admittedly hilarious moment. I have no evidence to support it but they probably peed on the floor.
Members of congress were scuttled off to some underground bunker somewhere to Tweet from safety while capitol police did their best to drive back the COVID-infested hordes. After several hours of utter chaos, several dead (including a cop), and hundreds of arrests, the hordes were beaten back and order was partially restored. Fortunately for Donald Trumps supporters, had they been black or brown people, the death toll would have presumably been much higher. I’d venture to say that had a throng of BLM protestors invaded the building in such a way, Washington DC would be a crater right now.
The fallout was swift and severe. Everyone from AOC to Mitch McConnell to AXE Bodyspray condemned the President and his supporters. Talks of an impeachment sequel, Impeachment 2: Maximum Impeachment, kicked up almost immediately. Education Secretary Betsy DeVos tendered her resignation, deciding that even after the Access Hollywood Tapes and Charlottesville and Hurricane Maria and almost-WWIII and the Mueller Report and Brett Kavanaugh and Jeffrey Epstein and Impeachment and The Very Perfect Call to Ukraine and 350,000 dead Americans that this was the final straw. By Friday, Trump was banned for life from Twitter. There goes his post-Presidency plans I suppose.
Hundreds of arrest warrants were issued for the genius-level insurrectionists who decided to live stream and document themselves committing felonies. In a juicy turn of events, those crimes now carried a mandatory 10-year minimum prison sentence after the threatened destruction of Confederate statues and monuments during protests last summer. Sweet, sweet comeuppance.
His supporters, rather than face reality, chose to take another step down the rabbit hole, blaming “ANTIFA agitators” for the instigating the violence and claiming the “protest” was peaceful. Quick aside here, why would one need a fuck ton of ziptie handcuffs at a peaceful protest?
It seems that now even Trump supporters themselves were part of the conspiracy. A 4chan anon post summarized their whole predicament quite succinctly:
January 6th, 2021 will go down as a dark day in American history. In some regards it feels like the fever of Trumpism has started to break. However in a lot of ways this is really just the end of the beginning. Trumpism isn’t going anywhere just because Donald Trump is no longer President. There’s really no incentive for him to turn down the heat. In fact, I’d venture to say he and his supporters will only grow more caustic and more dangerous now that he’s no longer restrained by the office of the Presidency. Trump himself will be free to continue the grift and revel in the unwavering adulation of his supporters. And his supporters are now relegated back to fringes of society, a position that naturally pits them against the enemies they hated all along; the government, the press, Hollywood, Big Tech, and mainstream society at large.
The reality is that we still have a significant swath of our population awash in this paranoid right-wing fantasy that gay liberal communist ANTIFA supersoliders are coming for them and their families. My greatest fear is that Donald Trump spends the rest of his life operating as a sort of shadow dictator, directing a literal and metaphorical insurgency against the US government. After all, isn’t this precisely what many of these folks have been waiting their whole lives for, to oppose a tyrannical and evil government no longer beholden to the will of the people? Isn’t this the reason they hold 2nd Amendment rights so dearly, amass arsenals of weapons, and organize their little militias and paramilitary groups?
Ideologically Trump represents a confluence of many of the bigoted, anti-government, liberal-hating ideals that many of these right-wing organizations share. To be sure, I don’t think every Trump supporter is necessarily awaiting the call to blow up their local post office. But I worry that there is a significant number of people and organizations out their who have consolidated under the banner of Trumpism. And the events of January 6th only serve as proof that many of these folks are willing to go to drastic and deadly places to protect their way of life.