My immediate concern is the fundamentalist groups around the country that expose some variation of an “End Times” theology. They’re tightly bonded groups of people that live in close proximity to one another. They share beliefs and lifestyles that are outside of the mainstream and rely heavily on their religious leaders to instruct them how to live in accordance with God’s will. And they love Trump, truly,madly,deeply.
I’m going link to a post I wrote a few days ago in another thread that goes into more detail.
If any of these fundamentalists believe this is the holy war moment they’ve been waiting for, that could spell trouble. If a lot of them do, that could spell big trouble.
I think, in most cases, their leadership will try to call them off and in most cases they will succeed. These groups are generational cults, they aren’t a bunch of crazies that found each other. These are just people, indoctrinated from birth, doing nothing more than living the lives they were born to. They’ve been waiting for this apocalypse for generations and it’ll be easy to go back to waiting. I think most of the leaders will see it’s bad for the bottom line. People that really believe something can still grift.
But there may be a handful of leaders that don’t back off, and a handful of men that won’t believe that God did a 180 degree turn, and they may think their leader has been corrupted by the Deep State. Some of them want to believe this.
Unfortunately, I don’t think it’ll take much violence to register an economic impact, especially if it’s random. I keep coming back to the hit that the DC area took during the 2-3 week spree of the Beltway sniper.
But in the long run, the biggest danger isn’t from a spate of terror attacks. It’s from the vast moneyed underground looking to turn the US into a right wing Christian theocracy, gradually and bloodlessly. Ted Cruz, the Devos/ Prince and the Mercer dynasties. The dozens, if not hundreds, of advocacy groups with words like Faith, Freedom and Family in their name. Pence and the Prayer Breakfast Gang.
That’s really a subject for another time, but I think the events of the past few weeks may have dealt a real blow to this second group, especially if law enforcement views, as they should, all the STOP THE STEAL disinformation as part of the greater insurrection plot. Silver lining, maybe.