What's next for the pro-insurrectionists?

[Mundane_Super_Hero]

@Ann_Hedonia

I agree with your analysis of the movement but not your conclusion.

We have been trying that approach, the pointing and laughing, the wars of words that slayed the barely literate. It’s how I handled the past four years, you have to use the weapons you have.

What is coming is inevitable and I do not think Wednesday was an isolated incident.

I’m going to say it. I think I’ll be the first. We need to treat Wednesday’s attack as the first volley in a civil war. I’m not going to capitalize the words, I’m not there yet. It’s hard to wrap your head around, I’ve been using the phrase “failure of imagination” a lot recently. But let’s say I find the total silence from the White House and federal agencies extremely troubling. We should be getting hours long press conferences on a daily basis, with agency leader after agency leader speaking.

Now it may not be a long war, or a significant war. There is a chance, however slight, that Wednesday’s attack was the first and last volley. But when does an insurrection become a war? How do we recognize what we’ve never seen in our lifetime?

Like I said in another post, a stupid army is still an army, especially if their guns are real.

But I think the tech companies did what need to be done, considering the circumstances. I don’t say this lightly. I realize that using insurrection or war to erode civil liberties is a horrible precedent. That’s why we allowed the a president to muster an army on the White House lawn and send them to attack Congress.

But both-sideism and an attempt at fair play is what got us here. In our efforts to be balanced, we allowed ourselves to be dragged halfway down the rabbit hole. This culminated when we allowed “Is Joe Biden the winner of the 2020 election?” to become a legitimate question.

We gave too much already. We never should have let “Is it OK for a President to use a threat to withhold foreign aid unless their President does our President a corrupt personal favor?” to become a legitimate question.

I’m glad someone is trying to stop the cycle and de-platform enemy propaganda. I applaud the tech companies. If they do it the government won’t have to, and that will be better for our liberties in the long run.

Sadly, I think that you are 100% right. I was attacked by the Alt Right Grunts on an on-line game earlier today. I pointed and laughed as is always recommended. I was countered with, “Laugh it up while you can. We’ll see you on the drive to your new job tomorrow.”

( No one there knew that I had a new job, let alone when it started. It’s pretty long odds that anyone would start a new job on MLK Day. It might just be “musket time”. )

Sure hope I can buy one.

[LSLGuy]

Today I saw a convoy/parade of about 5 jacked-up pickup trucks all flying multiple large US flags and, with no trace of irony, the blue and red flag with the Traitor-in-Chief’s name on it. I encountered the same group later in the day on a different main road going the same direction as last time. Implying they were making some large laps around the county for at least a couple of hours.

Clearly these particular individuals are happy to be identified as traitor supporters.

[Ann_Hedonia]

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.

7 Jan 2021 and beyond - the aftermath of the storming of the Capitol

There is a book I’m going to recommend if you want insight into fundamentalist evangelicalism. It’s not a well-known book. I would’ve never bought it if it wasn’t a Kindle Daily Deal. It’s a memoir, which is not my favorite literary format, but it’s one of the most enlightening books I ever read. The book is I Fired God by Joyce Zichterman . She lays out the abuse and corruption inside her Fundamentalist Baptist church in a very clear and readable manner, and her work has been used as a founda…

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.