Wingnuts, rage, and guns

The Trumpanzees are angry people.  Depending on the individual, they're angry about blacks and women who no longer "know their place"; at education and expertise, which they themselves do not have; at social changes like secularism and the growing acceptance of gay equality; at any manifestation of foreign culture or language or ideas, which remind them that the world out there is much bigger and more complicated than they can mentally process; at technological change which renders old ways of making a living irrelevant while the internet turns younger people away from old prejudices and certainties.  Despite the power held by Trump and other Republicans in their name, they feel put-upon and disrespected.  And because so many of them have guns, their anger often stirs fear.

Indeed, fantasies of some future explosion of violence in which they will emerge triumphant are very common on wingnut blogs and discussion sites.  From decades-old dreams of a "day of the rope" when enemies (such as Jews, government officials, and "race-mixers") would be hanged en masse, to present-day rumblings of a second civil war which their overwhelming superiority in guns would turn into an easy slaughter of "libtards" and other broad categories of people they loathe, they picture themselves as the massively stronger side of America's national divide, awaiting only one more provocation to burst their restraints and annihilate us in a hailstorm of cleansing ammo.  Such fantasies are actively encouraged by the worst of the Republican leadership, including you-know-who.

Don't be fooled.  And don't be scared.

First off, what is this second civil war supposed to look like exactly?  Are they going to send gangs of armed Deliverance mutants into major cities all over the country to attack all the vegan restaurants, gay bars, libraries, colleges, and the like?  Do they have any idea how big some cities are or how many such gangs it would take to make a real dent in the number of liberals in the country?  The actual Civil War involved entire states seceding, whose governments formed a ready-made organizational structure.  The last time these doofuses tried an "insurrection", they managed to seize a bird sanctuary visitor kiosk in the boondocks of Oregon for a few weeks, forgot to pack their socks, and ended up going on the internet to ask people to send them Cheetos.  And they're going to organize a paramilitary uprising involving millions of guerillas across a continent-spanning nation?  Without getting caught long before it was actually launched?  In fact, there's no sign of any such organizational feat even being contemplated.  All they have is quasi-masturbatory fantasies about the bloody aftermath.

And whenever somebody actually does something that looks like even a microcosm (very micro) of the nationwide paroxysm of violence they claim to want -- as the Christchurch terrorist did last week -- and the vast majority of people everywhere respond with revulsion, even most Trumpanzees find themselves chivvied along.  Whatever they may be feeling deep down, they viscerally recognize that they can't afford to be associated with such acts.  Right now the same parts of the right-wing internet that normally seethe with second-civil-war fantasies are alive with claims that the mass murder in New Zealand must have been some sort of "false flag" operation designed to make the alt-right look bad; no less of a wingnut luminary than Rush Limbaugh has endorsed the idea.  People who claim to be ready and eager to slaughter millions recoil from the slaughter of dozens.  When it's real instead of fantasy, the wave of disgust they know would greet anyone who expressed enthusiasm for such acts is more than they can face.

Yes, mass shootings are terrible for the victims and their families.  But they do nothing to advance the alt-right cause in society at large.  Just the opposite.

In the real world, so far from being "powerful", wingnuts who stick their necks out too far (as at Charlottesville), and even people who happen to get videotaped indulging in a racist rant in public, are being fired, ostracized, deplatformed, becoming unemployable pariahs, and sometimes sued and arrested.  Even some state governments which had passed or were considering anti-gay laws have been forced to back down by commercial pressure.  All those hundreds of millions of guns are utterly impotent to stop any of this.  Cultural change, which I argued here is what's really upsetting the knuckle-draggers the most, simply continues inexorably along its path in utter disregard even of their electoral victories, never mind their guns.  And there's not a damn thing they can do about any of it.  They're losing the war because they've chosen weapons which are irrelevant to the kind of war this is.  They are incapable of understanding how real power works, or who controls it, or how it is being used to change the world.