Thursday, March 14, 2019

Slouching towards Civil War 2.0

It's long been said that Republicans think that Democrats are stupid, while Democrats think that Republicans are evil.  So what happens when you combine stupid with evil?

Act the first: The Stupid, it burns!
Dugas works as a retail security manager, so he went back into the mall to look at surveillance footage of the parking lot. 
At 12:40 p.m., a car parked next to his SUV. Four women got out. Two of them peered into his vehicle — where there was a red "Make America Great Again" hat on the console.
The women went into a store, reappeared seven minutes later and got into their car. But a minute later, the driver and front passenger got out again.
There's a special type of stupid in slashing someone's tire because they have a MAGA hat on their dashboard.  It's a double dose of stupid when it's in a place where there's pretty ubiquitous surveillance. Nick Dugas worked for Mall security and so he had access to the camera footage, but any customer who was victim of a crime would have had Mall Security's full cooperation.  The perp was going to get caught, and caught easily.  Over a MAGA hat and a hair trigger temper.

Like I said, stupid.  But there's more.

Act the second: Evil is as evil does.
Dugas saw this kid sleeping on his belly and the 6-foot-6 man bent down to help him. He fed him, gained his confidence, and learned the truth. 
Bland wrote, "The boy began to talk. His mom took off when he was 2. He lived with his dad. But he had run away a week ago. He told him why. 
"Dugas listened in silence. He had grown up in Portland, Oregon, with attentive parents and a big sister in a nice house. They had taken family vacations and camped every summer. While he might not have had everything he wanted, he had everything he needed.
"Sitting at the table, the boy had inched up his shirt to show Dugas his back. There were lash marks, 63 of them, where he had been hit with a broken car antenna." 
Dugas took the kid in. This required filing paperwork, getting cleared by the state as a foster parent, and getting permission from the father to take the kid in. Dugas and eventually adopted him. Last June was his first Father's Day as a father.
That was the man who was seen as so evil (for having a MAGA hat) that someone slashed his tire.

This is the sort of story that makes me wonder if this Republic can survive.  Democrats have seen Republicans as evil for a long time, but now they're acting stupidly.  Violently and stupidly.  And that is perhaps causing Republicans - who have long seen Democrats as stupid - to now see them as evil as well.

The middle ground of shared "we're all in this together" that has been a core of political life in this Republic as long as I can remember is fraying.  Once those bonds snap, it will get very ugly.  Plausibly you could make the argument that we're already in a shooting war, although I don't think that I'd go that far.

Not yet.  But going into next year's election campaign we can expect things to get worse, not better.

But it doesn't matter whether you're a good citizen or a good neighbor.  Not if you have a MAGA hat on your dashboard.  This will not end well.

8 comments:

Beans said...

I live in a very liberal college town, where just having the wrong markings on your car (like, from Free Shoes University) will get you dinged. It's the only place where I've heard or seen (yes, actually seen) a Tesla with a Bernie 2020 sticker on it.

It is so bad here that every 4 years, the windows of the local Republican party office would be smashed, several times, and even with really good surveillance, no one would be caught...

But... In the last 3 years, on the west side of town, I've seen quite a few MAGA and NRA hats. They seem to proliferate after acts of stupidity. And more and more, I hear 'normal people' questioning the status quo, openly discussing 'conservative' issues out loud.

Though places like Portland and SanFran may be lost, I think there's actually hope out there if my little slice of socialist heaven/hell is showing positive signs.

Of course, then there's the negative signs. The city commission just banned plastic grocery bags because, as one councilwoman said, "They're polluting the ocean." Sure, lady. Our landfill at 150+ feet above sea level is leaching plastic bags into the Pacific...

But what do you expect from the town that brought you "Don't Tase Me, Bro!" (Which was a leftist protesting at a John Kerry speech, and the town supported the leftist, so that's why I said hearing conserve-speak here is a good thing...)

Tim Covington said...

I think our last chance to come together was in the immediate aftermath of 9/11. Unfortunately, to many people chose this as an opportunity to grab power (both sides are guilty of this). Now, I feel our nation is close to being irrevocably broken.

riverrider said...

nah, the last chance to save it was when they me too'd herman cain. he could have brought us back to the process. that was the last time everybody thought they had a say in it. as long as all sides think they have a voice, or a chance at one, they will remain largely civil to one another. without it, the power side abuses it, and the weaker side grows more angry from the abuse. just human nature. this republic will not stand much longer, maybe 50 years. thankfully i won't be here and have no kids.

McChuck said...

We may all be in this life boat together, but one group is boring holes in the bottom, setting fire to the boat, and chewing on your legs while you're asleep.

The war is already upon us. The only choice is survival or surrender.

Richard said...

War seems inevitable at this point. The only way I can see to avoid it is the national divorce but it appears to me that most people prefer war for reasons I can't understand. Perhaps the left thinks the right will just surrender. There is certainly evidence to support this belief but times have changed. The right thinks it will be an easy victory. They are wrong. And most people are just asleep or in denial about where we are going.

SiGraybeard said...

Plausibly you could make the argument that we're already in a shooting war, although I don't think that I'd go that far.

How much shooting crosses the threshold? Ask Steve Scalise and his security detail.

Let's say that was just a crazy MoFo with a gun. If not for Steve Scalise's security detail, he would have killed about 30 members of the House. Think that would have changed national politics?

How can we know when it's just another crazy MoFo or the opening round of CW 2.0? As I understand it, nobody thought assassinating Archduke Ferdinand meant much at the time, either.

I'm not saying the twit that slashed the guy's tires should be shot. I'm just saying the next one that goes after the MAGA hat may well be contemplating more and need to be.

Will said...

Beans,
turns out those free bags are what the street people crap in. When SanFran and other cities in CA eliminated them, we suddenly had a health issue.

Actually, there are more issues than that. Those reuseable bags are not always clean, but the cashier/clerk must handle them to load the groceries. I hear horror stories from the clerks on what they encounter. The stores require the clerks to load them.

The other issue is that they are supposed to be washed each time you get done with them. We don't have that culture here, so they don't get washed, and people get sick from contaminated food at home. They expect that there are people dying from this situation, but no hard numbers are available, just guesses.

Unintended Consequences just from virtue signaling. The Left strikes again!

Those disposable bags are made from natural gas, not oil. I suspect they just burn the excess gas now. When L.A. banned them, they put about 5k workers out of jobs making and transporting them.

kotetu said...

The evil part of me wants to stick Trump bumper stickers over Bernie, etc., bumper stickers every time I see 'em.