by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner
I really struggle to figure out the specific reasons why growing number of MAGA seditionists have decided that secession — and the resulting violence — is their only course of action.
The closest reason I can think of is their devotion to their ding-dong Dear Leader is so absolute that they believe all his fraud claims and would rather destroy the Union than allow Biden to become president. But here’s the thing — this is still very poorly thought out and not very concrete.
At least with the 1860 secessionist crisis, there was a concrete fear that the South had — by definition, Lincoln being president would lead to first a retrenchment of slave power and then its ultimate destruction. That, at least, has some logic to it.
But to have such absolute support for just one person that you would rather leave the Union than accept Biden is legitimately POTUS now is rather curious. It still seems like a very abstract fear. Where is all this passion — even if it’s empty for the time being — coming from? From my conversations with conservatives, it seems it boils down to an absolute fear of the abstract concept of cancel culture. This is the idea that just by being conservative, a person risk having their lives ruined by liberal-progressive “cancel culture.” This is a really big deal for MAGA and Trump talks about it all the time.
I would suggest, however, that the real origin of our current clusterfuck is the end of the American dream for white blue collar men without a college education. In short — they can’t get laid. They feel left behind because not only can they not afford to get married and have kids, but they also feel that the growing economic power of women — with its associated sexual agency — makes finding a mate more difficult in the first place. The racism and willful ignorance springs from that, as well.
While it’s way too late, I’ll tell you how we could have fixed this problem — national service for all 18 year olds. If, say, AmeriCorps had been true national service and we had 30 or so years of all 18 year olds across the country being forced to hang out with each other for 18 months a lot of our problems would have been preemptively solved.
But’s too late now.
The damage is done. We’re just one political 9/11 event away from the entire Union States buckling and Blue and Red states actually beginning to attack each other on the battlefield.
The question now, of course, is we simply be locked in political neutral for a few years until the passions die down or will we not be that lucky.
