“These are the things and events that happen when a sacred landslide election victory is so unceremoniously & viciously stripped away from great patriots who have been badly & unfairly treated for so long. Go home with love & in peace. Remember this day forever!”
Today is the one-year anniversary of the insurrection Donald Trump incited in an effort to block the fact that he lost his battle for re-election in 2020. It could be called the ultimate climax of Richard Nixon’s “Silent Majority,” which was all about telling conservative white people that they were the True Americans.
The problem is, it wasn’t true then and it’s even less true now. America becomes more diverse with every generation and the world is slipping away from the blue-collar types who anchored the country in past years.
All sorts of good jobs — building things, repairing things, operating machinery — that used to provide good livings for marginally educated people are gone now.
It’s becoming a “would you like fries with that” world in which something like 70 percent of jobs are in service industries.
Remember the great speech John Cusack gave in “Say Anything?”
“I don’t want to sell anything, buy anything, or process anything as a career. I don’t want to sell anything bought or processed, or buy anything sold or processed, or process anything sold, bought, or processed, or repair anything sold, bought, or processed. You know, as a career, I don’t want to do that.”
Thirty-two years later, the jobs Cusack’s character didn’t want are becoming tougher and tougher to avoid.
And American men are becoming angrier and angrier, and politicians like Trump are getting more and more mileage out of stirring them up. It came to a head last January 6th with the attack on the Capitol.
Call it the Million Moron March.
Trump had intended to give a speech today for the one-year anniversary of the insurrection, but when he learned that the television networks were not planning to cover it live, and his fans weren’t all that excited about it, he cancelled it.
Many of his troops stayed away from Washington, believing the police and other law enforcement would trap them if they came to the scene of the 2021 crime.
Maybe the biggest surprise was Texas Senator Ted Cruz, who put himself in line for the wrath of Trump when he described last year’s insurrection as a terrorist act.
Compare that with the Trump quote at the beginning and you see a potential candidate banking on the fact that by 2024, there will be a place in the battle for the Republican nomination for a candidate not sucking up to Trump.
Very interesting.