I love my parents. But they are Conservative, Trump supporting, selectively racist Republicans who eschew the news because “it’s always bad/depressing” (except when they watch Fox.) The Primetime news hour is “time for Wheel of Fortune.” And they are totally unprepared for what’s coming.
Trump, his family and his Administration are in serious legal jeopardy. I’ve tried to keep a running list of criminal investigations of Trump & his grifter family, but it never seems to be complete. I’m a “news junkie”. I start every morning watching the previous nights’ episode of “Rachel Maddow”, listen to Progressive Talk radio all day, end every evening watching an hour of both BBC World News followed by the Network News, and watch four hours of the Sunday Poli-Talk shows (including Fox “news” Sunday) every week. I’ve done this every day since Bush-43 was in office. So I am one of the most informed people I know (from more diverse sources) when it comes to what’s going on in the world.
But then I get on Twitter (I used to have a Facebook account, but they deleted my account months ago without explanation or recourse… I assume because some Trumpster-snowflake reported me as “fake” back when FB paranoia on the subject hit fever pitch prior to the election) and I see all these posts from Trump supporters whom believe he is truly “Making America Great Again”, saving us from “Lib’rul” Democrats/Judges/policies/Obama/Clinton/etc. And by no coincidence, much of the support for Trump is steeped in his racist policies (keeping out Mus’lims, Mex’cuns… brown people in general.)
I was at my folks home yesterday. Fox was on the TV announcing/cheering Trump declaring “victory” over ISIS and pulling out of Syria (never mentioning that ISIS hasn’t been defeated, and that he never consulted the Pentagon or any of our allies... whom will still be there after we abandon them... before announcing this withdrawal), and news that a “GoFundMe” page to fund Trump’s ridiculous wall had already raised “over $1.2Million” of their “one Billion dollar goal”. If you’re paying attention, that’s 0.12% (thanks for the correction guys) of what it would actually cost to build the damn thing (Trump himself estimated the total cost at $10Billion… which I assure you is a lowball estimate that does not factor in the cost of buying up all that private land using Eminent Domain.) This was fantastic news to my Conservative family. The fact Trump repeatedly assured them “Mexico would pay for the wall” did not matter. “Those damn Democrats” were to blame for “blocking Trump’s Wall” and Trump supporters are more than happy to pay for it themselves just to “p!ss off Democrats.”
But what I’ve noticed most is just how unaware they are that anything is wrong. Trump declares some ridiculous “victory” on Twitter that Fox doesn’t fact check, and they never watch another news source that corrects the record (and wouldn’t believe it anyway since Trump has convinced them anyone who contradicts him is lying. “Fake News!”) I first wrote back in May that Trump’s economy is going to crash spectacularly sometime next year, and when it does, they are going to blame Democrats and their investigations of Trump. They won’t recall that interest rates already started to rise in 2018 and the Stock Market ended with net negative “growth” for the entire year of 2018.
Democrats will retake The House in less than two weeks, and the list of crimes/scandals they will investigate that the GOP let slide and Fox ignores, will seem like a giant (unjustified) attack by those “sore loser” Democrats. “How could there possibly be SO many crimes to investigate? We would have heard about these things before if they were real! Power-Mad Democrats are just making it all up to get Trump because he’s making them look bad and they want the White House!”
My folks remember when the economy crashed and gas hit $4/gallon… “under Obama”... just before Trump was elected (cue these people). They “remember” the economy being “a total mess” under Obama and believe Trump “is truly making America great again” (exact quote from a family member.) My father is happy “we can finally say Merry Christmas again!” I avoid discussing politics with my folks like the plague, but I had to ask him, “Who told you you couldn’t say Merry Christmas?” I had to explain to my folks that sales clerks say “Happy Holidays” because “there’s no way to tell if a customer is a Christian, Jewish, Buddhist, Muslim, or whatever”. They clearly had never thought about it that way. Now they kind of understand why stores do that. They still think “screw ‘em” if they (non-Christians) don’t like it, but at least now they know there’s a legitimate reason for it (and now explain to their other chronically uninformed friends this new bit of information they’ve just learned.)
And that’s my point. These people have never thought there might be a legitimate basis for something they’ve been told/conditioned to hate. But now they know, and their “outrage” has been tempered.
Trump supporters know there’s an investigation accusing Trump of “collusion” with Russia by a guy named “Mueller”. But they also know: “there’s no such crime as collusion. So what’s the point of the investigation?” Beyond that, they don’t know ANY of the details. “Manafort who?” Mike Flynn? Michael “The Rat” Cohen maybe (now). If they’ve even heard of “George Papadopoulis” or “Maria Butina”, I’d be stunned. They are SO uninformed, they are going to be overwhelmed by the tidal wave of criminal investigations that’ll hit them next year. And because they are already convinced Trump is “the most successful president since Ronald Reagan” (if you believe everything Trump says), it’s all going to seem like a litany of fabricated “scandals” invented by Democrats desperate to derail Trump’s “amazingly successful presidency”.
No one is out there preparing them for what’s coming. And anytime you dump a truckload of anything on someone who’s not prepared for it, the backlash is going to be angry, extreme (and considering the demographic) violent.
Prepare.