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The Great Awokening scares big chunks of white America, and the St. Louis lawyers who claim they pointed guns at peaceful protestors outside their mansion b/c it was like "the storming of the Bastille" sum it up: armed fear of Black people. 1/ https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.ksdk.com/amp/article/news/local/interview-man-with-rifle-during-st-louis-protest/63-eeb61c07-4adc-4df0-a7d0-000d40a89e78
The Great Awokening scares big chunks of white America, and the St. Louis lawyers who claim they pointed guns at peaceful protestors outside their mansion b/c it was like "the storming of the Bastille" sum it up: armed fear of Black people. 1/ https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.ksdk.com/amp/article/news/local/interview-man-with-rifle-during-st-louis-protest/63-eeb61c07-4adc-4df0-a7d0-000d40a89e78
That was Sunday. The day before, Saturday June 27, 175 miles southwest of that gunslinging couple's St. Louis mansion, there wasn't a pink polo shirt in sight as hundreds of armed "militia" from at least 3 states joined camo-clad locals b/c of a *rumor* about a BLM protest. 2/
The White Power Comedy Hour began in Eminence, MO, pop. 600, a tourist canoe-and-float-tube town on the Ozark's Jack's Fork River. Shannon County, MO Sheriff Darrin Brawley posted on FB Fri., calling on "patriotic citizens" to defend Eminence from an incoming dusky horde. 3/
The Sheriff's FB post was followed by other bug-eyed commentary on FB, including at least one claiming to have seen threats from "radicals" to flay sheriff's deputies & leave their skin hanging from trees, flapping in the breeze like so many laundered Klan sheets. 4/
Come Saturday, the population of Eminence almost doubled. Locals were joined by "militia" members from MO & elsewhere. The Sheriff let them set up sniper positions on the roof of the Shannon County Courthouse.
Aaaand, of course, no BLM march ever materialized. 5/
Aaaand, of course, no BLM march ever materialized. 5/
South of Eminence, a native of the Current River tourist town of Van Buren, MO, pop 800, was appalled at the armed reaction to the BLM march hoax. So Abby Van Winkle decided to show that BLM & racial justice was no threat to the white-as-Michael-Bolton-in-a-blizzard Ozarks. 6/
A BLM march July 11 in isolated, white, pro-Trump Van Buren falls somewhere between unbridled hope & a death wish, but VanWinkle is determined, even after FB exchanges w/town Mayor Mike Hoerner. VanWinkle wrote in English, while the Mayor responded in, um, something close. 7/
The townspeople of Van Buren & Eminence, & the country club J Crew gunslingers in St. Louis look at BLM protests & the surging cultural support for police reform & Black issues, & are terrified. Hell, Black people are why they got guns to begin with. 8/ https://blogs.scientificamerican.com/observations/why-are-white-men-stockpiling-guns/
Now, their reptile-brain worst fears have been realized. You & I may see Black people who've had enough, & are awakening white America to endemic racism. Paranoid racists see their nightmares of Herds of Rampaging Negroes abetted by white race traitors coming true. 9/
Trump knows what's going on in their brain stems better than most because he lives in the Id. He tweets approvingly about the armed St Louis couple & the Florida golf cart geezer yelling "white power" because he's dumped the dog whistle for a tornado siren. 10/
His campaign is a blatant, yowling referendum on white nationalism. He's rallying white nationalists, from the camo goobers to pink-shirted country club types. He knows the snarling GOP is his now, and that no one **no one** in the Party of Jefferson Davis will cross him. 11/
Trump's white people -- 51% of the white population, according to the latest PBS/Marist poll -- still approve of him. He's their Great White Dope, determined to take back "their" country. As long as he recognizes and stokes their fear, absolutely nothing else he does matters. 12/
He knows credible media, scientists, experts, facts, or even reality itself stopped mattering to them years ago. Only propaganda or random Facebook threads that feed their rage and fear mean anything. 13/
Trump and the entire GOP 2020 are either the last battle of the original Civil War, or the first battle of a new one. The economic collapse, pandemic chaos snd death, treason itself--none of it matters. Only the psychology of the victimized white majority counts. 14/
So spare a thought for young, idealistic Abby VanWinkle in Van Buren, MO July 11. Maybe roll the dice and join her. She's outnumbered, outgunned, and out-Confederate flagged. She loves her home town, and still holds out hope they're better than they seem. 15/
She holds out hope for her country, hoping her fellow rural whites are decent and humane, and will listen to reasoned arguments about Black fellow Americans. She doesn't have to put herself in danger, but she is. Does love still trump hate when hate is armed and pissed? 16/
