Civil Discourse

As I have said here many times, there is a legitimate conversation to be had about the proper amount of restriction on commerce and liberty in response to an infectious disease epidemic at any particular place and time. Should the governor of Iowexas allow arts and crafts stores to re-open, subject to distancing restrictions? Did Calevada go too far by closing beaches? What amount of economic cost, loneliness, boredom and stress is worth it to reduce the rate of infection?

However, what this discussion has to do with body armor, combat fatigues, and semi-automatic weapons eludes me. If you show up at my door and say you want to have a debate with me while carrying an AR-15 with a 30 round magazine and wearing a bullet proof vest I'm not taking that as an invitation to disagree with you.

It turns out that these "demonstrations" are being funded and organized by far-right extremists, including ammosexuals who think the NRA is too liberal, a Michigan organization that is part of the Trump campaign apparatus (yes), an organization tied to Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos, White House economic advisor Stephen Moore, and the Koch brothers. The latter aren't necessarily pushing the firearm angle but they are getting it, along with some confederate battle flags and swastikas.

Bandy Lee views this in the frame of the cult of personality around the insane idiot in the White House.

When Donald Trump suggests that the virus be taken as a 'hoax', that people gather in churches or that people protest for their own sacrifice, he is actually testing people's loyalty to the 'laws' of his mind over the laws of nature, or even impulse for survival. The more he abuses them, the greater their devotion grows, since the psychological cost of admitting their mistake is ever higher — and so it becomes easier to dig a well of unreality than to see the obvious truth.

But where is this ultimately leading?

You may have noticed that the more the president abuses his "base," the more they idolize him and obey what he says. He frames risking lives in service of him, so as to prop up his ruined economy and increase his re-election prospects, as "liberation" — and they come out in defiance of their own protection, demanding "choice." He is practicing his "total authority" and putting his armed troops in the streets. We would be mistaken to believe he will leave, or even let a losing election happen in the first place. Abuse of the mind is the worst kind, for you make people do what you wish against their own interests, and even extreme physical abuse becomes possible. He is not only getting away with shooting someone on Fifth Avenue, but a whole massacre.

The only solution is to remove him.