Armed Fragility Threatens Democracy More Than Ever
By: Jessica Wildfire
Tags: Culture, Politics, Equality, Society, History

Armed Fragility Threatens Democracy More Than Ever

More militias will try to overthrow governments.

Photo by Maxim Potkin on Unsplash

A dozen men were arrested this week, after the FBI uncovered a plot to storm the Michigan state capitol with 200 armed snowflakes. Their plan was to take the governor hostage and put her on trial.

Her crime? Treason, they said.

She closed their gyms, to prevent the spread of a deadly virus.

America condones armed fragility.

Of course an uprising would brew in Michigan.

We’re talking about a state where protestors shouted in police officers’ faces without fear back in May, while militia waited outside with assault rifles. They wanted their stores open again. Some of them had legitimate concerns about their jobs. But a lot of them just didn’t like being told what to do. They couldn’t handle a few weeks without sports bars.

This is straight up fragility.

It’s the inability to deal with the slightest hardship. It’s the refusal to make the smallest sacrifice for a greater good.

Now it has weapons, and a sympathetic ear in the oval office.

Militias are snowflakes with guns.

Most militias border on terrorist organizations. Some of them have enough firepower to start a war.

But they have the emotional intelligence of children.

It’s a dangerous combination.

They threaten violence over everything from the second amendment to temporary closings of businesses for public health. They advocate for suppression of other people’s rights, namely women and minority groups. They only stand for one thing:

They celebrate their own superiority.

Once charged with defending our rights, they do nothing now except complain about infringements against their own personal freedoms, which often come at the cost of everyone else’s.

We’re creating a dangerous precedent.

Fragile white people have gotten away with a lot this year.

They’ve been allowed to threaten state governments. They’ve been allowed to spread a deadly virus around the country. They’ve been allowed to have meltdowns in public over everything from masks to black people who stand up for their rights. They’ve been allowed to wave guns at protestors. They’ve been allowed to shoot people in the streets.

On rare occasions, they’re held accountable. When that happens, our president leaps to their defense on Twitter.

The president wanted this to happen.

Trump has complained for months about Antifa.

But when an actual right wing militant group tries to overthrow the government, he says absolutely nothing.

It doesn’t fit his narrative.

He wanted a group to cause problems like this right before the election, and strike fear into the hearts of liberals everywhere. What he didn’t want was for them to get caught beforehand.

This isn’t a good example to set for the rest of the country. It sends the message that white fragility can go unchecked. Unfortunately, this is exactly the message the president intends to send.

It’s a warmup for November.

We’ve seen this coming for a while.

The president and other GOP politicians have spent the last four years dog whistling all kinds of armed militia groups. They weave code words into their public remarks and then gaslight the media when they’re called out. “You’re overreacting,” they say.

“You’re sowing discord,” they say.

Trump has been the kindest president ever to white supremacists and anti-government conspiracy theorists. He does a delicate dance of legitimizing their discourse without being too direct.

You can bet he has help.

Trump’s staff is stacked with white supremacists who are well-versed in the language of the dog whistle.

Double standards are on purpose.

Under Trump, white people are applauded for displaying their rage alongside a defiant pride in their race. They define whiteness in the most toxic ways. For them it’s all about Nazi flags and confederate statues.

It’s about making life unbearable for everyone else.

You can protest all day long about anything, as long as you’re white. You can break all the rules. You can tailgate people on the highway. You can drive recklessly. You can intimidate people. You can have all the guns and hamburgers you want.

But if you’re black, or a woman?

You can’t protest anywhere, anytime of day. You have to apply for a permit. You have to schedule your protest on a Saturday morning, and you have to ask nicely. If you start to get angry about actual injustice, you’ll get punished with curfews and teargas, or worse.

This isn’t accidental.

It’s not a blind spot. It’s not something that Donald Trump and his pals Lindsey and Mitch are too blind to see on their own. They know exactly what they’re doing. They always have.

Politicians invite the rioting they condemn.

Donald Trump loves political theater. Like his colleagues, he loves scapegoats more than anything.

So he provokes peaceful protestors.

He agitates them with insults and lies. He tacitly encourages militias and corrupt law enforcement to show up to nonviolent demonstrations and goad them. When that doesn’t work, they start in with the tear gas and the rubber bullets. They stab people’s tires.

We’ve seen the videos.

Trump condemns riots and looting. But he actually loves when this happens. It’s exactly what he wants.

It gives him an excuse to vilify an entire movement. Meanwhile, it draws attention away from the real threats to democracy, the guys planning to kidnap governors who close their gyms.

Armed fragility doesn’t listen to reason.

I’m getting a little tired of the pleas for civil discourse from moderates. They keep telling liberals that the current toxicity is our fault, because apparently we didn’t play nice enough with hate groups.

They’re starting to sound a little like Neville Chamberlain.

Quick history lesson: If you don’t know, Chamberlain was the prime minister prior to WWII, who practiced a policy of appeasement toward early Nazi Germany, which only emboldened Hitler and his followers. He made the fatal mistake of being nice to sociopaths.

You can’t make friends with hate.

Chamberlain’s main problem was that he tried to befriend hate mongers. He used his empathy on the wrong people. He tried to understand propaganda and intolerance, and make a place for it.

The Nazis were a bunch of emotionally fragile children, who just happened to have a lot of tanks and airplanes.

If you really understand history, you know better.

Fragility doesn’t listen to reason. When fragility teams up with aggression and weapons, you can’t make a place for it.

You can’t excuse it. You can’t wag your finger at people who call it out, and stand up against it.

You always have to stand up.

History is trying to teach us a lesson here. Historians and political scientists have been telling us for four years now, Trump and the people he’s brought along are deeply dangerous to democracy.

We’re not going to solve this problem with politeness and civil discourse. Hate groups and armed militias aren’t interested in that.

They’re interested in kidnapping your governors.

They want to put them on trial for treason and execute them. They’ll talk about the constitution. They’ll abuse it. They’ll cite it as a key reason for everything they do.

But it’s really about their gyms and sports bars.

Don’t let a bunch of snowflakes with guns take your democracy.

Speak out. Donate. Organize.

Vote.