They are supreme examples of affluent MAGA (sorry, pun intended 😀). Prosperous, comfortable. No earthly reason they could possibly be mad about how their lives turned out, but still full of rage over real and imagined slights.

I think a lot of these people have never had to really answer for anything in their lives, so the concept is so foreign to them that it just doesn’t factor into their thinking. Like they just assume that God will immediately pull them aside to tell them they’re great and dish on their neighbors.

Yeah - turns out they‘re fine with being the world’s vigilante gang. It’s just the rule of law part that bothered them.

Maybe they were just guessing because they didn’t have technicolor yet.

There’s also a sort of kids playing video games aspect to it. Like it’s just some Grand Theft Auto knockoff about drug trafficking and they thought it’d be funny to blow up the survivors of their already illegal attack with another missile. I just can’t believe this is a real thing that‘s happening.

“We had to kill them because if they would have lived, they could have fought another day.”

We’re still talking about drug traffickers, right? I mean, how does a person get from “dating 15 year olds isn’t great but, ya know, come on” to “I want to cut off a drug trafficker’s arm and watch him bleed to death”?

“I guess it beats jail.”

I think his point is that both of the Republicans in TN-07 on Bluesky may have stayed home if everyone would just played it cool.

Technically though, the post isn’t wrong, right? I mean, he also can’t pardon Tunisian parking tickets, but still …

Yeah - I mean, maybe it’s not even worth saying anymore, but I think rural people have (or maybe had?) lost cultural power while retaining political power. It was probably inevitable that they’d eventually want to use that political power to retake cultural power.

i don’t know. The power the EC and Senate gives rural people these days doesn’t seem to be making them very happy.🤷‍♂️

But it is what it is. (I also sort of wonder how many of the people who adamantly oppose the EC now felt about it pre-Nov 2016 when everyone thought it baked in an advantage for HC.)

All I can think reading that is “What I want for Christmas is a Red Ryder BB gun with a compass in the stock and this thing which tells time. I don’t think a football is a very good gift for Christmas at all.”

I feel like if this is Trump’s high water mark, it’s going to be a lot like the end of COVID. It’s going to take some time for people to get used to feeling normal again. (And, also like COVID, there will be some lasting damage and likely permanent scarring.)