Sunday, December 13, 2020

Short Take: Proud of What?

Trump supporters rallied in Freedom Plaza as Marine One flew overhead, people in the crowd waving at their president and believing. They’re allowed to believe, just as Trump is allowed to enjoy the adoration of his most devoted supporters in his waning lame duck days. It’s not as if he would let any of them into Mar-a-Lago when he’s gone.

But true believers, for whom all the bluff of election fraud claims remains disconnected to all the courts, all the judges, all the Trump-appointed judges, who have rejected them, weren’t the only ones to step out for Trump. There was also a group of pathetic losers who call themselves Proud Boys, because losers always pick a name to make themselves feel better about being losers.

The Proud Boys fancy themselves a bunch of tough guys whose brute force and dumb manliness entitle them to make grunting noises, behave like fools and beat people up. So they did.

If their antics were limited to indecent exposure, we might be able to laugh at Darwin’s error. But they’re not.

At night, four people were stabbed near 11th Street and F Street Northwest, according to Douglas Buchanan, a spokesman for the city’s fire department. The mayor’s office said that the four were in critical condition, adding that two police officers also were hurt and taken to hospitals.

In Olympia, Washington, the force was more deadly, with one counterprotester being shot.

Unlike the black-clad counterprotesters, whose decision to challenge the Trump supporters was uselessly provocative, there is no pseudo-intellectual gibberish rationalizing these fat faux brutes. They don’t rationalize their fighting, their oafishness, their cause, which appear no deeper than Trump with some white supremacy thrown in.

Is there anything about this group that says anything other than violent, racist, overweight pathetic losers looking for an excuse to pretend they’re tough guys?

Much as Antifa begs for most of its problems and derision, at least the people involved believe they are serving a higher purpose. This is not to say there are no reasons to support conservative values or oppose progressives ones. Nor is this an excuse for white college kids wearing black to deliberately try to incite violence. Rather, this is a juxtaposition of bad and worse. It doesn’t get worse than the Proud Boys.

There are groups, deeply misguided but with at least some semblance of legitimate purpose, fighting for what they wrongly believe to be the Constitution. The Proud Boys enjoy no such legitimacy. They are just violent scum out for a good ol’ time and, when in a large enough group that they aren’t beaten up by people half their weight, pretend to be the embodiment of white manliness. They are trash.

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