The responses to the Trump verdict offer an instructive - and alarming - reminder of what defines the American Right today: They are out for bloody retaliation, all dressed up as patriotism.
According to the Right, the verdict constitutes the culmination of an evil campaign of leftist forces not just against Trump, but against America itself: The once great nation, in decline and under siege – high time for “patriots” to rise up and defend it, by whatever means. 2/
Rightwingers have decided that they are the country. The choice, therefore, isn’t partisanship or loyalty to the country. To them, the partisan divide maps perfectly onto the struggle between patriots and “Un-American” radicals for the survival of the nation. 3/
In that fundamental struggle, they are never the aggressors. If the Right is embracing a violent struggle for supremacy and a politics of revenge, they are telling us and themselves, then it’s because “the Left” made them do it. 4/
This is precisely the permission structure that has governed conservative politics for quite some time: “Real Americans” are constantly being victimized, made to suffer under the yoke of crazy leftist politics, besieged by “Un-American” forces of leftism. Time to fight back! 5/
Building up this violent threat from a “Left” that supposedly values nothing but victory over the enemy allows the Right to justify their actions within the established framework of conservative self-victimization. It allowed them to support Donald Trump in the first place. 6/
This has always been the Right’s argument for Trump. If “real America” is under siege, and its defenders have their backs against the wall in an all-out, Us vs Them struggle for the survival of the nation that defines and consumes all politics, then Trump is precisely the right leader. 7/
Trump doesn’t just sympathize with the (mostly white, mostly male) grievance and anger that defines the rightwing base, the desire for revenge – but shares it, revels in it, is consumed by it himself. It forms the core promise of Trumpism as a form of radical politics. 8/
The extremists, those who perceive the world entirely through the lens of a politics of revenge, are thoroughly in control of defining the problem, the agenda, the style of politics, and the political identity on the Right. And they long to get bloody.
@tzimmer_history Spot on. Roberts having the ethically-bankrupt Thomas give the green light to bump stocks before the election is part of it. #SCOTUSIsCorrupt