Naw Bitch Make America Great Again
Supporters of President Trump attend the 1000000 MAGA March in Washington, D.C., on Saturday. Jacquelyn Martin/AP hibernate caption
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Jacquelyn Martin/AP
Supporters of President Trump attend the Meg MAGA March in Washington, D.C., on Saturday.
Jacquelyn Martin/AP
How many of President Trump's supporters swarmed into Washington, D.C., this weekend for the Million MAGA March? More than a million, as the White House says? Hundreds of thousands, as the president asserts? Perchance 10,000 or and then, as local government approximate?
The answer: It doesn't matter.
The nation's political tribalism defies debate. Throngs of largely mask-free, conspiracy-immersed Americans turned the city'south Freedom Plaza into an alternate reality on Sat. Within that zone, there was no question that they numbered a one thousand thousand. Trump did not lose the ballot; information technology was stolen. Antifa is the nation's gravest threat. Socialism is lurking around the corner. The coronavirus pandemic is hype. Children are being trafficked by a cabal of global elites. And the nation's valiant, outnumbered police force are under attack.
Parents bedecked in red, white and blueish Trump paraphernalia said they brought their children to see a celebrated twenty-four hours, the day the patriots would "take back America." One human being marched in Old Glory underpants and cypher else. A woman in a white Brand America Neat Again ballgown fielded selfie requests. An elderly marcher completed her crisp, preppy look with a hat inscribed with Q, for the mass mirage known as QAnon.
Dozens of Proud Boys, members of a violent gang of self-described Western chauvinists, knelt together in a somber prayer, then hopped around while chanting "F--- antifa!" Minutes into the march, their rowdy procession abruptly halted for a pit finish at a Walgreens.
The crowd was extraordinarily diverse for a right-fly issue. Blackness, Latino, Asian and Middle Eastern fans of the president walked aslope white nationalists, boogaloo boys and marchers with Confederate flags. The road ran along a wall where someone had slapped a sticker over existing graffiti, turning "Black Lives Thing" into "Trump Lives Matter."
"Expect around," said David North, who, along with his wife, Julie, drove all night from eastern Tennessee to attend. "Is this fringe?"
In a way, that's the question: Is "fringe" still accurate if debunked ideas are endorsed by seventy 1000000 voters?
Extremism analysts say the hastily organized effort to assemble the right under a unmarried banner — for now it'due south "End the Steal" — is a chilling reminder of the Unite the Correct rally in Charlottesville, Va., in 2017. They say the thousands who showed up Saturday stand for countless others who followed via social media, donated to travel funds or watched from domicile — on Fox News, for those with a human foot still in reality, on InfoWars-style channels, for the fully inculcated.
Brian Levin, a California-based hate and extremism researcher, called the Million MAGA March the debut of the pro-Trump insurgency, a preview of the "multiheaded Hydra" of far-right opposition expected when President-elect Joe Biden takes function.
Levin said the loyalists who showed up in Washington are merely the public face. The bigger business organisation, he said, are the extremists "whose names we don't know notwithstanding," plotting in the shadows.
"Irrespective of the oversupply," Levin said, "the fact that this is beingness organized shows that the hard, hard right is angling for some kind of activeness to show that they have some potency."
This petri dish of conspiracy and extremism was at Trump'southward doorstep, so naturally he had to come say hello. Making skillful on a tease he tweeted the day before, Trump's motorcade snaked effectually Freedom Plaza in a surprise visit that thrilled his supporters.
Among the spectators was Patty Timmons, who'd flown in from Indiana on a last-minute impulse. She was just arriving at the plaza when she heard the ruckus over the motorcade.
"Nosotros ran out like, 'Oh, my gosh, it'south President Trump!' We tried to run to see him, but we saw the whole parade of security and everything else that follows him," Timmons said. "But and so he did a U-turn and he started coming effectually the other manner and everybody was and so excited. Because, really, they only love him. They genuinely love this president."
In her case, Timmons said, the amore for Trump developed gradually. He wasn't her pick in the Republican primaries, simply she took a risk and voted for him in 2016.
"At starting time I idea it was a vanity project, to be honest. I idea, 'OK, well Trump'southward Trump. He'due south e'er been Trump,' " Timmons said. "Merely I really do recall that, in the process, he fell in love with the crusade and with the American people. And he's going to fight for us merely like he said he would."
Timmons said she believes there was fraud in the election, only she also sees the writing on the wall: Biden is president-elect. She seemed to have come to Washington more for a good day than a fight. She said she wanted to honor a president she sees as protecting her family unit's American dream, which began when her parents arrived from the Philippines in 1967 with iv young daughters.
Today, Timmons said, she's an American baron in charge of a successful company — an immigrant fairy tale, as long as you don't spoil the ending by pointing out that Trump'due south policies mean that her parents' journey might exist far more difficult, if not impossible, today.
"At that place's some people who are absolutely fix to fight, really gear up to lay down their lives for this president and what he'due south washed," Timmons said. "And then at that place are those who just really desire to give thanks him and show that we loved him and that we do beloved him."
The adulation was evident all over the plaza. Trump socks with fiddling tufts of yellowish fuzz for his signature coif. Trump masks, Trump racing suits, Trump jackets studded with rhinestones. The marchers held aloft huge Trump flags that fluttered in the cool breeze. "4 more years!" they chanted. Some chimed in with "Viii more years!"
With counterprotesters mostly confined to another area, there were few punctures to the bubble of Trumpworld. On ane street corner, a lone adult female in a Biden cap heckled the marchers every bit they walked by: "Farewell, losers! Bye, old people without masks who deny scientific discipline! Bye, racists! Farewell, goodbye!"
The tensions worsened after nightfall, spiraling into brawls and the reported stabbing of a beau. Clusters of Black Lives Matter and antifascist activists massed in front of downtown hotels where they knew the Trump supporters were staying. The bulletin was clear: Your rally is over and you're non welcome in these streets.
In each case, constabulary officers formed cordons in front of the hotels, a human barrier between the warring sides. The cordon outside one of the hotels extended to an adjacent "gentlemen'due south lodge." As Trump supporters and black-clad antifascists screamed insults at one another, a few strippers from the club came outside for a smoke pause and ended up twerking for the oversupply. Because 2020 is nothing if not on the olfactory organ, at near that fourth dimension a human on a bicycle rolled up with Jefferson Airplane's "White Rabbit" blasting from a speaker: When logic and proportion / Have fallen sloppy expressionless ...
The MAGA guys, some openly intoxicated, looked like aroused bulls that were prevented by the constabulary from charging. "Come at me!" they yelled from behind their cordons. The leftists, meanwhile, reveled in their dwelling-courtroom reward, steps away from a White House that before long will be under new direction, a reality that hadn't quite sunken in for the marchers.
"This is D.C., bitch!" one counterprotester taunted the penned-in MAGA crowd. "This is our city."
Source: https://www.npr.org/2020/11/15/935181031/a-march-without-millions-is-still-a-worrying-sign-of-a-nation-divided
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