Well, the Trump Liberation Army (TLA) finally came rolling in to my little hometown of Annapolis last Saturday. A couple hundred people, mostly from Baltimore, descended on Maryland’s capital city like a flock of noisy grackles, using the pandemic as an excuse for their very own alt-right play date. American flags were worn and waved, along with the yellow, coiled snake, Gadsden “Don’t Tread On me” flags that many of the false patriots like to carry these days. Trump 2020 signs, hats, shirts, towels, and bumper stickers were everywhere. The mood was festively tense and there were plenty of police to make sure that no one got out-of-hand. And it didn’t.
How did such an event come together, you ask? Well, through Facebook, of course. There are Facebook liberation groups popping up like nasty viruses all over the country. They come across like legitimate homegrown people who are pissed off and aren’t going to take it anymore. They are demanding that America be reopened, so they can get back to work and pay the bills. The one in Maryland was ostensibly put together by an angry nurse who works in an empty hospital somewhere.
But Facebook has become a political tool and it turns out that maybe we should be paying these folks a bit closer attention. A recent Washington Post expose uncovered the alarming fact that these seemingly genuine posses are being funded to the tune of millions of dollars by a nefarious group called Convention of States whose donors are a who’s who of big-time Trump supporters, like billionaire hedge fund manager, Robert Mercer; the acting Director of U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services, Ken Cuccinelli; the Secretary of Housing and Urban Development, Ben Carson; and Trump’s dingbat Secretary of Education, Betsy Devos. They have a long and murky history of funding the Tea Party, Obama haters, white supremacists. and gun nuts.
The TLA swept into our quiet Colonial city by the Chesapeake Bay as if celebrating VC (Victory Corona) Day. Most of the mob came in their own personal vehicles, led by some badass trucks with loud boat horns and angry white men shouting “Stop the Tyranny!” over amplified speakers. But they were preaching to their own unhappy choir, because other than a few well-mannered locals standing peacefully with their own signs in support of Republican Governor Hogan’s lockdown measures, the sane and sensible people of Annapolis were back in the safety of their homes. Most Annapoltans never knew the protest even came to town until they saw it on the evening news. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=67AfXbBBS_8
The press was there, of course, to cover the event as if the sky was falling. They frantically filmed and waved their boom mics into people’s faces, shouting questions but staying a safe distance away from the protesters. They looked like people recording the antics of the large animals in a zoo.
At first, I asked myself: Why do we spend so much time worrying about a small group of disgruntled people — regardless of their political affiliation? Their numbers when compared to the six million people living in Maryland make them utterly irrelevant.
At the same time, I think these folks have the right to drive around town honking their horns and walking the streets protesting, as long as they exercise the proper social distancing. I’m a child of the 70s and was arrested in D.C many years ago, protesting against the Vietnam War. I’m a big fan of civil disobedience. But the current situation is dramatically different because the protesters could be carrying a highly infectious disease that could kill others. And to their credit, most of the TLA foot soldiers in Annapolis maintained a proper distance.
Those that didn’t should have been dispersed and if they refused to leave, they should have been fined because to allow them to congregate endangered public safety and could ultimately overload the already shaky hospital situation. Freedom of speech does not trump public safety.
But there was more to the protest than met the eye.
First off, the crowd was not homogeneous.
Yes, there were a ton of tinfoil and red MAGA hat Trumpsters, and they exhibited full-on, despicable white racist behavior, like flashing that stupid-ass white power “okay” hand signal.
But there were also many people who were hungry, sick, and scared, and they just wanted to go back to work so they can feed and protect their families.
There were some who have struggled and clawed their whole lives to create a small business, and now in one short month it’s all gone.
There were people who thought the masks were to protect them from catching the virus, rather than infecting others, and felt that the government was exceeding its authority. A lot of folks kept shouting that getting sick was a personal choice. Apparently they missed the part about spreading the virus to those who choose not to get sick.
Some folks just wanted to go fishing or get their hair done. Others really wanted to go back to church.
There were nurses who worked in small, rural health facilities around the state that are virtually empty — no virus patients — and yet they can’t serve the public unless it’s COVID-19 related. This group thus sees the shutdown as some sort of grand conspiracy.
There were Veterans — a traditionally ornery bunch — who felt like they volunteered to serve their country in Korea and Vietnam in order to protect our liberty, and now their government was taking away that liberty. They said they were more than willing to take a virus for their country.
My wife Inna who is way smarter than I will ever be, and who actually takes the time to listen to those with whom she disagrees, sees this outpouring of anger as a product of two serious shortcomings in our society.
First and foremost, is education. People don’t understand basic science. And so they see everything that’s happening to them as a giant government conspiracy to fuck them over.
And second, our capitalist system has left a lot of people behind who can’t feed and provide for themselves and their families, even in the best of times. They know they are totally screwed and they don’t have a backup plan. They don’t have any savings or health care. Their lives are a mess. They live in little shitboxes with no yards. They can’t just go outside and play. They can’t afford Netflix or premium cable. They can’t even spell luxury. They don’t have the physical or mental resources to research the facts. And they are desperate and truly terrified.
Here’s an example of the utter disconnect. A guy lives down in Culvert County. He hasn’t heard about any cases of the virus there. [There have been 113 confirmed cases and 3 deaths in Calvert, but what the hell does he know?] The hospitals are empty. He has heard the doctors and nurses are just sitting around twiddling their toes. So, why are all the businesses closed? Why can’t he go to the bar, have a few beers, and eat some goddamn crabs? Ignoring the fact that COVID-19 is already in his neck of the woods, he doesn’t understand that if the businesses in the rural parts of the state open, then all the city folk will come knocking, and in turn further spread the disease from the city to the country.
And when these folks see the stock market going up as their lives crash and burn, what are they supposed to think? And when they don’t get a relief check but big business gets millions right away, are they wrong to want to riot?
In the end, this virus has exposed how a lot of Americans have been left behind for many, many years. They got a half-assed education. They made some very poor life decisions. They don’t have a good job. They don’t have marketable skills. They don’t have health care. And everybody who is doing well seems to be getting richer and richer and laughing at them. As someone recently wrote, we all might be in the same storm, but we are definitely not in the same boat.
I do think the coverage these protests have been given is absurd because it makes it seem like large numbers of people are sympathetic to their cause, when in point of fact, most of Maryland’s citizens understand the real threat — or at least believe it’s wise to err on the side of caution — when it comes to a fast-spreading virus, and they are acting responsibly for the benefit of all Marylanders. This was evidenced by the fact that when the TLA scheduled a repeat performance the following Monday, two trucks, three people, and a little dog showed up. But the media was there in droves and that’s a big part of the problem because they invariably focuses on the batshit crazies in the group. And that makes it easy for us to miss the people truly hurting in the midst of the repellent Trump Revival Road Show.
Freedom has little to do with loudly tooting your horn over and over again. But people in peril often flock to the person who yells the loudest. Unfortunately, that’s always the President of the United States, Donald “Dipshit” Trump.
I’m not sure about much these days, but I’ll bet you dollars to doughnuts that if these protesters got their wish, and everything was suddenly open for business, most folks — at least the ones in Maryland — would still stay at home until there’s a proven vaccine. And, unfortunately, that aint happening anytime soon.
