The local impact of Donald Trump: "They reshaped government in the MAGA image -- and it caused chaos"

[marmar]

The local impact of Donald Trump: "They reshaped government in the MAGA image — and it caused chaos"
In "Chaos Comes Calling," Sasha Abramsky shows how ugly national politics hurt local communities — and how to heal

By Amanda Marcotte
Senior Writer
Published September 3, 2024 5:45AM (EDT)


(Salon) From the presidential election to the insurrection at the Capitol, Donald Trump and the MAGA movement are usually portrayed as a national news story. But the impact it's had on local politics is just as serious — and often quite devastating. Taking advantage of the low turnout at local elections, QAnoners, election deniers, and anti-vaccination extremists have been able to gain power on city councils and school boards, where they often proceed to wreak havoc on the local community.

In "Chaos Comes Calling: The Battle Against the Far-Right Takeover of Small-Town America," journalist Sasha Abramsky documents how two rural communities in the Pacific Northwest were overwhelmed by far-right radicals. It's a sobering story, but also one that offers hope. Concerned citizens in Clallam County, Washington, beat back the MAGA menace, offering a model for others looking to protect their communities, whether their immediate town or the nation. Abramsky spoke with Salon about his work and why it matters for the future.

What communities did you decide to follow for this book, and why?

The book is focused mainly on two communities in the Northwest. One is in the far north of California, called Shasta County. The other one is on the Olympic Peninsula in Washington and the county is Clallam, where I focused on a small town called Sequim. They both had an extraordinary lurch rightward that gathered pace during the pandemic. Shasta County had long been right-wing, with a militia presence and the idea of seceding from the rest of California. Then the pandemic debates over social distancing and school closures and then the vaccines turbocharged everything. There was this purge, where moderate Republicans who had been in charge of the county beforehand lost out to the hard-right: Republicans who were aligned with the militia movement, who were spouting QAnon theories and who were very involved in the MAGA movement.

....(snip)....

You retell a story from Forks, Washington, where rumors that "antifa" was coming to town got whipped up in 2020. An innocent family was threatened. What were people thinking, that they were ready to believe antifa was invading their small town?

..... In small towns around the country, these rumors took off that the big city anarchists were coming into the small communities to burn them down. Racial rumors started that people were coming to attack white folk. On the Olympic Peninsula, a few days into the protests, a rumor starts that a white school bus is going to come into town filled with people who are "antifa." And they're going to burn the local communities down. Unfortunately, this mixed-race family comes in looking only to camp and to escape from the pandemic a little bit in the woods. They get stopped by locals who are terrified that they are "antifa." They're followed into the woods by dozens of mainly young men on all-terrain vehicles with guns, in an incredibly remote part of the country. There's all the potential for a complete tragedy. There's all the potential for a lynching. Now it does get diffused in the end, after the sheriffs come in and convince the young guys to go home. But this family was at risk of serious physical harm because of this uncontrolled rumor mill. ...............(more)

https://www.salon.com/2024/09/03/the-local-impact-of-donald-trump-reshaped-government-in-the-maga-image--and-it-caused-chaos/

[raging moderate]

1. I found this attitude in some small towns back in the 70's.

As a public school speech therapist assigned to several very small isolated Southern Illinois towns in the 70's, I listened to some residents saying that they would chase and beat up any Black people if they ever found any near their towns. They assumed that any Black people would be there to attack and rob and wreck things. Not all of the residents were like that. When I worked briefly on the volunteer ambulance crew of one town, those wonderful ambulance crew volunteers were very sad that a Black family they had rescued from a crash were at first terrified of the ambulance crew volunteers because they knew that many residents in that area hated Black people. Some of the racist people also expressed the belief that Jewish people were all rich and snobbish and dishonest. I had grown up in a mostly Jewish neighborhood, and they were shocked and sceptical when I told them that I had known many nice poor Jewish people. One of these people tried to convince my husband and me that the Nazis really were fine people, and the Holocaust had not really happened. These people also spoke reverently about a retired biology teacher who had "proven" that the evolutionary theory was false.

[2naSalit]

2. The fact that they are...

Willingly fomenting groupthink in such a way is why they are dangerous and need to be fragmented to the point of dissipation.