sure it is
Almost everyone wants to talk about 2016 and how they’d been waiting for someone like Trump to come along with the guts to say what they were thinking but they weren’t “allowed” to say out loud. “Is he an asshole? Sure. But he’s our asshole,” one man emphatically told me, and those around him nodded in agreement. They love that Trump created a space to speak their minds, which, in many cases, means being able to spout racist, sexist, hate speech that was all but forbidden in public life just a decade ago.
These individuals fully embrace the former president’s crass, offensive, disrespectful way of speaking, and imitate it, too. The mainstream media does not show the obscenity and profanity of these rallies, but it is everywhere and, for me, a defining characteristic of these events.
“FUCK BIDEN” flags are still for sale from most vendors (even though Joe Biden dropped out of the race weeks ago) and appear on cars across the parking lots near the venues. Families wear matching T-shirts reading, “The Hoe is worse than Joe.” Kids wander around in “No more bullshit” visors with fake Trump hair attached, and browse bumper stickers that read, “I like big boobs and small government,” or show a naked woman’s torso with pistols resting on her hard nipples and the slogan “I <3 guns, titties, & whiskey.” After the assassination attempt in July, graphics featuring Trump with two raised middle fingers have popped on every type of merchandise you can imagine with taunts like, “You missed, BITCHES.”
The people I chat with drop slurs into our conversations, often with the glee of teens testing their parents’ boundaries. Since Kamala Harris has become the Democratic nominee for president, the men I interview at every event tell me that she got to where she is “on her knees.” They shift from foot to foot as they say it to me, knowing it’s offensive, and wait for my reaction. As someone who has endured a career full of misogyny and sexual harassment, I feel waves of disgust and anger when I hear these comments, but I just blink, remain blank-faced, and wait for them to continue.
Conspiracy theories and misinformation are threaded through every conversation I have:
The assassination attempt was an inside job.
Obama is still running the government.
People in the country illegally are being given vast sums of money, benefits, houses and free education.
Crime is at an all-time high.
Antifa has burned major American cities to the ground.
There is a globalist cabal in control of everything.
The discussions are infused with dehumanizing language. Immigrants are a common target for their attacks and, as someone married to one, I sometimes physically bite my tongue to keep from responding. As the attendees bemoan the alleged “border invasion,” they simultaneously (and disingenuously) claim that they would welcome these people if they came to this country “the right way.”
Minorities are also frequently disparaged by Trump’s white fans while we’re talking, but there are some non-white attendees at these rallies, and they are celebrated. Trump supporters enthusiastically point out the “diversity” of the movement and even take cringey selfies with the “Koreans for Trump” group that seems to show up at every event I attend.
No one I talk to believes there will be a peaceful transfer of power if Trump loses the election in November. Lots of people mention “civil war” (though no one volunteers to fight it), “civil unrest,” or “the end of America as we know it” and “the fall of the American empire.” They, like many people across the political spectrum, see this election as determining whether America survives.
The conversations I’ve had over the last three months have made it clear to me that there is a large, unified movement committed to the destruction of American democracy. This campaign claims to want to save our country — to make it great again — but it is working to do exactly the opposite. These rally goers cheerfully and earnestly call themselves “patriots,” but true patriotism is nothing like the hateful, authoritarian, anti-institutional platform they support, and I believe many of these people do not grasp this — or how they are being used.
They're a bunch of cunts who support a cunt, and the more cuntish Trump acts, the more they support him