For At Least One Day, MAGA Was Reduced To MehGA

By DICK POLMAN

Allow me to update Robert Duvall in Apocalypse Now:

I love the smell of failed fascism in the morning.

Normally, it’s not newsworthy to report that a few hundred losers wandered around some greensward in the shadow of the U.S. Capitol – in this cacophonous land of ours, it’s easy to corral some folks to rally for just about anything, including horse medicine – but Saturday, Sept. 18, was surely special. How pleasing it was to see MAGA be reduced to mehGA.

The guy who organized the rally seeking “justice” for the Capitol insurrectionists – a former Trump campaign aide, natch – had promised something sensational. He recently said, “It’s going to be huge … We’re going back to the Capitol, right where it started” in order to “push back against the phony narrative that there was an insurrection.” (“Phony narrative” versus what we saw with our own eyes.) He promised high-profile speakers, including Republican members of Congress. Meanwhile, Trump predictably pumped some of his own hot air into the balloon, declaring that the arrested insurrectionists, whom he lauded as “tremendous people, tremendous people” have been “persecuted so unfairly.”

Oh well. The rally tally maxed out at around 400.

Spinal Tap drew a bigger crowd when it had second billing on a puppet show.

Heck, you’d get more people at 7-Eleven if they offered free Slurpees.

The “Justice for J6” organizer, Matt Braynard – best known, if at all, for ginning up phony election fraud data in 2020 swing states – roped in less people (400) than the number of Jan. 6 arrestees (643). Not a single elected Republican thought it prudent to show up and rub shoulders with the likes of rally-goer Lori Smith of Atlanta, who told the press that “if a nuclear bomb dropped on that Capitol building, I would celebrate.” Or rally-goer Eugene Sibick, whose son is in jail for assaulting a cop on Jan. 6. He said that his son is not happy with the prison’s bologna sandwiches.

Any number of Big Lie boosters were undoubtedly deterred from attending once they realized that the buttressed security forces had no intention of allowing feces to be smeared a second time inside the citadel of democracy. That was a one-shot deal. Flying the racist Confederate flag was a one-shot deal. Marauding around, screaming for Mike Pence’s neck and Nancy Pelosi’s blood, was a one-shot deal. Beating a cop to death was a one-shot deal.

Various right-wing tough-guy groups, apprised in advance of the heavy police presence, told their acolytes that it would be wise to stay away. And similar rallies, scheduled elsewhere, were also busts. Around 15 “patriots” bothered to show up in Seattle, and around 20 surfaced down in Charlotte.

Of course, this doesn’t mean that MAGA mania has suddenly evaporated; or that multitudes have scrapped their fantasy that the ’20 election was “stolen,” or that they no longer believe the violence of Jan. 6 was actually faked in a Deep State video co-produced by Dr. Fauci, but at least for one blessed day, we could take a welcome breather.

A mere 400 people. No word yet on whether Trump will wield his Sharpie to sketch an extra million.

Dick Polman, a veteran national political columnist based in Philadelphia and a Writer in Residence at the University of Pennsylvania, writes at DickPolman.net. Email him at dickpolman7@gmail.com.

From The Progressive Populist, October 15, 2021

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