Culture Crash

When I heard the gut-wrenching story yesterday about the car that drove through a holiday parade in Waukesha, Wisconsin, killing five people and injuring 40 so far, I had two, immediate thoughts.

The first was about the article I wrote here the other week on how Republican legislators in 13 states have proposed bills that limit penalties against people in cars who run down protestors.  The “rationale” is that some protestors are actually rioting and therefore a danger to the community and not protected by the “peaceful assembly” clause of the U.S. Constitution.

And yes, I know that there was no protest or riot in Waukesha, just a holiday parade – and yes, we don’t know yet the motivation behind this act, or if it could have been momentary holiday rage, ghastly panic, or even drunk speeding 30 MPH through an entire parade route, all before driving away to escape – but when your conservative fascist belief creates a culture where running down people in a crowd and getting away with it is given even just a hint of justified acceptability, for whatever “reason” you try to paint it with, then the various horrific ways that can go bad -- and that includes "I didn't mean anyone to get hurt" -- aren’t hard to see.  There’s a line that connects it all, whatever your intention. 

(And no, I specifically did not type that as “whatever your good intention,” because good intentions have nothing to do with driving a car into a crowd of people.)

To be clear, I'm not saying that these GOP state bills permit intentional killing.  They don't.  But when you open the door for a driver deciding for himself if a crowd is a threat, it is a door leading to hell.  Indeed, that driver may well be found guilty of a crime -- but the people would still be dead.  And when you create this culture of justifiable violence, even horrific accidents then become more commonplace, with the same tragic results.  And even non-accidents -- like on Saturday in Connecticut, the car driving into a crowd of people protesting the Rittenhouse verdict 

But that is the Republican Party culture these days, make no mistake.  Sometimes it’s with a car running into people that they’re okay with, sometimes it’s a congressman sending out a cartoon “joking” about killing a liberal colleague with a sword and threatening the President.  It’s the culture of acceptable violence they are creating.

And the other immediate thought turned to someone else I've been writing about, Rep. Madison Cawthorn (R-NC), boy fascist and Trump-in-training, who has been on quite a pseudo-macho jag lately, using the Bible six weeks ago to call "for us to stand up and say 'no' to your tyranny,” and then only a month ago entreated parents that “If you are raising a young man, please raise them to be a monster.”  And then –

-- only last week called for his supporters to “Be armed, be dangerous.”  (Adding, as a touch of apparent ironic whimsy, to also “be moral,” a personal inside joke no doubt since most people’s morality is vastly different from Madison Cawthorn’s call to raise monsters.)  And he not only celebrated the not-guilty verdict for Kyle Rittenhouse killing two people, but offered him an internship in his office.

I don’t know if Madison Cawthorn will be releasing a statement at any point expressing outrage and sadness at the murderous rampage by the car driver.  I don’t expect him to – that wouldn’t be on brand for his hate-filled posturing – but if for some reason it was impressed upon him by adults to do so and he listened to those who actually know a lot more than he does and who care about others, it won’t matter at all unless at the same time he retracts everything he said about being armed, being dangerous and being monsters. 

And if Cawthorn even tries to explain that this wasn’t what he was talking about – it was precisely what he was talking about, giving approval from a sitting congressman to be a monster, to be armed and be dangerous.  All to fight his faux-Biblical war against his view of “tyranny.”  After all, does he not think that using a car to drive into a crowd of people isn’t arming oneself?  And dangerous?  And being a monster?

But then, for all I know, this is exactly what Madison Cawthorn has been talking about.  I have no great reason to think otherwise, especially given his…well, you know, be armed, be dangerous, raise a monster, and Biblical rant about having a duty to be civically involved to save the country.

And for all I know, the Republican legislators who have proposed “hit and kill” bills limiting penalties for driving cars into crowds of people are okay with what happened in Waukesha because that’s the fascist culture they want and sometimes there will be victims.

I don’t think that’s the case.  But then, that’s because I’m not a fascist and don’t think that way.  At the very least, I deeply hope these Republican legislators, and Madison Cawthorn, and all the Gosars, Greenes, Boeberts, Hawleys, Cruzes, McConnells and Trumps of the world are horrified by this mass tragedy in Waukesha.

The problem with my hope about that is they haven’t shown themselves to be horrified or outraged by most mass tragedies over the past five years, including the January 6 insurrection to overthrow the United States.

They may all say “This is not what we meant” – but it was.  Because this in Waukesha, even at a holiday parade, even if the motivation of the driver was personal, was the natural outcome when this is the culture you create, when that is what you say, even if the end result is far worse that you thought might happen.