Mass suicides don’t just spontaneously occur. It’s not like a group of people who hardly know each other just get together and all of a sudden they just all begin killing themselves. No, mass suicides can only occur among people who harbor similarly strong — and often kooky — systems of beliefs.
And when those systems of beliefs are of a political or religious bent — if they are both, that’s much the better — it causes a kind of rigidity of thinking that can prove dangerous. There are some of our fellow citizens who (due to that aforementioned rigidity) are in pain and turmoil, are angry and outraged — and, most importantly, they just don’t know what the hell to do. They’re hurtin’.
The MAGAs made no plans for this: losing. And now that they have lost, they’re all really lost. Perhaps the historical parallel that comes to mind is how these people — today in their abject defeat — must feel similar to how the traitors of the Confederacy felt after Appomattox Court House. The “Cause” was lost — and for some the weight of it was too much to bear. They couldn’t bear losing, not only the war but their cherished and privileged way of life. Many a confederate officer went home so dejected over the loss that many came close to taking their own lives, and some of them actually did.
At present there’s a “call-to-arms” circulating around right-wing media. Some of the wackier types are starting to ask the question “Are you willing to die for President Trump?”And they are getting back answers of an empathic “YES!” from the MAGA faithful. What the questioners are really asking is, “Are you willing to die to protect your privileged way of life?” If too dazed and depressed people begin to answer “yes” to the question, things could get out of hand and downright frightening.
If a large cohort of people pledge their allegiance to willingly die for the Trump “Cause,” then that means they’re also probably willing to kill in service of it — which is also in line with their violent thinking and beliefs. Such beliefs can potentially make these folks on the political and mental fringes a danger to themselves and the Republic.
If this “Die for Trump” meme takes hold and grows, some people who are already desperate (and perhaps unbalanced to boot) are going to willingly subscribe to handing their very lives over to a mentally unbalanced conman. And in the end — after the coup attempt has failed — he’ll only have one last thing left to tell them: Commit mass suicide.
O.K., so of course that sounds outlandish. I could just be predicting gloom and doom as a kind of punishment for those so dense they’ll believe anything and are prone to acting out en masse if signaled to do so by their feckless leader. The problem is, these true believers will do just about anything, as long as it sounds somehow vaguely patriotic and it comes from the lips of their mad leader, and that includes hurting fellow Americans.
On Inauguration Day there will be a counter-event hosted by right-wingers in Washington. This of course is going to be an open-carry, mask-optional event, with thousands, if not hundreds of thousands, of the mad MAGA-hat faithful in attendance as they to gather to mourn their loss and be told over and over again that the election was stolen.
But here’s where the slope can get slippery: Many of these folks have spent their adult lives rejecting rationality and finding comfort in whatever fantastical version of the truth they are being spoon-fed by any manipulator that happens along, and this time they’re at the mercy of a master of the craft. Their collective will to resist calls for widespread mayhem that will be made by one provocative speaker after the next, ending with a plea from Trump himself, will be nil.
Some on the aroused crowd will do whatever it is they are told to do, and that could prove catastrophic. I don’t take any satisfaction in predicting violence by any — on the right or the left — but some of these lost souls, with their blood boiling, might react violently during or after such an event and if that’s the case blood might flow in the gutters of Washington, D.C.
While we on the left are so busy spending our time feeling good, celebrating our hard-won victory (as we should), we need to keep in mind the abject agony other Americans are currently experiencing. Millions of them — and to them their pain and feelings are just as real and legitimate as those we hold so dear.
All we can do is pray they come to their senses and come up with a reason to live again, if for no other reason than to fight another day, and perhaps win.
