A View From Central Virginia

From a longtime TPM reader:

I live in Madison County in Central Virginia, about 80 miles southwest of DC. Charlottesville and Albemarle County excepted, this is industrial-strength Trump country. … Yesterday’s  election unsettled me, a lot. Despite decisive wins across the board a palpable, consuming rage drives Republican energy here, a rage that mere victory will not sate.

There’s a savagery in the opposition to President Biden and to the Democratic Party and its voters that seems to bubble up from a deeper well. I’d describe it as men’s rights anger, a desire for a type of conservative male dominance over all aspects of society, government, and culture, rooted in a specific strain of white evangelical arrogance. … It’s Trumpism distilled to 150 proof, what with its celebration and gaslighting of January 6th, barely concealed threats of violence, and constant invocations of Marjorie Taylor Greene’s  “1776 moment.”

Basically, it boils down to the idea that white conservative men can do whatever, whenever, and to whomever they want without consequences as just compensation for the world stolen from them by the effete, barely human Democrat Party-liberal-Marxist-communists, all of whom must be jailed and tried for treason (they’re deadly serious about this). It’s much more than “toxic masculinity,” it’s fascism. And it’s here openly and unabashedly.

I don’t know where this is headed, but it’s nowhere good. And it scares the shit out of me.