At every service plaza I stopped at there were unmasked lines at the food-court- no social distancing… bus-loads of mennonites mixed with the masses.

In the rural areas there were numerous TRUMP signs (some with PENCE scratched out… ). The country has nearly 2/3 of a million fewer citizens since the last road trip I took… but certain segments of the population still worship the mass murderer that inflicted that carnage.

Obese high risk folks waited in line cheek to jowl for their Popeye’s chicken, no mask in areas where less than half the population was vaccinated… This was the week prior to the 4th of july weekend… The Delta variant was spreading.

I wore my mask, despite being vaccinated, because while the vaccine virtually eliminates the chance of getting seriously ill, there is still a chance you could catch it and spread it…

I got hostile glares from a couple in MAGA gear that waddled by me, covered in tattoos stretched to grotesque illegibility… I was knee-deep in deplorables.

I-70 brought me past a field where someone had taken a semi-truck trailer and parked it as a billboard- painted on it in large red letters was “TRUMP” with “God, Guns, No Socialism!” scrawled under it.

The drive was uneventful for the most part… I listened to a rather disappointing post-apocalypse sci-fi-ish Audible book by Margaret Atwater, or tuned the radio to a right-wing talk radio program- so it was nonstop dystopia for the entire drive.

The end was always near.

I reached my destination in rural Michigan- a once wealthy town that had fallen on hard times. The population of the cemetery was far greater than the living population.At a stoplight I sat behind a massive pickup truck flying a US flag, a Blue line flag, and between them, higher than either of them was a flag that had “FUCK BIDEN, AND FUCK YOU FOR VOTING DEMOCRAT!” printed on it….

It was a largely agricultural area where they grew corn and- apparently- Covid. Vaccination rates in the county I was staying at were ~%41. No masks.

My last day there I was preparing to head back home…. it was the lunch hour. As I was running a few final errands I passed a man standing in a parking lot near the starbucks – he was wearing a buisness shirt and tie holding a sign that said “URGENT TUNE TO 99.3 NOW FOR IMPORTANT INFORMATION” He had clearly had the sign professionally printed, so this was apparently a regular thing he did… out of morbid curiosity I tuned to the station… I knew it would be a right wing talk show, or a religious sermon… I was wrong- it was both. A man was lecturing about how the ‘governor woman’ was a satanist and practitioner of witchcraft. Not that long ago a militia plot to kidnap and kill Gov. Whitmer was foiled- but the efforts to whip up the next plot are publicly underway.

The end is indeed near…

Closer to home, this past week I worked alongside with some blue collar government contractors… as they took a break and spent some time shooting the shit I was privileged to hear them regurgitate verbatim the bullshit I had been hearing spewed on right-wing talk radio the night before… talking about how the libs are trying to promote trans-gender-ism (whatever the hell that is) and how Biden was sending teams door to door to force people to get the vaccine. One of the guys proudly declared that if they came to his door and tried to force him to get the shot he would introduce them to his new gun…
Another stated that he would rather die from covid than get sick from a vaccine he was forced to take…
None were wearing masks…

They all agreed that the time was coming for armed revolution… all while billing the government for the time they spent advocating it’s overthrow.

That same evening it was announced that Government employees and contractors would be mandated to have the vaccine, or undergo constant screening… I wonder how the blustering buffoons reacted to that news….

In Colorado I saw a bumper-sticker: “DeSantis 2024″- they are already finding a new strong-man to rally behind…

A democracy cannot survive when such a large segment of the population is disconnected from reality- where they openly root for fascism, authoritarianism, and violence… and where one minority party is able to suppress and dilute the votes of tens of millions. When nearly half the population lives in a bubble filled with noxious conspiracy theory, imagined and manufactured grievances, and lies, how can democracy survive? Their vote counts the same as mine, but their entire world view is a counterfactual and bigoted one.

The ‘loyal opposition’ has embraced insurrection, violence, and the undermining of our democracy by any means available, while the pro-democracy majority is constrained to play by ALL the rules.

The end is near…

2022 will be the next assault on our democracy- I doubt we will survive it- and if we do then there is 2024…

In 1984 the IRA terrorist tried, and failed, to kill Margaret Thatcher, in a statement they released afterwards they ended with the ominous warning: “You have to be lucky all the time. We only have to be lucky once.”

The end is near… I suspect the last good exit is quite a ways behind us.
Are we there yet?