There was supposed to be a nice column about changes in my life, but it seemed stupid to put something pleasant here when the army of unfuckable hate nerds (h/t to Marc Maron for the best description for these cretins) gets a VIP pass to trash the Capitol. Cory Doctorow explains how unlikely the “unprepared” party line is here.

Where do we even go from here? It’s obvious what’s going to happen. Before the Capitol Riot Cosplay Brigade even made it home, Republicans burned the rest of Trump’s political capital while it was convenient, let all the shit stirrers who kept their office save face by cloaking it all in “just asking questions”, and the editorials and talking heads on the right vaccilate between Antifa conspiracies and saying how this wasn’t even as bad the BLM riots in the summer. The Democrats continuing their streak as the Washington Generals fail to do anything but tut tut and attempt a meaningless impeachment rather than fomenting a real policy agenda.

The media both traditional and social finally decided to cut Trump loose, much like Congressional Republicans all the value has been wrung out of that particular Reality Show, it’s not even worth the reunion show antics.

Of course, there will be so much handwringing about national decorum. Thinking about how this riot happened because single man convinced a whole bunch of grown men that he was their only voice in the world. When the inevitable collapse came, of course the only thing they had left was a temper tantrum.

Trying to get people to understand that riots happen when people feel that they have no representation is a difficult one. In this case, it’s people who have absorbed so deeply the rhetorical device about corrupt Washington that they believed a TV star was their only defense. It’s a far cry form people begging a city council to work for them rather than the Chamber of Commerce, but they have similar psychological roots.

We live in a culture so steeped in dumb aggression disguised as action that people send death threats over delayed video games and bad movie reviews. Hollywood has trained these people for their close up moment as the singular man waving around his gun to speak truth to power. Though most of the time they're just accidentally shooting the roof a McDonald’s because it’s too late for Breakfast.

There is no next from here, because we don’t want to examine what’s at the heart of American Culture. That Thompson proverbial Fear and Loathing beating just beneath the heart of these guys as they whip around the lake on their boats wondering why the world doesn’t fall at their feet and acknowledge the greatness of their credit score and middle management positions. They already moved to the exurbs and adopted this fake redneck persona while tinkering away in a four car garage on an array of toys, it’s a culture of mega churches, strip malls and tract developments nestled in the woods pretending to be rugged.

It takes incredible amounts of privilege to descend into the ennui of middle age, it takes even more to drive it into a cliff of an online cult because your only real friends are the angry radio guy, and the anonymous tipster telling you half the government has been executed and replaced with body doubles. The quiet desperation has turned into screaming insanity and middle aged dudes appear to not be alright, searching for dads everywhere to tell them what to do with all these emotions they don’t understand.

Trump was the latest in a long line of people taking advantage of all these damaged dudes. This was the warning at the heart of Fight Club most of you were too busy hoping to be Tyler Darden to notice. Someone was going to take all these broken dudes and give them a purpose. As much as we like to chalk all this up to brain damaged Boomers embracing their TV pal, that crowd had a lot of angry young men. You can spot them as the people who always talk about politics but can’t really pin down an actual philosophy, mostly just harping on to whatever the latest culture war battle requires their copy and paste meme.

They’re going to slink back to Parler, probably find out that someone stole their SSN via the woeful security practices, and await whoever their next daddy is going to be. It could be Trump working as President in exile, though his nightly missives on OANN are just going to end up sliding into racist Andy Rooney routines and will lack the apocalyptic fervor. Whatever the next hit the Q folks need is going to be big and probably even more insane than this, and because this is the internet it will probably be violent.

The IEDs all around DC yesterday were drowned out by cosplayers running around for selfies and vandalizing offices. It’ll probably stay forgotten because it shows how dangerous a bunch of damaged dues who went from Jordan Peterson telling them they could eat only meat and didn’t need to really eat their vegetables, to Trump telling them that he would make all the people making fun of them online pay. As Q rounds up the remaining Trump faithful now exiled from all but the most isolated media environments, both online and traditional, it will escalate again.