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I strongly second this recommendation. Brilliant analysis of the militaristic, fascist iconography that has blossomed in our consumer culture since Vietnam, but which has taken on new life and meaning since 2016.
This iconography is intended to be menacing, terrifying even. Yet it is also served up with a heavy dose of plausible deniability. "It's just a fictional character! It's just a flag emblem. What's wrong with liking a movie or the flag?" 
I see trucks like this several times a week in my town. Each time I try to catch a glimpse of the person behind the wheel, and I wonder if they'd volunteer to serve as a guard at a camp where "dangerous leftists" had been housed in the interests of "public safety."
A thread from last year where I tried to historicize this hyper-aggressive, angry iconography that has come to dominate the political culture of the American right in the age of Trump.
I want to draw special attention to an important word the graphic novelist used, "proto-fascist." When I see this sort of iconography out in the world, I don't immediately assume that this person is a member of an avowedly fascist group. Chances are, they're not.
Depending on the direction our politics takes over the next decades, we may look back at these trucks and their punisher decals as funny and kind of sad. Like the way we might look at one of those anti-communist "educational" films shown in middle schools in the 1950s.
But if our politics goes a different direction, the people in those trucks with those decals might end up being the sorts of armed civilians whose actions legitimize and support the use of government force to "defend" the current administration from "authoritarian socialists."
That's the unavoidable slipperiness of the "proto" part of "proto-fascist." We can never know for sure how a person will respond in a moment of political crisis. But it's frightening that a certain segment of the population seems to be signalling a willingness to do bad things.
History tells us of innumerable instances where informal paramilitary violence carried out by civilians made a big difference, especially when it was coordinated (if only loosely) with the force of a right wing government.
To a great extent, this is what happened in the South at the end of Reconstruction when a white elite (both economic and political) partnered with a paramilitary terrorist organization (the KKK) to reassert white supremacy.
Americans may associate such paramilitary actions (like were depicted in Roma) with "other countries," but we've got our own history of this...and we're not immune from it becoming part of our future either.
For a more in-depth look at how informal, paramilitary violence enabled the triumph of white supremacist politics during Reconstruction, check out this thread.
h/t to a few folks in my mentions who pointed out this relevant news story from today. Trump pardons a soldier who murdered an Iraqi, sending a signal that he gets to decide which murders are congruent with "law and order."
