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Every now and then I check in to the official FB page of the GOP for the Central Pennsylvania county in which I grew up, and where my family had lived since the 1910s.
The mood on the page over the past few days has been....angry, defiant, and a bit trigger-happy if I'm going to be totally honest. There's the usual stuff about taking guns and banning Jesus and socialism taking your money to help undeserving people. 
But then there's even more apocalyptic stuff about the end times and the need to be prepared. The mainstream media has become state media (though media against the head of state, but whatevs), and also it's time to read 2 Timothy 3.
All of this talk about "the last days" intersects with posts about the supposed coming Civil War. While some people responded with calm resolve and some sadness, others are "cocked, locked, and ready to rock."
Some fans of that FB page and the President have taken things even a bit further.
I grew up with some of the folks who follow and like that page. I find it very hard to believe that they would engage in actual violence against the government. In part because they have homes and kids and boats and don't want to go to jail.
But basic statistics would suggest that there is more than one really unstable and well armed person in that county who just might be moved to do something drastic on the basis of the rhetoric and "information" provided on that page.
The radicalization of the local, grassroots GOP leadership is, I argue in this thread, THE story of the past 4 years. I've seen mild mannered HS friends turned into Qanon addicts spoiling for ultimate vengeance against "our enemies."
It's not like this is the first time that conspiracy theories like Qanon or "the deep state" have played a major role in our political culture. Here's a tour through the many conspiracy theories that have absorbed the minds of Americans since the 1790s.
But several things strike me as distinctive about this moment. 1) the election of Obama combined with NRA propaganda encouraged people to stock up on guns. 2) the local GOP leadership (mostly folks who live in nice houses & drive nice cars) are co-signing this saber-rattling.
...3) the person in the WH is encouraging this talk about "coups" and the need to defend America from the dangerous Democrats. 4) There is a well-financed channel (Fox News) and broader right wing media infrastructure that can hive folks off from the national conversation.
To be clear...while the class composition of the pro-Trump vote in this county is diverse, it contains a large number of dentists, doctors, lawyers, police officers, and business owners. It's hard for me to see how they think their economic interests will be served by civil war.
And yet...here's the county's official FB page coming right up to the edge of (if not actually) inciting political violence in the name of God and Trump. When someone says "yeah, Civil War, locked and loaded" no moderator comes on and says "that would be illegal."
When people respond to a biblical passage by identifying themself as a "killing machine" ready to go into battle for Christ, does their minister talk them down? Or do they rile them up? Or do they just ignore it?
By driving the moderates out of the party, by driving people who care about scientific truth out of the party, by driving the people who are able to detect authoritarian propaganda out of the party, the GOP has created the conditions for political violence, as we've already seen.
I suspect there's a high probability that this is just empty bluster, all of this FB chatter. I certainly hope that is the case. But you'd think local leaders, people with a vested interest in maintaining basic civic order, would not be playing with fire like this.
The fact that the official GOP page in this county (where about 1/3 of the people voted for Clinton) is encouraging people to look upon their neighbors who are Democrats as "enemies" who want to put them in a concentration camp is wildly irresponsible.
This is the unemployment rate for the county. It's hard to detect a significant shift that began when Trump took office.
The median income has remained pretty much the same from Bush through Obama and into 2017. I would be surprised if 2018 showed any sort of significant upward tick.
This was once coal country. 2 of the towns that fed into my school were company towns Colver (named for Mr. Colman & Mr. Weaver, the owners) & Revloc (Colver spelled backwards, no sh*t) founded in the 1910s. Since 2016, a few coal jobs have come back. tribdem.com/news/big-year-…
But look, there are 130,000 people who live in this county. 40 coal jobs are not going to make a difference. Things are not suddenly much better or worse there. These are not the conditions that would inspire one to say "pick up your musket Bob, time for Civil War."
The Trump Cambria County FB page, as far as I've seen, has offered exactly ZERO policy proposals that would improve the lives of the people who live there. ZERO. What they offer is a chance to save America from the Soros-funded, God-hating, baby killing Socialist gun grabbers.
Apologies for the long rant, but I'm angry on behalf of the place I grew up and the people who live there who are being so ill served by the army of well-off and powerful people who have led them down the Trumpian, authoritarian rabbit hole of angry victimization.
