Friday, November 2, 2018

The West Bend Wave

By Jeff Simpson



Once again, West Bend made national news, challenging "Florida man" for biggest the Darwin Awards. 

Let's rewind a bit first.  The Guardian decided to follow The Donald around the country to his "I Love Me" rallies and assigned a different emotion to each rally they attended.  The emotion they assigned to the WI rally (where Scott Walker, Leah Vukmir, Paul Ryan, et al spoke), was HATE.

On the morning of the fourth rally, the outside world blasts its way into Trumpland. Shortly after 10am, as CNN anchors are telling their viewers about a series of pipe bombs mailed to the Clintons, the Obamas and to George Soros, they have to rush off air because the network has received its own explosive device.
At the same time, Jacob Spaeth and three of his buddies are lining up in a field in Mosinee, Wisconsin. They are all wearing the same distinctive red T-shirt. It bears a cartoon sketch of a smiling Trump urinating profusely over the CNN logo.
Today, after the CNN pipe bomb became headline news, a merchant says he’s sold about 15 of them in quick succession at $20 each.
Spaeth, a 19-year-old college student, doesn’t want to comment on the bombs. But he’s happy to discuss CNN.
“It’s not just CNN, it’s the whole media. They are very unfair to Trump. They’re manipulating kids, telling them that Trump is a horrible guy and that he wants bad things.”
Spaeth never watches CNN – he occasionally sees clips of it on Facebook. He gets his information from Infowars, the website of Alex Jones. Jones, a conspiracy theorist, is on the record as saying 9/11 was a government set-up and that the 2012 Newtown school shooting in which 20 children were killed was fabricated. Within hours he will be broadcasting that this week’s pipe bombs are also a hoax.
Spaeth embodies one of the most puzzling aspects of my week in Trumpland. Throughout the five rallies, I talk to scores of people, all of whom, without exception, are welcoming and pleasant. Yet hours later, in the pressure-cooker of the rally, they will turn on me and my mainstream media colleagues and hurl insults at us.
Spaeth admits that when he went to a Trump rally in Minnesota last month he took part in the finger-jabbing and the chanting of “CNN sucks”. It made him feel happy to be able to express his feelings so openly among like-minded folk. “I don’t see it as bullying,” he says.
There’s only one explanation for this pattern of behavior: that Trump enables good, civil Americans to metamorphose into media baiters. “Those people, fake news,” the president says sneeringly at almost every rally, pointing to the caged pen where reporters are cooped up during his speeches.
It’s a trigger mechanism: as soon as he says it, the chants begin. “CNN sucks! CNN sucks!” Many of the people chanting are also laughing – it’s that humor thing again. But CNN is taking no chances: they bring private security guards to every rally.
Tonight, he talks about the need to “bring our nation together”. It’s an extraordinarily cordial message coming from him. But listen closer. His call to unity is in fact a veiled attack on his political enemies.
In the name of “peace and harmony”, he tells politicians to stop treating their opponents – for which read Trump – as “morally defective”, and he references the “mob” – for which read Democrats. Remarkably, he is actually mocking the very concept of national unity while calling for it.
But wait there is more, there is always more.  Also attending the rally in Mosinee, was  Steve Spaeth from West Bend.  The hometown of Owen Robinson( who thanks to guys like Spaeth, the moral he pushes for is improving).  

Spaeth was more than happy to give an interview!   

Tonight in Wisconsin, the crowd are focused on only one thing – hearing their leader. It includes Steve Spaeth (no relation), 40, who runs a home exteriors company in West Bend. I ask him who he regards as his political enemies, and whether “hate” is too strong a word.
“Not at all,” he says. “I have a deep and absolute disgust for these human beings.”
Which ones?
He rattles off CNN, Soros, Clinton, Waters, Booker, “Pocahontas” AKA Elizabeth Warren, and others.
Why do you hate them?
“They want to turn America into a socialistic country. It’s disgusting.”
I ask Spaeth how far he is prepared to take his hatred. In reply, he tells a story. The other day he talked to his sister, who is liberal and votes Democratic. He said to her: “If there is a civil war in this country and you were on the wrong side, I would have no problem shooting you in the face.”
You must be joking, I say.
“No I am not. I love my sister, we get on great. But she has to know how passionate I am about our president.”

Yes Mr. West Bend (does that statement qualify him for Mayor now) will shoot his sister in the face if this guy tells him too:


I highly recommend anyone that is mesmerized with the Donald and the current GOP spend an hour and watch this old 70's movie The Wave.  


Dr, Phillip Zombardo,  the Stanford professor best known for his famous 1971 prison experiment, feels the answer lies in what people are willing to do to go from a feeling of powerlessness to one of being empowered.   “For most people it’s an awful lot,” remarks Dr. Zimbardo.  “People will transgress a lot of personal values to step across the line.”

Please do not stay home this election, we need to stop this dangerous crap before it gets out of control and lunatics like Spaeth actually start shooting people. 

Vote on Tuesday!   Vote blue and if you can not bring yourself to do that, vote libertarian or write in ...we need to change out those in power badly. 


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