Short Take: Proud of What?

Trump supporters rallied in Freedom Plaza as Marine One flew overhead, people in the crowd waving at their president and believing. They’re allowed to believe, just as Trump is allowed to enjoy the adoration of his most devoted supporters in his waning lame duck days. It’s not as if he would let any of them into Mar-a-Lago when he’s gone.

But true believers, for whom all the bluff of election fraud claims remains disconnected to all the courts, all the judges, all the Trump-appointed judges, who have rejected them, weren’t the only ones to step out for Trump. There was also a group of pathetic losers who call themselves Proud Boys, because losers always pick a name to make themselves feel better about being losers.

The Proud Boys fancy themselves a bunch of tough guys whose brute force and dumb manliness entitle them to make grunting noises, behave like fools and beat people up. So they did.

If their antics were limited to indecent exposure, we might be able to laugh at Darwin’s error. But they’re not.

At night, four people were stabbed near 11th Street and F Street Northwest, according to Douglas Buchanan, a spokesman for the city’s fire department. The mayor’s office said that the four were in critical condition, adding that two police officers also were hurt and taken to hospitals.

In Olympia, Washington, the force was more deadly, with one counterprotester being shot.

Unlike the black-clad counterprotesters, whose decision to challenge the Trump supporters was uselessly provocative, there is no pseudo-intellectual gibberish rationalizing these fat faux brutes. They don’t rationalize their fighting, their oafishness, their cause, which appear no deeper than Trump with some white supremacy thrown in.

Is there anything about this group that says anything other than violent, racist, overweight pathetic losers looking for an excuse to pretend they’re tough guys?

Much as Antifa begs for most of its problems and derision, at least the people involved believe they are serving a higher purpose. This is not to say there are no reasons to support conservative values or oppose progressives ones. Nor is this an excuse for white college kids wearing black to deliberately try to incite violence. Rather, this is a juxtaposition of bad and worse. It doesn’t get worse than the Proud Boys.

There are groups, deeply misguided but with at least some semblance of legitimate purpose, fighting for what they wrongly believe to be the Constitution. The Proud Boys enjoy no such legitimacy. They are just violent scum out for a good ol’ time and, when in a large enough group that they aren’t beaten up by people half their weight, pretend to be the embodiment of white manliness. They are trash.

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18 thoughts on “Short Take: Proud of What?”

  2. Richard Kopf

    The wonderful ending sentence of your post could have referred to “white trash” rather just “trash.” I am debating with myself whether my suggestion is good or bad. Choices. There are so many choices with so many motivations.

    All the best.

    RGK

    1. SHG Post author

      My disgust at these scum colored my writing this morning. I fear my post did not do justice to how awful these Proud Boys are.

      1. Pedantic Grammar Police

        You don’t have to be a white supremacist to realize that BLM is a bunch of socialist revolutionaries who said on their website and in interviews that they want to replace the US political system with their brand of fascism, and that they have hijacked legitimate anger about a real problem to advance their agenda. Don’t let the name confuse you; the leaders of the BLM movement don’t care about black lives; they are greedy opportunists.

        I agree that the Proud Boys are a bunch of moron assholes who do lots of bad things, but being against BLM is not one of those bad things. It’s more like a blind squirrel finding a nut.

        1. SHG Post author

          There’s BLM the concept and BLM the organization (such as it is). I suspect the church banners were directed at the concept.

          1. Pedantic Grammar Police

            It’s depressing to realize that churches and other well-meaning organizations and individuals are being duped into supporting a bunch of fascists. Regardless of one’s opinion about police violence, the letters “BLM” are irrevocably tied to this organization, and displaying those letters supports that organization even if, like most people, you have no idea what it stands for.

  4. B. McLeod

    It isn’t that they don’t believe in something, it’s just that the something is the lifestyle described in the lyrics of Gary Owen and Glory.

      1. B. McLeod

        That would be the sanitized, U.S. Cavalry version. The original is a boastful glorification of drunken hellraising and street thuggery.

  6. KP

    Would they exist without the blm & antifa etc to go up against?

    What other focus is there for Americans who disagree with the Left and want to take similar action to express it. It seems we haven’t advanced since the 1930s and brownshirts versus redshirts.

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