The only thing the Republican Party has left
Waco, Texas, is to extremism what Auschwitz is to intolerance. It was no accident, for example, that Timothy McVeigh chose April 19th, 1995 as the date to blow up the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City. He picked that date specifically because it was the second anniversary of the so-called Waco siege of the Branch Davidian complex.
Like the earlier siege of Ruby Ridge, Waco has become a flashpoint for anti-government extremism. There’s a certain mentality surrounding people who use Waco and Ruby Ridge as rallying cries. They’re “survivalists” who are inevitably the first to open carry. They hate the federal government and see it as a rotten monolith of deep state special interests. Their heroes include David Koresh and Ted Kaczynski. It’s little wonder that Donald Trump would want to recruit the spirit of Waco for his latest Nuremberg-style rally.
In his first public appearance since speculating that he might be arrested, Donald Trump lashed out on Saturday against the multiple criminal inquiries that have plagued him since he left office in January, 2021. Trump referred to the New York City investigation into hush-money payments to adult film star Stormy Daniels with an expletive.
Trump took the stage to utter what will undoubtedly become, in the ensuing months and years, a catch-phrase to rival “no obstruction, no collusion” or “Russia, Russia, Russia.” Trump said, “The district attorney of New York under the auspices and direction of the ‘department of injustice’ in Washington, DC, is investigating me for something that is not a crime, not a misdemeanour, not an affair.”
Look for “not a crime, not a misdemeanour, not an affair,” to be the formula Trump will employ whenever he refers to his illegal abuse of campaign funds. It will be his latest mantra in a life jerry-built out of ramshackle shibboleths recruited to convey simple ideas to the simple-minded.
The people of Trump-land are unabashed users of slogans. At the rally, t-shirts emblazoned with “God, guns and Trump” and “Trump won” were seen everywhere. By contrast there are no rallies for Joe Biden, no slogans, no red hats, no Biden flags, no giant wheeled Dodge Rams with multiple Biden bumper stickers proclaiming allegiance to him. If Waco did nothing else it cemented the idea that Donald Trump’s candidacy is a cult of personality — as real and as deadly as the cult surrounding the memory of David Koresh.
It never made any difference that Waco is, in fact, 13 miles from the Mount Carmel Center where the 1993 standoff took place. Symbols don’t have to be accurate to be effective. They don’t even have to convey the truth, and with Trump and his cultistic following they never do. All they have to do is inspire rage, and it should never be a surprise to anyone that Trump and his team of cult leaders use red. It’s not just the color of the Republican Party, it’s also the colour of rage.
Trump’s success stems from rage. It’s the only product the Republican Party has left, and because Trump uses rage exclusively to promote his candidacy it will remain his only export. The Republican Party has convinced itself that it can’t live without hate. Nothing symbolises hate better than the still smouldering ember of the Waco siege, and who but Donald Trump would wish to stoke into a raging fire? And, as ever, ladies and gentlemen, brothers and sisters, comrades and friends, stay safe.
Robert Harrington is an American expat living in Britain. He is a portrait painter.