I had just made it to the Hands Off! rally to protest the Trump/Musk administration being held in Downtown Staunton on Saturday when a young man in a jacked-up pick-up truck stopped in front of the rally crowd, then started menacingly revving the truck’s engine, mere inches from a sidewalk full of rallygoers.
I don’t have video because I couldn’t decide whether to shoot video with my phone or focus on not getting run over.
The truck blew a mountain of black smoke as the driver proceeded into performing what NASCAR fans would recognize as a burnout on the street in front of the rally site, on the grounds of the Augusta County Courthouse, where, it looked to me, there were at least 500 people crammed into the postage-stamp lawn in front of the historic courthouse steps.
Message sent, right?
Another message was delivered.
To the guy in the truck, and his buddies hanging out the passenger and back windows, all wearing shit-eatin’ grins.
A Staunton Police officer, after the truck had passed the rally, initiated a pursuit.
I followed on foot a couple of blocks up to where the pursuit ended with the police officers engaging the MAGAs.
As I approached the truck, I saw that the shit-eatin’ grins had left.
Their dose of reality won’t last long, of course.
The perps are White, they’re MAGA; if it ends up being anything more than a traffic ticket, and it could – I can easily see criminal reckless driving being the outcome here, but that’s not going to happen.
Anyway, even if the worst-case scenario would be there for these guys, somebody important in the local political leadership set would make sure they’re taken care of.
That’s what you call privilege, folks.
***
It’s not safe to be a Democrat anywhere these days, but particularly where I live.
The two cities, Staunton and Waynesboro, are split – Staunton leans D, Waynesboro leans R – but we’re surrounded by 70 percent-plus Augusta County.
Just putting a sign in your yard or a bumper sticker on your car in these parts takes a certain amount of, you know, intestinal fortitude.
I speak from experience here: one of my Waynesboro neighbors identified me as the left-wing AFP editor because of our collection of signs and our rainbow flag, and bragged to a militia group a couple of years ago about having plans to get even with me – plans that I guess got put on the shelf when a mole in their militia ratted them out to me, and the FBI got involved.
A recent column that I penned that mentioned this incident in passing got me an email from another neighbor, who blamed me for, among other things, ruining the tranquility of the neighborhood, I suppose because, since we moved here with our signs in 2020, quite a few others among our neighbors have decided to out themselves as Democrats.
The lost tranquility that the second neighbor mourns is the illusion of MAGA uniformity, enforced by a code of bullying that has some complaining about lost tranquility, others vowing to get even with a stranger over politics, and then a bunch of dumbass kids threatening mass violence with a burnout at a stoplight in front of a protest rally.
***
I didn’t set out to cover the rally like I would have a few years ago, doing formal interviews with attendees, getting a quote on the record from a rally organizer.
I just wanted to feel it, you know?
The past 75 days, since Jan. 20, have been a roller coaster, to say the least.
The Trump/Musk folks are doing everything they can to tear down America from within – the underpinnings of American democracy, the foundation of the U.S. economy, the basics of even just human decency.
Our government is plucking innocent people off the streets and sending them to gulags in Central America to rot, in our names.
The rule of law is being subverted to almost make it illegal for Blacks, Latinos and LGBTQs to even just exist, again, in our names.
And it’s not just Republicans in DC and Richmond and their MAGA loyalists in the hinterlands who are responsible.
We can’t even get our elected Democrats to use the limited tools available to them via our Constitution and the rules of how political business is conducted to fight back.
Democrats voted with Republicans to approve a Trump/Musk budget that gives unprecedented and unconstitutional power to the executive branch to just shut down whatever it wants to, however it wants to, whenever it wants to.
It doesn’t feel like anybody is listening.
***
So, what do we do?
What Americans do: we get together in the town square, and we shout to the skies, we’re f—ing pissed off.
That’s the message captured in the signs that I took photos of, and have been sharing here with this story.
We know where the kids who came within inches of making national headlines with their oversized truck think, and we know what our electeds think.
The Augusta County Board of Supervisors is seven MAGAs.
Our state delegate, Ellen Campbell, is a MAGA.
Our state senator, Chris Head, is a MAGA.
Our congressman, Ben Cline, is a MAGA.
Our U.S. senators, Tim Kaine and Mark Warner, are Democrats who started off the Trump 2.0 era trying to play nice, voting for too many of Trump’s dangerous MAGA nominees, but I’ll give them credit, somebody must have had a come-to-Jesus with them, because they’ve come around, somewhat.
I’d welcome any of them to come to Staunton or Waynesboro for a town hall, so that they can learn firsthand how the Trump/Musk cuts are making it hard for small businesses to stay afloat, for families to make ends meet, for police and hospitals and social-service agencies and food banks to do their jobs.
None of them, Republican or Democrat, are going to, not anytime soon, so, we need to take it to them.
***
And that starts by taking to the streets.
They’re our streets. We paid for them, and we pay for their upkeep.
Kudos, by the way, to the Staunton Police Department, and its chief, Jim Williams, for having a security plan in place to deal with, what turns out, it was only one group of MAGA assholes, but they were there, doing their job, and for that, thumbs up.
That situation could have been a mess worse.
From what I understand, there were more than a thousand of these type local rallies held nationwide, in addition to a massive one ongoing as I write this in DC.
It’s a Saturday, so the people who needed to hear the message up there aren’t in town; your guy or gal either back home for a photo-op with the local Kiwanis Club or schmoozing at a resort somewhere warm fellating a wealthy campaign donor for re-election fundage.
It’s my job here to make sure some of them see some of what transpired on this national day of protest.
It’s all of our job going forward to keep the pressure on.
We’re going to get our country back; of that, I have no doubt.
It’s not going to come without a fight, and part of that fight is preserving what we can while we still have something worth preserving.
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Chris Graham
