I lied to you. I said that this website was not going to be about my job. The job is a newsletter, and what diseased mind would want to write a political item a day on top of that?
Events changed my plans, and I’m still interested in posting pieces of my reporting from the attack on the Capitol last week. In my published story about it, I mention a man from Delaware, who I decided to talk to because he did not look fringey, unloading to me with the plans he had to lynch and murder politicians.
In that story, I admitted that years of fist-pumping conservative rhetoric had desensitized me. The people at the “Save America” concealed nothing, describing how they wanted to hang politicians if they did not get a new and unearned Trump term.
This audio clip stuck with me because it captured the transition in my thinking. At the beginning (0:35), you can hear me awkwardly laugh at the man saying he’s waiting “for someone to make a move up on this goddamn shit.” At 0:57 you hear me explaining that I am taking notes on my phone, and trying to clarify what era of politics he’s talking about. (Not on the tape: I had introduced myself as a reporter and begun talking to him, starting the recording when a woman came by and interjected herself.)
At 2:40, when I ask what the man will do if the vote is not overturned, he hesitates. “I won't say,” he explains. He describes a Tammany-style vote rigging scheme. At 4:17 I go a little deeper and ask to hear what he really thinks would follow a Biden win; he has more violent scenarios. And around one minute later, the Proud Boys come by and stop the conversation.
The ballot box and the cartridge box