An encouraging sign?

I live in a pretty red part of Pennsylvania.  Like, in 2020 Trump received 78.7% of all the votes in the county, which was an increase from the 78.0% he received in 2016.  In 2020, in my drive to work I saw a dozen or so Trump signs and flags.  And they stayed up, like, in late 2021 there were still a couple yard signs out.  And hardly a week goes by I don’t see some asshole wearing a MAGA hat or an “I’m voting for the felon!” t-shirt at work. 

But back in … June or so I noticed that I was seeing less and less of those people.  And I hadn’t noticed any yard signs.  I was thinking maybe the fever had passed, and I was thinking of writing up a post about how not seeing Trump signs everywhere was an encouraging sign, but I figured I would wait a little closer to the election before doing that.

Then, on July 13th, I was at work and this lady said that Trump had been shot.  I think she had a friend at the rally and wasn’t sure what all was going on.  It was a few minutes before I was able to get to my phone and check the news.  I saw that the bullet had “grazed his ear,” and the first reports I saw listed two dead, and I thought it said as well as the shooter, so I thought three people were dead.  I don’t know if it was just confusion on the developing story, of if I misread the report.

Now, I’m not a fan of Trump, but I don’t want him shot.  For one, I don’t want to make a martyr of the asshole, and two, he deserves to spend the rest of his miserable life locked up in prison.  And three, political assassinations should have no part in a democracy.  Although, I will admit, there were times back in 2016-2020 where I could start to see the appeal.  So I was happy that Trump wasn’t severely wounded, and saddened that three (really two) people were dead.  We’ll probably never know what troubles that kid had, but that wasn’t the way to go about fixing them.

Once I knew Trump was still among the living, I realized my job would become agonizing.  Because I expected all the magats would come out of the woodwork.  A couple years ago, someone had stickers made of Biden saying, “I did that,” and put them on the gas pumps at one of the stations down the street from where I work.  I know this, because some guy found that so goddamned funny, that he took a photo of them, and then had to show that photo to a complete stranger working at a different store.  I could have explained that the President has no control over the price of gas and high gas prices are the results of greedy oil assholes, but what are facts and reason to a Trump supporter?  So after the assassination attempt I expected a constant barrage of MAGA hats and conspiracy theories.  Like the one semi-regular customer who said that the fires in Hawaii a year or two ago were “obviously” caused by an energy weapon as some kind of false flag to convince people climate change was real.  Fortunately, I haven’t seen that guy in like two months, so I thankfully don’t know his thoughts on all of this.

But none of that happened.  I only work Saturdays and Sundays, and I counted the number of Trump hats/shirts I saw.  I didn’t keep track before July 13th, but I would guess I saw one or two each weekend.  And that’s how many I’ve seen each weekend since.  And except for a neighbor putting up a Trump flag, I haven’t seen any new yard signs on my drive to work.  And given how many customers feel the need to talk my ear off about anything, I’ve surprising not heard anyone say anything.  I thought maybe on the 13th, people hadn’t heard about it yet, but I figured it would be nonstop talk on the 14th, but it was if it never happened.

And that’s why I wonder if this is an encouraging sign.  Perhaps the Trump fever has finally broken, and there are just the few, isolated cases of foam-at-the-mouth MAGAtism.  Don’t get me wrong, most of my customers will still vote for Trump in November, because for decades they’ve been told “Republican good, Democrat bad,” and that’s about the extent of their political thinking.  So they’ll still vote for Trump, but they won’t be as excited about it as they were in 2016, or 2020.  Which, while small, is still a step in the right direction.