There's a scene in the film Dr. Zhivargo
It's during the first World War, the Bolsheviks have not yet seized power in Russia, and Russian troops are still fighting the Germans, but in retreat. A charismatic Russian officer leaps on top of a sealed keg of water to rally his troops who have begun to drop their weapons and flee. His words have power and conviction, and soldiers turn to face him as he implores them to regroup and fight on. Some begin to respond. Then the top caves in on the water keg and the officer plunges in and flails in the water as he tries to regain his footing. Soldiers laugh at him and one shoots the officer dead before they all turn around and resume their flight from the Germans.
Trump never had either the conviction or charisma of that fictitious officer, but he still held millions of Americans under his bombastic macho sway. Then his coup failed, and his twitter account was taken away from him. Already groups like the Proud Boys are ridiculing Trump as "weak." No doubt there will be millions of Americans who will continue to look up to Trump as a leader for some time to come, but something fundamental has changed. Trump no longer has the trappings of power, and he can no longer command the attention that came with it. The top collapsed on his water keg platform.
Meanwhile white nationalists in America have not given up, but they are in retreat. They have not been routed, but neither can they mount full scale military offensives any longer. They can't lay siege to our capitals now because, like the insurgents once fighting Castro at the Bay of Pigs, they were counting on receiving air cover from a sitting American President while they advanced. That cover has been stripped away, making it much more difficult and far more dangerous to them to mass in public again. I suspect they will turn more to guerilla terrorist tactics now, while hopefully awaiting another right wing political tide in a future national election, one as soon as 2022 or 2024, and we must be prepared for that. But Donald Trump got his moment on the water keg, and it caved in on him.
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