Georgia woman's efforts portend what Trump movement is becoming

[Demovictory9]

ROME, Ga. -- The dumpster was at the end of a parking lot alongside the county election office. It was stained, rusted and dented, and Angela Rubino suspected that it contained evidence of the corruption and moral decay she had come to believe was gripping the country. She'd been to the election office and heard the shredder going. She'd never been in a dumpster before, but this is what the times required. Extreme measures

It was a Monday night with nobody around. She gripped the side of the metal container and pulled herself up, and as she leaned over the edge and looked inside, she felt a rush of vindication.

"Jesus," she said to herself, spotting two clear bags full of shredded paper.


She leaned further, balancing herself to keep from pitching in, grabbed the bags and jumped down. She checked her clothes for flecks of rust and bits of trash, and then she drove the bags back to her house, a neat, whitewashed Colonial in a part of America where it had become normal to believe elections were stolen, that evidence of this could be in a dumpster and that retrieving it was a daring act of patriotism.

And that was how Rubino thought of herself as she pulled into her gravel driveway, as a patriot. It was late. There were rips in the bags, so she transferred the shreds to two other bags and stored them in her garage, dreading what she might find inside. "Who knows?" she said, believing anything was possible. "Who knows?" A few days later, she braced herself, opened one of the bags and pulled out a fragment of paper.

https://www.sfgate.com/news/article/Georgia-woman-s-efforts-portend-what-Trump-17235754.php

Six years into the grass-roots movement unleashed by Donald Trump in his first presidential campaign, Angela Rubino is a case study in what that movement is becoming. Suspicious of almost everything, trusting of almost nothing, believing in almost no one other than those who share her unease, she has in many ways become a citizen of a parallel America -- not just red America, but another America entirely, one she believes to be awash in domestic enemies, stolen elections, immigrant invaders, sexual predators, the machinations of a global elite and other fresh nightmares revealed by the minute on her social media scrolls. She is known online as "Burnitdown."

[NJCher]

1. Long read, but one

That paints a portrait of a psychologically maladjusted individual striving for meaning in life.

[SunSeeker]

2. Sounds like my dad and my brother, both thoroughly unhappy jerks blaming others for their fate.

They, like lonely Ms. Rubino, were perfect marks for the Fox right wing propaganda machine and the fever swamps of the internet.

[lostnfound]

3. Absence of engaged civic meaning, disempowered citizenry, greed helped create a vacuum

We once were citizens, degraded to be consumers who occasionally became ‘voters’

People want to feel important, admired. Within her crazy circle she is made to feel those things.

The real wall that the gop built is around these conspiracy communities. It becomes impossible to connect with them because they are so far gone and reinforced.

Grounded civic actions would help bring people back to reality or at least reduce the allure of the conspiracy cults.

[bluecollar2]

4. Kick and rec!..n/t