We don’t even know their position on climbing every mountain. They are visibly prepared to ford any stream, or at least release any blockages that may be obstructing said streams.

Philistines.

Nice analysis, Robert Green, but you missed the key point!

While (historical/fictional) European peasants march with pitchforks, and (genuine) African and Latin American peasants march with machetes, these (delusional) American peasants march with *toilet plungers*. Doesn’t that sum up the contemporary Right? Rural life vs. shit jobs, menacing vs. comical, hard and pointy vs. soft and squooshy, etc. — it’s all right there.

i think this phenomenon should be called “pitchforkism” where you constantly have the rabble ready to raise their (purely metaphorical, these days, but that’s a key to the whole thing) dander on any perceived slight. there’s at least one a day. there is a chattering class who are the functional equivalent of radio milles collines in rwanda–gotta stir the rubes up, keep ‘em frothing, so that you can (there with machetes, here with phone calls and e-mails and shirts and yelling) have them constantly on edge. and that gets them to vote your way no matter what.