The prion disease that has afflicted American conservatism—and the Republican Party, which is its outward expression—ever since Ronald Reagan fed the movement the monkey brains in 1979 now has reached full-blown epidemic proportions. It's beyond even that which researchers anticipated would happen with the election of the current president* of the United States, although he has been a formidable vector for its transmission. Between the actual pandemic and the current turmoil, the prion disease is manifesting itself in several dangerous ways, as we see in this report from Channel 9 in Denver:

A Loveland man faces felony charges after allegedly concluding that two men going door-to-door in his neighborhood were members of the protest movement known as Antifa – and then ordering them to the ground and holding them at gunpoint, 9Wants to Know has learned...The incident unfolded after the man called police, said there were two men wearing masks near his home, and announced he was armed and going to go confront them, Loveland Police Lt. Bob Shaffer confirmed to 9Wants to Know. When officers arrived in the 2400 block of Dawn Court around 6 p.m. Thursday, they encountered Scott Gudmundsen – dressed in fatigues and holding two men on the ground at gunpoint, Shaffer said.

It turns out that the two men, one of whom was a football player from Colorado State, were wearing masks as per the instructions we’ve all received regarding life during the pandemic. They worked for a local roofing company and were soliciting business in the neighborhood following a severe hailstorm. Not that any of that mattered to the neighborhood gun-humper who clearly has listened to far too much talk-radio and watched far too much Hannity.

There was no evidence that either of the men did anything wrong.

I’m stunned.

At the scene, police arrested Gudmundsen, 65, who lives around the corner from where police encountered him. Gudmundsen was armed with two weapons, Shaffer told 9Wants to Know: A Glock pistol, and a second Glock pistol that had been converted into a longer weapon that looked like a carbine rifle.

This is the fire that too many people, including the president*, are willing to play with for political advantage. The administration* has a high enough body count due to its bungling of the pandemic. That it seems willing to risk adding to it through gunplay is a indicator of deep and abiding sociopathy.

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Headshot of Charles P. Pierce
Charles P. Pierce

Charles P Pierce is the author of four books, most recently Idiot America, and has been a working journalist since 1976. He lives near Boston and has three children.