The End of an Era:

Trump’s Final Days — and What Awaits Us

David Hackett Fischer wrote Albion’s Seed in 1989. In it, he discussed in considerable detail the folkways of the settlers of the American Colonies who came from four distinct regions of Great Britain, and whose cultural traits are still deeply embedded in our county’s DNA.

The ones giving us the most trouble these days — the same as those who supported the Confederacy in 1860–1865 — were the so-called “English-Scots,” which gave rise to the Appalachian culture. These folks carried with them a culture forged in a thousand years of brutal conflict. Trusting only family and clan, prone to violence, deeply mistrustful of authority, given to pregnancies that proceeded marriage, and even abduction rituals as a playful part of any marriage celebration, this was a wild, warrior culture with a lawless streak.

They are the ones who proudly march, without facemasks, carrying signs that read: “My body, my choice. NO ONE can tell me to wear a mask!”

They are the Proud Boys, the Boogaloo Bois, QAnon, the Three Percenters network, the Wolverine Watchmen. They are the conspiracy-spouting, militia-joining gun nuts who want a civil war and a race war, and who believe that a pure white U.S. of A. is the only acceptable America for them.

These folks suffer from profound deficits of trust and, in extreme cases, they project that onto all levels of government. The less paranoid ones still harbor doubts about all forms of government…