By Jack Stroud
Owing to the historic swarms on the National Capitol and various state capitols (including our own) on January 6th, the nation awaited Inauguration Day with clenched teeth and private curiosity—not, “Would the Trumpers turn out?” but, “How many would there be?” Picket signs scattered throughout the suburbs of Olympia, stuck into wet lawns with a sense of pride and fear, begged (one may wonder who, in our city’s predominantly liberal subdivisions): RESPECT THE VOTE. PEACEFUL TRANSITION. Quiet coffee shop goers speculated about, derided, and prayed for an end to the nascent and well organized movement that is Trumpism. 500–700 National Guardsman, in coordination with state troopers, the Olympia Police Department, the Department of Corrections, the Department of Enterprise Services, and assorted military police took up arms and constructed barriers around the Capitol Campus, preparing for who-knew-what was to come. Conscientious Redditors warned Olympians to steer clear of the Capitol, and maybe even all of downtown, in the week leading up to Inauguration. But when the day finally came, as the 46th President was sworn in and Amanda Gordon subsequently recited her beautiful poem, in Olympia, there was a certain silence—the Trumpers had gone AWOL.
On the Capitol Campus around noon, journalists outnumbered Trump supporters twenty-five to one (by estimate), long-lense cameras pointing to the ground in poorly hidden disappointment. The one apparent Trump supporter that was there, a buff sporting man who walked at a brisk pace with a large American flag slung over his right shoulder, received a moment of celebrity he is apt to never experience again: journalists from such outlets as the AP, the New York Times, and the Seattle Times jumped on him like fresh meat—Why are you carrying the flag? Are there more of you coming?
Interviews that lasted as long as it took for the man to walk a block dissolved back into waiting around, strolling the perimeter of the gated off area, trying to figure out how to take a photo to express the absence, asking one National Guardsman and then another if they could answer any questions, with lotto-ticket success.
I found some kids my age, fellow journalists, each strapped with impressive cameras. We got to know each other some and chuckled at the irony of the situation. I said that I had to have an article ready in two days and didn’t know if I should try to make this work or find something else. I said that well, my one idea is to go out to Spiffy’s, there’s bound to be some Trumpers out there (downtown Oly itself being characteristically bereft of the outwardly expressive sort), and then maybe they could explain the low turnout, and if not at least I’d get a pie out of it. I hung around for a while longer, picked up a few tricks of the trade from long-time photojournalist Ted S. Warren, and said Spiffy’s here I come.
A few hours later my roommates and I were loaded into the sedan, driving South on I-5. I chicken-scratched a few questions along the way: What were you thinking this morning leading up to inauguration? What happens now that Biden is in office? But that didn’t quite get at it.
Over the past two months I have spent a number of Saturdays at the Capitol, speaking with Trump supporters, and bearing witness to their passion, their sense of betrayal, and their familial spirit that altogether constitute a strong adhesive for a sometimes open-ended cause. In other words, many of them feel martyred and this shared trait fuels their fire. Of course I am speaking in generalizations, but only to illustrate that, if they want to be, and as we have seen, the Trumpers can be a powerful group of people.
But now that Biden is in office, the question can be asked: without Trump as their Commander-in-Chief, will the Trumpers any longer have an organizing principle? Will the movement fizzle? Because although Trump is the leader to whom all too many of them ask “how high?” when he says wave a F— YOUR FEELINGS flag, they have still proved proactive, online and IRL, often without direct indication from the former president. Neither does Trump’s absence from office predicate his inaction. Moreover, the rallies that I have attended were grounded in specific political aims (end the lockdown, reform sex education, ward off socialism with torches drenched in caustic chemical compounds if we have to). Undoubtedly these political ideations will not die off so soon; they are much more long-standing than Trump. But will Trumpism and all its brashness and merchandise remain, or will it fade back into the regular old Grand Ol’ Party? Hidden as it once was, a modern day Lost Cause.
Because only five years ago, if someone said “Trumper” you might’ve thought they had a minor salivary gland malfunction and politely ignored the mispronunciation—i.e., in no time at all a nationwide movement has been established, laid down its fibrous and branching web and has even swung into international politics (q.v. Brexit and the rise of British Trumps). In light of this and the strong sense of identity that Trump has fostered for the Trumpers, it seems unlikely to me that just because they did not show out in numbers at our Capitol, or any other American Capitol, on Inauguration Day, that we have heard the last of them. It was into all of this that I wanted to pry at Spiffy’s, and felt prepared to receive confirmation of my speculations as we barreled down the Interstate, Douglas firs flip-booking away behind us.
But as we pulled off on Exit 68, the parking lot of the restaurant and bakery was conspicuously empty, four cars total. On the glass door of the building was the explanation: they’d closed down for a few days to attend to their ongoing court case. But I didn’t give up journalistic hope, we were still in an area that I will affectionately call po-dunk, i.e., the potential for a coincidental encounter with a Trumper could no-problem become actual, and we still had to find something to eat besides. We plugged in the coordinates to the next eatery, Frosty’s Saloon & Grill, pulled out of the parking lot, and past the WE SUPPORT THE POLICE flag on the edge of it, which made me think: maybe that has something to do with it, maybe now that the police and armed forces are in visible force at the Capitol (whether they will say it verbally or not) directly because of the threat the Trumpers pose, maybe now the Trumpers cannot well make a scene at the Capitol without eating their own words, those devout supporters of the police and armed forces who have only doubled down in their stance alongside recent traction for defund/abolish movements. But these thoughts passed as we extended further into the country, Patsy Cline’s refined twang filling the space between us.
Frosty’s, sadly, proved closed also, as did Spiffy’s satellite bakery in Napavine, as did Ramblin’ Jack’s Rib Eye, and not one Trump flag, hat, or even bumper sticker did we see on our zig-zags across those foriegn back roads either—chalk it up to a tourist’s sensibilities. Having learned our lesson, we called ahead to the next restaurant, Jeremy’s Farm to Table, and set off along the highway again, as if we knew the meaning of the word transportation, a hot meal then tangible and the prospect of a chance encounter and some answers-sought not entirely lost.
As a piece of bubble gum lands in the V formed by a child’s feet at the parade, a pink neon sign off Exit 77 caught the eye of one of my fellow travelers: ADULT TOYS, ARCADE, NOVELTIES; and so if we’re out here already, I mean, we might as well check it out, see what flavor it is.
Then, out of the car, past the two beef-headed men leaning against a yellow Hummer in the parking lot—glaring us down—and into the purple and chrome interior of the sex shop where there was everything you would expect—Attack of the MILFs 2 and Girls Gone Wild—I stopped not five feet past the entrance, quickly resolved to distract myself by talking with the clerk, a 30ish year old man with a mid-length, red beard hanging down from under his mask.
He told us the history of the place, that it’d been around for 35 + years and that a mother and son were the original owners, the mother withering into a wheel-chair in her later years, letting dust cover the shelves, and subtracting from the sex-appeal of the place in general. He told us that it wasn’t a bad gig and that since COVID started the “arcade” had been closed so he didn’t have to listen to whatever noises emanated from that backroom in which there is a row of stalls, every other taped with a note: LEAVE A MESS, LEAVE A TIP (: So that was one good thing.
He told us that a lot of old people come in the store—one guy he remembered wearing a F— INSLEE mask, for example—and they will come in there and end up saying something along the lines of “Your generation” to him, and he, one imagines with his hands in the air, is like hey, I’m just here to sell you some adult items. This followed by equitable laughter throughout the small space where my roommates and I were the only customers present.
Subtly and of its own accord, the conversation begins to take on a somewhat more serious tone as we start talking politics, insofar as that is polite with a stranger—protests and inauguration, too much violence, it’s childish, broad picture stuff. He is saying that it’s hard to believe how much political activity there has recently been in a small town like Chehalis—the protest at Spiffy’s, the one at the courthouse, both in the last month. He is saying that everybody is just trying to get by, whatever that means for them, but some people have some confused approaches for doing so. He is saying that freedom is the ability to act without constraint of resentment or fear, and I am nodding along to his fair-mindedness, somehow unperturbed by the plethora of lurid temptations that surround me. Soft-rock crackles through some speaker in some upper corner of the room. This, and the clerk’s round voice, closed off from all exterior sound and influence. Later we will eat farm-fresh hamburgers in the parking lot of Jeremy’s, covered in a darkness that will carry us home. Now we speak with this pleasant man, in the brightly lit, windowless sex shop. The intimidating men in the parking lot, just beyond the door, somehow lightyears away. The words spoken by the former president the day before—The movement we started is only just beginning. There’s never been anything like it.—no longer ringing in my head. OK, for now, without answers.
If there are any Trump supporters reading this who would like to set the record straight or offer any kind of explanatory comments, please feel free to contact me at strjac01@evergreen.edu.
