Trump is looking for a civil war. His followers are only too happy to oblige

The people who saw Trump's tweets about 'LIBERATING' Minnesota, Michigan and Virginia and went out to protest are the same people who voted against their own self-interests in 2016 — and they're going to have a rude awakening

In Colorado on Sunday, health workers in PPE blocked the way of some demonstrators demanding the end of the lockdown (REUTERS)

I can think of no reasonable explanation for the president of one of the world’s richest, most medically advanced societies to buck all serious advice and tweet — as my president did, on Saturday, the following directives: “LIBERATE MINNESOTA,” “LIBERATE MICHIGAN,” and “LIBERATE VIRGINIA, and save your great 2nd Amendment. It is under siege.”

By now, New Yorkers like me can already tell you what happens when you don't observe social distancing: you watch hospitals struggle to keep up. You watch people die, over and over and over again. You watch cities and communities fall to pieces. The president knows this. Many believe he is stupid. I don’t happen to think that’s true in the traditional sense of the word. Bookish he is not, but stupid? No. Every tweet he throws into a crowd is an unpinned grenade.

Donald Trump, resolute, has encouraged the residents of those three states (and others) to buck the edicts set forth by their governors. The result: protests — all in close quarters, it should be noted, an even more preposterous visual element in all of this, people shoulder-to-shoulder in the middle of an epidemic — on the steps of government buildings, screaming about violations of so-called freedoms. These protestors might die as a result, the literal kerosene to the president’s lit match.

Trump knows, fundamentally, that the worst is not yet behind us. And yet, he is hell-bent on waging war against his own citizens. Because the president thrives in moments of political upset. Political upset got him elected, and he’s banking that political upset (or, really, a civil war) will get him elected again, too. Except, this time, the consequences are more dire than the circulation of memes on the internet, accusing Hillary Clinton of running a pedophile ring in the nonexistent basement of a DC pizza joint. This time, Trump will have the blood of thousands of Americans on his hands.

The people who jump when Trump says jump, the ones who showed up at the protests and who organized at the drop of a hat when they saw his tweets — and the ones who will likely contract the disease because they did everything science and medicine tells us not to — are the same people who voted against their own self-interests in 2016.

These are the people from the Rust Belt, who were promised higher wages by a man who has never himself known sacrifice — yet their wages remain stagnant. These are the people from the Midwest who were told that the president had a plan for more comprehensive health insurance for them and who are still, nearly four years later, navigating the same uncertain waters of private insurance. These are people from all over, who were told that the United States would see ceaseless fortune as the result of one man’s business acumen, and who are now, in 2020, seeing themselves plummet instead toward the bottomless pit of a recession, brought on by an unforgivably delayed response to a pandemic by that same businessman.

These are Trump’s warriors and victims. These are the casualties of Trump’s civil war. Over the weekend, protests erupted in Colorado which pitted flag-waving pro-Trumpers against counterprotesting healthcare workers from local hospitals. This is how it begins.

Steel yourselves, Americans. It is not that our president knows not what he does. He knows, but he does not care. We are all disposable. When war erupts, as we know it will, remember this moment, when we tested the boundaries of how far our democracy could stretch, when we pulled an elastic until it could no longer be pulled past taut. He will test us with civil war, but whether or not we arrive at civility on the other side rests purely on us.