SAN FRANCISCO FREAKAZOID FREAKS OUT AT THE FAIRGROUNDS.

This person sounds like fun company, nicht wahr?  "I took a trip to Trump country. It was more bleak than I could have imagined."  What, exactly, could cause such misery?  Why, it was last week's Boone County Fair in Belvidere.

Like a lot of folks who live in rural America, my extended family considers the local county fair in their corner of Illinois the biggest event of the summer. All year, they fantasize about the rides, the charcoal-kissed meat skewers and the stall that churns out fried cheese curds, those little molten pebbles enrobed in crisp chambers of light-as-air batter. They circle that curd stand like a menacing school of sharks as they take in the surrounding attractions, stopping over every so often to re-up on greasy, cheesy fuel. In recent years, they’ve even taken to entering the fair’s contests — the Olympics of Boone County. And they’ve since collected plenty of award ribbons for photography, cookies, crafts and giant garden-grown vegetables.

If this all sounds like a wholesome bit of Americana, I once thought so, too.

Ingratitude, just what you'd expect of someone who wants people to respect her plural pronoun. Probably put off at those 4-H displays thanking the businesses that buy the prize animals.  You won't read any of that, because she's distressed to discover a dissenting perspective.

I went back after two decades away to see what I’d been missing.

Everything was basically the same, from the cheese curds to the moaning herds of wooly sheep — except this time, the fair was feeling a little … weird.

Along with corny fair merch and anime ponchos, every, and I mean every T-shirt stall was draped with Trump flags: “I’m voting for the felon,” “F— Biden” and the relatively anodyne, “I’m With Trump.” While browsing the pet supply shop across from the local Republican Party’s stall, I saw GOP staff greeted with cheers and raised fists — echoing Donald Trump’s triumphant pose after the assassination attempt on him — by numerous fairgoers wearing red caps and “Ultra MAGA” shirts. “Boo, Kambala!” yelled a woman, laughing.

In packed queues for roasted corn, I squeezed past parents balancing their children’s plastic lemonade cups in their arms with “Trump/Vance 2024” lawn signs tucked under their armpits. “Nice sign!” one blonde, elementary school-age girl shouted above the din, with her thumbs up at a woman holding one of them.

Yes, the sales tents at the steam power shows and county fairs have provided opportunities for people who understand nose rings are for livestock to cock a snook at the weird freakazoids who think nose rings are a Statement.  "The more censorious the Perpetually Aggrieved become, and the more in-your-face the rainbow coalition is in the entertainment industry, the more Gadsden flags and POW-MIA flags and Confederate battle flags will sell. Subverting the dominant paradigm and being transgressive isn't for the critical studies people only."  These days the Trump flags are the modal insurgent expression, with those "voting for the felon" being scorn for the lawfare.

That's not to say the art only takes one political side.

I found that on offer at the Dodge County farm power show a few weekends ago (where has August gone.)  There might be some Harris voters looking at the tractors, or perhaps some friends or relatives of affluent white female urban liberals who could buy one as a gag gift.  Unfortunately, Soleil Ho is too miserable even to appreciate that.  "I was just trying to have a chill time looking at show rabbits. But I was bombarded by right-wing politics."  Cry me a river.  Or spend convention week in Chicago.  Or go back to the Bay Area and commiserate with the other weirdos.

But even in a reliably blue state like Illinois, you wouldn’t know it from walking around the county fairgrounds.

I know it’s just T-shirts. It’s just signs. But it was unnerving all the same to be among so many people so in thrall to the politics of white resentment that it’s seeped into something as casual and family-friendly as a county fair. If MAGA is winning any political contests these days, it’s clearly dominating the merch category.

Living in the Bay Area, it’s easy to forget that pockets of deep-red space exist everywhere in the United States. But I knew better than to be utterly shocked. My family, mostly Democrats or otherwise apolitical, are pragmatic about politics: This is their home. They quietly listen to the daily political rants and ravings about crime, immigrants and “transes” from MAGA colleagues, neighbors and friends, hoping for any opportunity to pivot to the weather. The truth is, if you cut and run in a place like this, you won’t have any friends left.

How can Illinois simultaneously be "reliably blue" and "in thrall to the politics of white resentment?"  How much white resentment is there in Woodlawn?  But it's so easy, particularly if you have a platform in San Francisco, to blame the voters.

Walk around a place like that Illinois county fair and you’ll see that MAGA comes off like an addiction — an obsession that seems much more emotional than rational. It’s the mean-spirited aspect of America, one that looks upon people like my refugee family as a lesser-than group, even if we might be tolerated individually. It’s heartbreaking to be around, knowing that there’s little logic or data that can dislodge a thorn that’s been absorbed so thoroughly.

Right metaphor, wrong thorn.  Whether it's Barack Obama with his "bitter clingers" or Hillary Clinton with her "basket of deplorables" or what remained of Joe Biden with his mega-ultra-Maga ranting, the professional-managerial class and their freakazoid cheering section have had a party while the Normals rack up credit card debt.

I'm not sure how far beyond the fairgrounds the Trump insurgency extends in Illinois.  I have noticed more Trump flags than in either of the previous two presidential cycles, and some being displayed right here in DeKalb, which is a university town.  With classes resuming next week, I might be able to report on sightings in the student ghetto, and perhaps in the faculty ghetto as well.