I wonder what the folks organizing the tiki torch parade next to Glen Youngkin’s campaign bus thought they were doing? Because, obviously, to do the thing right you would need to hire genuine Southern crackers, white trash from the Appalachian valleys burned out on opioids or at least people that look like them, with bad teeth and all. So you dress up a woman and a black as white crackers?

I suppose they had the brilliant idea that tiki torches, after Charlottesville, equals far-right equals racists equals armed insurrectionists equals eeeew to suburban moms who all vote Democrat because all their schoolteacher friends vote Democrat. No doubt that is what the NYT and WaPo “explainers” explained after the Charlottesville debacle.

Of course, it is true that nowhere in Frankfurt School honcho Adorno’s Authoritarian Personality does it mention the obscenity of authoritarian plumbers daring to protest the rape of their daughters in a government school bathroom, especially when in the throne room of their noble and credentialed school-board betters. Only, dear Democratic friends voting in Virginia, one thing I have noticed among my female acquaintance is that the ladies are really uncomfortable with the idea of males in the bathroom -- by any name. Now, I was reading dear Derb only this morning and he quoted Gen. Montgomery about the Two Rules of Warfare.

Rule One: Don’t invade Russia.
Rule Two: Don’t invade China.
Rule Three: Don’t let men in the women’s bathroom.

Okay. Rule Three is just my little joke. And yes, dear liberal friends, you can take all the offense you want. I am indeed the worst transphobe west of the Pecos, but don’t forget to turn left at Albuquerque.

But I have to admit, Senator, that I thought the tiki torch parade around the statue of Robert E. Lee back in the day of Charlottesville rather charming. See, I think of tiki torches as rather white working-class. Antifa’s mostly peaceful protesters would never descend to such Walmart-ism. Nor would well-born peaceful protesters lying down in the street in a Die-In to protest fossil fuels. And as for #WeBelieve faculty wives…

See, I think we are entering upon a golden age of political good humor, featuring us, the Friends of Brandon. We shall be remembered down the ages:

We few, we happy few, we band of brothers;
For he to-day that walks and stands with me
Shall be my brother; be he ne'er so vile,
This day shall gentle his condition;

You mean, Hal, you are offering a Get Out of Jail Free card to deplorables? Sign me up!

Yes, we Friends of Brandon will doubtless, many years from now, glance at the tiki torch up on the mantle shelf and explain to our grandchildren about the glorious deeds of the Friends of Brandon in the days gone by, when ordinary Americans came together holding our tiki torches high and laughing the cry of “Let’s Go Brandon” together in our shared determination to end the vile injustice of woke progressivism, but with laughter in our voices and joy in our hearts.

No, not for us the comfort of “I would ‘twere bedtime, Hal, and all well.” Not for us the ignominious serfdom of the vassals of the ruling class dutifully “protesting” for the ruling class’s agenda from race to climate change.

And let the tiki torch be our escutcheon. We don’t want to parade around like The Great Race’s cackling Dr. Evil in artistical black, or like today’s Antifa regime shock troops that curiously have chosen the same color uniform as the SS. We don’t want to parade around virtue-signaling in our electric cars or taking offense at the least little thing. Instead, we hold high the symbol of the ordinary suburban barbecue: the unremarkable tiki torch. Available at Walmart. Of course, as you would expect, there are many alternatives to the basic 4-pack suitable for peaceful protesting alongside campaign buses, including one, for $58.95, that sports a carved image of a primordial god.

Hey, even La Wik is in on the joke:

A tiki torch is a pole-mounted torch, typically made of bamboo, that originated in the tiki culture of the mid-20th-century United States[.]

Really, I had no idea that La Wik ever joked about anything. But you can see the slight veneer of condescension: the suburban American white middle class as an anthropological curiosity.

Note to Antifa armorers. Don’t believe La Wik: the tiki torch is not made of bamboo, as you would know if you had ever seen one in the garden section at Walmart. The tiki torch is a cousin of your pal the Molotov cocktail, except it has kerosene fuel and a metal canister and a wick, not a Wik. Do not allow your peaceful protesters to wield tiki torches unless they are “cold” and emptied of fuel.

Image via Twitter

Christopher Chantrill @chrischantrill runs the go-to site on US government finances, usgovernmentspending.com. Also get his American Manifesto and his Road to the Middle Class.

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