A strange image on the front page of the Washington Post — a woman called "Burnitdown" — who's accelerating a fire — is said to "portend" "what the Trump movement is becoming."

 

The caption under the picture — the tiny print — says: "Angela Rubino squirts fuel into a fire in her yard in Rome, Ga., so that participants in a Republican meeting on a chilly morning can warm themselves."

So we're told she's called "Burnitdown" and she "portends what the Trump movement is becoming," and we're inflamed at first glance, but if we take the trouble to read the fine print, she's just warming Republicans on a chilly morning.

Why is this front-page news? It seems like some random lady.

If we click on the link, we arrive at "The town crier/Deepening suspicions. A parallel voting system. Dumpster diving for documents. In northwest Georgia, a woman known as ‘Burnitdown’ portends what the Trump movement is becoming" by Stephanie McCrummen. 

So... a "town crier" brings us the news we hadn't heard yet. And she "portends" — she foretells, she's an omen, she gives advance warning.

Okay. I'll read it now. Excerpts:

Six years into the grass-roots movement unleashed by Donald Trump in his first presidential campaign, Angela Rubino is a case study in what that movement is becoming. Suspicious of almost everything, trusting of almost nothing, believing in almost no one other than those who share her unease, she has in many ways become a citizen of a parallel America — not just red America, but another America entirely, one she believes to be awash in domestic enemies, stolen elections, immigrant invaders, sexual predators, the machinations of a global elite and other fresh nightmares revealed by the minute on her social media scrolls. She is known online as “Burnitdown.”...

In [Marjorie Taylor] Greene, she did not see what much of America saw — a person willing to do almost anything to keep emotions running high, whether that meant perpetuating lies about election fraud, harassing a victim of a school shooting, speaking at a white nationalist conference or casting fellow citizens who disagree with her as “domestic terrorists.” 

Instead, Rubino saw a person like herself: a political outsider who shared the same sense of urgency about the same dystopian America, one that required a popular uprising to save it. To that end, Rubino had so far managed to rally enough people to get the county election board ousted, replacing its members with those who believed that the 2020 election was stolen. She was part of a group called the Domestically Terrorized Moms that was pressing the local school board to get rid of a curriculum they believed to be grooming children for sexual predators. 

Now, on a cool Saturday morning a few weeks after she had climbed into the dumpster, she was getting ready to host a gathering of fellow activists to strategize about their next moves.... She set out coffee and doughnuts in the bed of a pickup. She hooked up a loudspeaker she’d bought for the occasion. She built a roaring bonfire, and now smoke and Aerosmith were drifting into the blue spring sky....

This is well-written, I must say:  "and now smoke and Aerosmith were drifting into the blue spring sky." Ha ha ha.

 They were also planning to start a podcast called “The Dirty Peach” to expose “RINOs” and “criminal politicians.” And, to keep people motivated, they were launching an elaborate online game in which players would earn points by carrying out political actions in real life, the more audacious the better.... 

She had ordered three huge tents she was planning to raise in her yard, imagining larger rallies with candidates and nationally known speakers, a gathering place for people in the movement. “It’ll be a safe space,” she said. “People can come and express themselves without worrying someone’s going to call them crazy.”...

Much more at the link. I think this is an excellent article, deserving of promotion on the front-page, and the incendiary teaser is likely to rope in WaPo readers. I don't know why there's no comments section! Anyway, I'm interested in reading more articles by Stephanie McCrummen.

I loved the Aerosmith detail. What Aerosmith do you think played in the bonfire smoke?

 

There's something wrong with the world today 

I don't know what it is 

Something's wrong with our eyes 

We're seeing things in a different way 

And God knows it ain't his 

It sure ain't no surprise, yeah