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A somewhat haunted-looking, older man from Farmington Hills who came to the event by himself described how every Tuesday, at 7 Mile and Farmington Road in nearby Livonia, he and a group of friends assemble, to wave flags and show their support for the former president. But mostly to hang out and drink.

Theres probably about 25 or 30 of us, and then we go to the bar across the street after and its really fun, he said. When the people drive by, I cant believe how many people honk their horn and stuff.

Two middle-aged men, one from the nearby suburb Lake Orion and one Brandon native, huddled under a massive thin blue line flag on a preposterously tall flagpole. I approached them because the latter, who identified himself only as Sean, was wearing a cap with a message I couldnt help but strike up a conversation about: Everything woke turns to shit.

Sean described his concern over the issue as stemming from the newscast, seeing what was happening, and a lack of trust for the current administration. But when it came to his own kids schools, he was considerably more sanguine.

My son goes here, to Brandon [public schools]. Im really happy with Brandon schools, I couldnt be happier. I graduated from Brandon High School; I dont think its happening here in Brandon, he said. But Im still concerned with all the other communities where it is happening.

His kids were alright. But how could you pass up the opportunity to gather with like-minded individuals, and transmit your Brandon-ness into the ether for all those fighting the good fight in less comfortable environs?

Despite proclaiming my status as a hometown boy, or close enough to one, it wasnt easy to get the events wary attendees to warm up to the rare national political reporter coming through the area. (It didnt help that, realizing I had worn my normally tweedy attire, I attempted to ingratiate myself by slapping on a Detroit Tigers cap that happened to be in the back seat of my car which only had the effect of making me look like a sort of millennial-hipster Michael Moore.) So I was especially grateful when an intense-looking man who I had noticed observing me earlier complimented my sneakers as he walked by with his wife. He introduced himself to me as Mike Steger, a self-described activist and one-time Democratic House candidate who had moved to Kalamazoo just six weeks prior from California.

I soon learned that in addition to being a welcome conversational oasis of familiarity, these urbane, vaguely hip-seeming younger people were rare birds in the political world: honest-to-god LaRouche-ites, acolytes of the late, eccentric perennial candidate for president whose movement became conspiratorial and at times in its history, violent. The Stegers, however, couldnt be further from that; they were kind and engaging as they described their journey from Bush-era anti-war activists in California to true-blue Trump supporters in Michigan.

The first [Trump] rally we went to was in Phoenix, and what was most striking was the type of people who were there, and the sacrifice these people were making. They had this sense of something deeper, and they had a lot of conservative style and a sort of nihilistic tendency, but the stuff thats underneath it was really substantial, Steger said. Theres not a lot of ideology there, its a lot of single-issue stuff, or if its not, theyre actually concerned about: What are their grandchildren going to have for their way of life?

As unexpected as it was, encountering a pair of LaRouche-ites in the wild there felt appropriate. Steger and I discussed how Trump had scrambled traditional politics, coding what was once the lefts anti-imperialism as conservative, and state control over medical decisions as liberal. The Lets Go Brandon Fest attendees werent there out of an undying commitment to the Reagan Revolution, or their desire for a Vermuele-ian diktat of the common good. They picked their motivating causes a la carte: some wielded signs protesting critical race theory, some Covid lockdowns, some sheer cultural animus toward Democrats. They showed up because this was where their people were.

That made it jarring to consider that the actual purpose of the event was, in reality, as rigidly partisan as possible: to ensure that Republicans might never again lose a competitive election.

The Maddocks, who founded the MCC, led groups from Michigan to Washington on Jan. 6, as did current MCC President Rosanne Ponkowski, the vice chair of the Oakland County Republican Party. Former State Sen. Patrick Colbeck bragged onstage about his ban from PayPal, and playing a role in getting Lou Dobbs Fox News show cancelled for his aggressive peddling of 2020 election conspiracies. The apocalyptic rhetoric was all the more odd coming from a politician with his particular brand of awkward-dad anti-charm.

Ive been working for over the last year investigating what happened in the 2020 election, and all the evidence points to the fact that Brandon should not be occupying [the White House], Colbeck said to cheers and whoops. Our legislators should be doing a full forensic audit. Im tired of people putting on a good show during campaign season, and then not doing what they said they would do after they get into office. We cant afford that anymore. Too much is at stake.

Colbeck encouraged attendees to learn more about his Election Integrity Force, which has conducted a tireless effort to overturn Trumps loss in Michigan and earned legal threats from Dominion Voting Systems in doing so.

People seemed excited, but not enough to deter them from eagerly patronizing the hot dog stands, or the makeshift bazaar selling F--- Joe Biden hoodies. As the weather deteriorated, with light snow turning to sleet and then to a chilling rain, the crowd slowly diminished after Colbecks pep talk, especially as an eccentric radio host held forth interminably about conspiracies covering everything from the Kennedys to something inscrutable about the IRS and Quonset huts in Alaska. (Easily the warmest reception of the afternoon was for Ricky Bobby who, red-faced and giggly, mostly just expressed his dismay at leaving the sunny confines of Daytona Beach for mid-Michigan in November.)

With still an hour to go in the festival, the crowd dwindled, and the main park area was populated by only a handful of true believers, including two men in Proud Boys regalia presumably asserting their manliness by toughing out the inclement weather. I approached a mother and her teenage son who, like me, seemed to be lingering at the events fringes, surveying the crowd for an in.

I just kind of wandered over here from down the street, said the mother, who pulled the fur-lined hood of her coat to her face against the cold. Both requested anonymity to speak to a reporter. Im not really political, but you know, this is a conservative area, so Im not surprised. I didnt vote for Biden, but honestly, I feel like this is kind of embarrassing.

Against the backdrop of an ambulance that was emblazoned with the slogan Trump Save the USA, I could see where she was coming from. Her son described himself as a Trump supporter, but he seemed somewhat abashed by the festivals f--- your feelings espirit, even as he earnestly registered with me his concerns about mail-in ballots in the 2020 election.

With a few noisy outliers like a shaggy, wild-eyed man carrying a Gadsden flag, who punctuated Colbecks remarks with shouts of they should be in prison the overall atmosphere was more like a family cookout, or a local radio festival than the noxiousness of an official Trump event. Its difficult to imagine anyone like that teenage boy, or the Farmington Hills retiree, or the hometown-proud, anti-woke dad whom I spoke to, storming the Capitol, or the local vote-tallying center. But thats the nature of a mob: You gather the basically sympathetic, but otherwise not prone to action, and incite them toward the aims of the activist few.

The vast majority of the Lets Go Brandon Fest attendees were there because they were sympathetic to its central, humorous cultural conceit, or because they were fired up about a pet issue. Its organizers pitched the event because they thought it could help them grow their petition, or their mailing list. Even in the Tea Party era, that might have been aimed toward, for example, enforcing Grover Norquists anti-tax pledge, or pursuing the quixotic effort to uncover former President Barack Obamas birth certificate. Today, the goal is to elect Republicans at every level who appear overtly hostile to democracy.

I dont think people are angry, said Steger, the LaRouche-ite-turned-Trumpian. They just want to see politicians who will actually do something.

A binary political system demands that Americans sort themselves into one of two tribes, and their choice is based mostly on cultural affinity. I happen to know this community very well, and despite the Trump-era Republican Partys increasing extremism, the other side isnt going to win it over anytime soon. So while cultural appeal remains static, the something that the leaders of each tribe aim to do changes, tilting in ever more extreme, and in the case of some Republicans, anti-democratic, directions.

Its an unexpectedly ominous lesson from an event ostensibly based on a NASCAR-related joke slogan. But considering how even the people I spoke with who thought the event itself was a joke didnt vote for Biden, its one worth considering. Thank You, Brandon probably isnt going to cut it as a rebuttal.

As Thanksgiving approaches, the Brandon-ites assembly might offer a dark political lesson for Democrats thats been apparent to families for years, especially in our polarized era: deep, uncomfortable grievance can still be the catalyst for a pretty strong community bond. In the spirit of the event, and to quote an early anti-PC cultural touchstone: Happy Thanksgiving, and Merry F---ing Christmas.

Read more here:
The Bizarre Mildness of Lets Go Brandon Fest - POLITICO Magazine