Movement started by Trump has created a sort of parallel U.S., where suspicion rules and trust is for the like-minded

Angela Rubino with the shredded records she retrieved
(Photo by Michael S. Williamson, The Washington Post) 

After describing a northwest Georgia activist's dumpster dive for shredded records in search of the elusive villain of voter fraud, Stephanie McCrummen of The Washington Post writes:

"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.'

"She is also among the people across the country willing to do whatever they can to ensure that the imagined enemies of the United States are defeated in the 2022 midterm elections and beyond. From school boards to state houses to Congress, their goal is to take political territory, and for evidence that this is possible, they look to northwest Georgia Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, whose first-time candidacy two years ago defined the fringe of the Republican Party and who is now running for reelection as one of its standard bearers."

There are people like Angela Rubino in your county. Are you writing about them? Might be a good idea. So far Rubino has "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."

McCrummen spent a lot of time with Angela Rubino, and her story is a deep dive into places many would rather not go. Ignore them at your peril. --Al Cross, Institute for Rural Journalism and Community Issues