Australians have a word they use to describe young men long on testosterone and short on brains who drive around late at night, speeding and revving their muscle cars. The word is “hoons.”
It’s a word that works on many levels, suggesting a special category of goon, perhaps one so lacking in personality as to be unable to attract attention without a large, loud engine. Through alliteration, hoons also might be raccoons, a cowardly rodent who makes mischief at night.
(The Aussies and Brits own all the best English slang, including my all-time favorite, “cashed-up bogens” for rednecks who suddenly become rich.)
In this election, Trump has capitalized on American hoons who most recently surrounded a Biden campaign bus on a California highway, apparently boxing it in. My friends who are Trump fans celebrated it on Facebook, laughing all the way at the latest manifestation of Trump hooliganism.
It was no isolated incident and it was not an innocent prank.
Trump’s hoons have been out, all over the country, for weeks or months.
In the Philadelphia suburb of Aston, one was driving around a month ago with a flag that read, “Trump 2020: Fuck Your Feelings.” Those are harsh words in Aston, which prides itself in Little League baseball, the Dairy Queen and family values.
A week ago Saturday, the hoons were out on High Street, the main street of Missouri’s capital, Jefferson City. A half-dozen of them cruised the main drag, giant Trump flags raised, individually and then together. Two days ago, here in Sierra Vista, Calif., a dozen or more Trump trucks drove in procession down Fry Boulevard, the main drag.
These boys in their big trucks want you to know something, but their message isn’t abundantly clear. If the point was to show support of the president, a bumper sticker would have sufficed.
The hoons want more than that. With their big trucks and oversized flags and tinted windows, they want you to know that they believe themselves powerful, more powerful than you in your small, fuel-efficient car.
They want you to know that they believe themselves more patriotic than you, a citizen who hangs your U.S. flag out on the Fourth of July and puts it away again until next year. They want you to know they are more aggressive than you are, you shrinking liberal with your Chardonnay and your college degree.
As Adolph Hitler rose to power, he enlisted the help of the Brown Shirts or “Stormtroopers,” ex-soldiers and others ruffians, to intimidate and physically attack Jews, Communists and others who dared challenge the Nazis. While using them as a tool, Hitler maintained a safe political distance from these thugs, and when their power became too great, the Fuhrer got rid of them by executing 150 or so of their leaders.
Young men with more testosterone than brains on Saturday “captured” a Biden campaign bus on a California highway, an ostensible crime. It’s unlikely anyone will be prosecuted, though. Acts like boxing in a bus on a highway are viewed as pranks, particularly if no one’s hurt. After all, cops have real crimes to investigate.
I’ve seen this behavior at close range and I’ve seen how it works.
Two years ago, when Heath Scott, the police chief in our town, was angling for a whopping $10,000 raise, a pickup truck with a “Support the Police” sign showed up outside our Haines Borough Assembly meeting. The truck peeled wheels and shot gravel around while we on the assembly sat inside wondering what was happening outside.
A few weeks later when the issue of Scott’s raise arose, I couldn’t scare up enough support on the assembly for even a discussion of the raise.
Hooliganism is real. Intimidation is real. Hoons are real. The boys long on testosterone and short on brains are involved in shaded thuggery and working for our president. Don’t laugh or shrug it off. This is how totalitarianism begins.