The brown shirts of the Nazi Party (Sturmabteilung) operated from 1920 to 1945. Their primary purposes were to provide protection at Nazi rallies, disrupt the meetings of opposing parties, and intimidate Slavic and Romani citizens, unionists, and Jews. In a lot of ways, they resemble the Trump supporters of today, who have physically assaulted more than one person at Trump rallies around the country.
Like the vast majority of newspapers in this country, the Arizona Republic endorsed Hillary Clinton for President, the first time in their 125 year history that they had not nominated a Republican to be President. Since the Republic is a conservative newspaper in a conservative state, the editors expected some feedback.
I didn't take long for the death threats to come in, followed by a few other unseemly comments. As a result, the President of the newspaper published the story below last Sunday:
http://www.azcentral.com/story/opinion/2016/10/16/publisher-response-to-threats-after-republic-endorsement-clinton-trump/92058964/
A few days ago, an armed citizen stood vigil on the outside of a Democratic office in Virginia for 12 hours, for no other reason than to intimidate the folks inside. Since Virginia allows "open carry", he wasn't shy about flashing his weapon from time to time.
A few days ago, three members of the Crusaders militia group were arrested for a plot to blow up an apartment complex that had a large number of Somali residents, and they had planned the attack to occur on November 9, the day after the election. These guys were hardly acting along, since the Southern Poverty Law Center estimate that there were 276 separate militias operating in this country in 2015, down slightly from a peak of 334 in 2011.
Since Donald Trump is under the impression that the whole election is rigged, he has expressed a desire to have observers at polls across the nation. According to Ashby Law, a conservative Virginia based law firm, recently sent out a memo confirming the fact that the election is NOT rigged. Although they acknowledge that poll watchers are desirable, they also said, "any candidate who implies that their followers need to take the law into their own hands is horribly manipulating them to disrupt the election, setting them up to break laws and be arrested - which is exactly what he wants. "
We're always going to have dangerous and foolish people in this country, and Donald Trump, more than any other politician in recent memory, has drawn them out. The only logical way to keep them in check is to make sure that Trump and other right wing Republicans get as few votes as possible.
It's interesting to note that some of those dangerous and foolish people in North Carolina had firebombed a Republican office. Within hours, the DEMOCRTS had "crowd funded" more than enough money to rebuild it, a result that you would not be likely to see if the situation were reversed, as evidenced by Trump's response to the bombing
My wife and I cast our ballots on Saturday, and I've actually seen article that predict that Hillary could win BEFORE the Election Day due to the preponderance of early votes
On top of all that good news, it appears that the Chicago Cubs will finally get to the World Series. It's been a long time since 1908!