>>64139229
>Guys I've known for years on shooting forums or whatever
Also to add to this -- you're seeing this on shooting forums, yeah? There's a reason for that. In American culture, this kind of John Birch / right-wing schizo stuff heavily overlaps with gun culture, prepper/survivalist culture, libertarian culture, militia culture, and fundamentalist Protestantism. There's strong distrust of the government and a kind of apocalyptic mindset to these people. At least as a narrative. The world is always careeing towards a nuclear disaster, and there's a shadowy cabal that's responsible.

You run into these people a lot if you hang around gun stuff, or go to gun shows. It's just part of the atmosphere. But most people who own guns and are interested in it as a hobby can be like "okay, these people are a little crazy." But they're not wrong about guns and maybe having some survival stuff (just in case!). It's the difference between liking guns and that being part of a whole holistic (and rather religious) belief system and intepretation of reality that leads one to join a religious cult or move to Russia because you think the earth is going to flip upside down.

Many of these people don't vote, or if they do, they vote for Republicans, but they're not part of the Republican establishment, and they could see Trump as their champion (which is an interesting subject), but like I was saying, he's not one of them. They voted for Ross Perot in the 1990s.