A Parallel Universe Part 4: Fellow Soldiers
J6 families, facing hardship and animosity, find support in each other for better or for worse. Part 4 of 5
The first time I attended Clay Clark’s ReAwaken America Tour in Anaheim, CA, I‘ll admit I was jealous of how enthralled and inspired the audience was. Part Trump rally, part Mega church revival, with just a pinch of real-deal-fascism, these shows are a weekends-long affair that pop up in the red rims of major cities and pump hour after hour of fear and gospel into your aunts and uncles. On any given day one might watch a book-burning preacher, a medical quack, the Pillow Guy, one of the lesser Trumps— all preaching with big Jim Baker energy. The audience is drawn vivid pictures of things to be afraid of, proof the changes they don’t like are causing the ruin they’re sure is happening, and a cast of evil villains to direct their ire towards. General Michael Flynn, former psy-op expert and admitted taker of foreign money, is lauded as a rockstar here. People stand up and cheer, and he is truly a general. The crowd would follow this man into war and indeed his language is that of combat; the audience is in “a battle for God,” there’s “irregular warfare” on a “digital battleground,” everyone present should “fight like a Flynn!” and so on. It had been over a year into the pandemic when I sat in the audience and these people looked happier than I’d felt in a long time.
Speaker after speaker expounds on the American Dream in peril. The crowd cheers and nods and smiles at each other filled with a renewed mission. Now they’re platoon-mates. For God. I envied that kind of clear motivation.
Let’s not fuck around, the American Dream these speakers are talking about amounts entirely to acquiring wealth and privilege. That’s it, that’s the dream. The people at ReAwaken, festooned in flag clothing, want this Reagan-era concept to continue and everything else is a dark fall to Socialism. Decades ago, they made this their defining characteristic and, in time, they moved into a more individualistic and isolated country because of it. Driven to endlessly upgrade larger houses with bigger yards or a higher loft perches with thicker walls, the American Dream pushed us all further away from each other. We lost the sense of community, family, and shared goals of surviving as a group. We made ourselves feel empty as we were cast, single or in pairs, to quiet suburbs, connected only by The Algorithm. Into that emptiness crept political extremism, a poor excuse for community. Looking around the Jan6 Truth & Light Fest now, I think about the American Dream. The comical amount of flag-themed party decorations, the patriotic regalia taped to every free surface. At the end of this weekend better than half the paper table runners will be pulled and thrown away, no one ever having sat at them.
There is a patriotic (if not sparse) group of people here this weekend still committed to helping each other. They are making themselves a tribe; first as fighters for Trump’s unfair election loss, then as protectors against those who want to punish them for their actions on J6. For better or for worse, they’ve made themselves a temporary family.
“They call me Insurrection Barbie,” laughs Nicole Reffitt. Her husband, Guy Reffitt, is currently held in the “DC Gulag” serving time for bringing a gun to the capitol. Eight or so of us are smoking cigarettes in the lush, grassy field behind the barn. A few lean against posts, a few sit in folding camp chairs. She’s telling us about the trolls that create all manner of mocking images of the J6 families. One created a stop-motion animation, one has harassed Ashli Babbitt’s mother in person viciously. We can have conflicting views on Babbitt’s mother, a VERY extreme woman, but I don’t know how making fun of a woman’s dead daughter accomplishes anything, least of all bringing her back to reality. Still, the group chuckles. I get the sense that laughing it off has taken a lot of practice. A few people have stories of being mocked by strangers, some by family. They all wince when they smile.
I’ve listened to Nicole interviewed on both liberal and conservative outlets for the last year and a half, I’ve heard her express both contrition and defiance. I wonder if she moderates these opinions depending on the crowd around her or if she’s hardened since her husband’s plea deal bore a much longer sentence than promised. I can tell she’s an independent thinker, I also know that her son turned Guy in to the FBI a few days after January 6th. So she’s also a person who has lost family, at least for now.
The conversation turns to adult children and Nicole mentions her son’s girlfriend whom she’s met and likes. Oh, Nicole and her son must be speaking again then, that’s good. Nicole places the butt in an ashtray and shrugs her shoulders, “my son’s girlfriend is non-binary. I don’t care, whatever. It’s no problem for me to say ‘they’ instead of ‘she’.” She must be relieved to have him back in her life. “If that’s what they want.”
The crowd nods and murmers a chorus of yeps and yeses. A silent moment passes. “But you know…” pipes up a seated man, “that’s what all these liberals want. All this confusion about girls and boys, that’s what they’re doing now. That’s what we have to stop.” The same crowd that just agreed with Nicole, that just applauded Jessica Watkins, that seemed fine confirming identity, retreated immediately back to their stock talking point. Another round of nods and yeps. The all looked down momentarily, as the congnitive dissonance registered then evaporated. One of them had wandered too far into the realm of independent thinking and the group had to be herded back again. There’s no followup; who are ‘they’? What are ‘they’ meant to be doing? And what does ‘stopping them look like? Nicole doesn’t protest. Maybe she thinks she‘s not changing any minds and there was no point in arguing, maybe she doesn’t want to be singled out from flock.
Jessica Watkins, had served in the military. She had joined the Army in 2001 and the reportedly went AWOL when her status as transgender was revealed. According to reporting by CBS and interviews she’s given on several shows, Jessica lost touch with family, who rejected her because of her transgender identity. For a period, she suffered from depression. Years later, she found new camaraderie with the Oath Keeper’s militia. The military training in a career cut short now had a use and purpose. A band of comrades working towards a shared goal. She believed together they could help other patriotic Americans. There’s a science behind why this feels good: helping others in your community, called “pro-social acts,” rewards the group member with approval as well as a healthy dopamine hit, according to Sebastian Junger in his book Tribe. There’s a tiny part of us that knows if we had felt the sting of rejection from our family, if we felt the shame of a country telling us our service is not wanted — we would be susceptible to the promise of joining a new family, and joining means falling in line with their goals. It hurts to know also, the same ultra-conservative crowd that buys into election conspiracies traffics incessantly in anti-trans messaging. One wonders if there was more open-minded acceptance 20 years ago, if Jessica would be in prison today in the first place.
Doug Jensen is a recognizable figure. You’ve seen him leading a crowd up a set of stairs, wearing a Q-Anon t-shirt, challenging a security guard who slowly leads the crowd away from fleeing congressional staff. The FBI transcript of Doug’s first interview after January 6th paints as sad picture. Doug grew up in foster care, he was a victim of sexual abuse. He supported Clinton until the Pizzagate rumors (a pre-cursor to Q-Anon) began to flood his social media feed in 2016. Like countless others, Doug built lurid, paranoid fantasies on the back of his own experiences of a failed system. I really believe that he thought he would enter the capitol and undo all that hurt. In December 2020, Doug’s wife underwent a hysterectomy. Despite this, he was certain he had to go to the capitol.
April Jensen, arrives late sporting a “Free My 1/6er” t-shirt. She has a temporary cast for a wrist injury, she looks like dazed and tired. Clements rushes to get an interview in before the light fades and with his clumsy attempt at an interview, he coaxes what sounds like a very flat re-telling of her husband’s return from the capitol and subsequent arrest. When arrested, Doug was first permitted to stay home, so long as he stayed away from social media. That meant no phone. He was caught watching Mike Lindell’s Cyber Symposium on his daughter’s old cel phone. Unable to kick his addiction, he was taken to jail. As the evening falls, I asked April how she and her family are holding up. “Listen, he knows what he did was wrong. We want our kids to know when you do something wrong, you pay for it. There‘s consequences.”
Her voice waivers a bit. “But I’ve never had to pay a phone bill on my own. I’ve never had to shovel the walk, bring in all the groceries.” She lets me take a few quick portraits in the last, long, blades of sunset, “I just want my husband back.” She waves hello to her supportive friends who pat her on the shoulder, letting her know they care.
