Oath Keepers and Proud Boys were like little kids living out a fantasy.

[nuxvomica]

10. It's the broken hero's cycle

We are supposed to transition from the innocence of youth through rites of passage to the awareness of corruption in the world and the commitment of our newfound adult powers to protecting the innocent from that corruption so the cycle can begin anew. If we pass the awareness stage without answering the call to heroism, either because we fear sacrifice or have no confidence in our powers, this broken instinct must be mitigated by fantasies in which we are pantomime heroes easily fighting the made-up corruptions invented by abusive parental figures who only acquire power by keeping their followers in a permanent twilight of childhood. This broken cycle has been the primary cause of human misery since the dawn of humankind, even though myth and literature, from Gilgamesh to Skywalker, keeps telling us how the whole thing is supposed to work.