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

[KPN]

35. Thank you for sharing that remarkable insight.

It explains a lot. Having rational explanations for disquieting events is enormously reassuring and calming in effect.

My Dad was a loving, playful and responsible father and generally compassionate person, but he had a dark side, a volcanic anger that could erupt in a moment’s notice that routinely put me and my siblings on pins and needles. We never understood this and often felt like we were walking on eggshells around him. When I was in my late 30s, I and my siblings learned from our Mom that my Dad’s mother had killed herself when he was 15. And he had been the one who found her hanged in the basement of their farmhouse. He had never told us how his Mom had died. Nor had any of his siblings, our three aunts on his side of our family. As my Mom described it, they were all ashamed by and had kept it a secret. Only after that did I realize that my Dad’s emotional development had been interrupted by that one disturbing event in his early life. His innocence had been violated and in some ways corrupted. This knowledge was a tremendous gift for me and my siblings; it gave us an explanation and it gave us peace.