Bunker mentality
By 
It’s not news that a lot of reactionaries completely lost their minds when America elected a Black president, but this eventual Kentucky politician is a particularly extreme example:
On 200 acres of Kentucky meadow just outside of Richmond, his vision became a 14,300-square-foot reality. Nine bedrooms, three kitchens, a six-car garage, a steam room, a saltwater pool — the front entryway alone cost $75,000.
“My feelings were that we were going to have civil unrest because there was so much going on with Obama,” Mr. Morgan said. He believed that people were going to rise up against the attempts to overhaul health care and restrict guns, and that societal collapse would soon follow. He envisioned “roving bands of gangs” hunting for food and necessities in the aftermath. He bought riot gear, bulletproof vests and a small arsenal of firearms, so that “if you had to engage a band of marauders, you would have a chance to save your family.”
The keystone of his survival plan was what lay underneath: a shelter 26 feet underground, beneath a 39-inch solid ceiling. It contains 2,000 square feet of bedrooms and common space along with a stocked food pantry, an air filtration system and two escape tunnels, one of them 100 feet long. The company that installed the shelter suggested that Mr. Morgan keep quiet about it, because “if anything ever happened, there’d be people that try to take the bunker.”
But even as he built his fortified sanctuary, politics in Kentucky were shifting, becoming more favorable for those with the kind of hard-right convictions that Mr. Morgan held. Jordan, who had become an ambitious and outspoken conservative herself, landed a job out of law school in the new gubernatorial administration of Matt Bevin, the firebrand Republican. Mr. Morgan decided to run for the Kentucky House of Representatives and in 2016 became the first Republican in decades to win his district.
Within days of taking office, he had become a lightning rod for criticism and derision. Good government groups expressed shock when Mr. Morgan proposed a slew of bills that would help the retail liquor business. Democratic lawmakers lambasted his measures allowing teachers to carry guns and granting immunity to motorists who unintentionally hit protesters blocking traffic.
What happened after he went full QAnon while proving too much of a crackpot to win a Kentucky Republican Party primary (!) is both tragic and sadly predictable.