Rolling coal is new; it just caught on a few years ago. It does not improve the performance of a truck. It has no practical application or pragmatic purpose of any kind. It is
purely aggressive, a raw expression of defiance: I can pollute your air, for no reason, and no one can stop me.
It is what it is. And now lawmakers are cracking down on it.
Which brings us to our quote.
But to diesel owners like Corey Blue of Roanoke, Ill., the very efforts to ban coal rolling represent the worst of government overreach and environmental activism. "Your bill will not stop us!" Mr. Blue wrote to Will Guzzardi, a state representative who has proposed a $5,000 fine on anyone who removes or alters emissions equipment.
"Why don’t you go live in Sweden and get the heck out of our country," Mr. Blue wrote. "I will continue to roll coal anytime I feel like and fog your stupid eco-cars."
My apologies to Mr. Blue for using him as a synecdoche here, but … this really captures something.
The core of the ethnonationalist perspective is that a country’s constituent groups and demographics are locked in a zero-sum struggle for resources. Any government intervention that favors one group disfavors the others. Government and other institutions are either with you or against you.
