You might never suspect that up here in beautiful Washington State, we have one of the largest numbers of white supremacist groups in America. After all, it s gorgeous and relatively quiet, and this is a  blue  state, right? But under all of our fall colors, our lakes, our bike lanes, and our farmer s markets is the same hate you see in the Deep South or the rural Midwest or really anywhere in the United States.In fact, here in the northwest part of the Northwest, there are a surprising number of  Alt-Right  adherents. But considering how rural much of the area between Seattle and Canada is, nobody should be surprised at how many Trump supporters there are. And that seems to have been the catalyst for many people in my neck of the woods who at one time were relatively self-policing: Permission from the president to be bigots. If you listen to Donald Trump when the conversation moves to white nationalism, the subtext is almost that bigotry makes you more American, and we have got some flag wavers in these parts.So last month when my local paper covered a local murder that was, at least peripherally, connected to the Alt-Right, it really wasn t shocking to me. My (now-adult) son and I have attended any number of rallies up and down the freeway corridor we live on, and there is a strong presence of Richard Spencer wannabes and Milo Yiannopoulos sycophants at every single one. But over the fold was a face I knew: Lane Davis, a 33-year-old guy who lived a few doors down from my mom s old house. I saw him in stores and on the street. I bummed him a smoke outside the Safeway more than once.I touched that guy s hand.Image via FacebookHe killed his dad out on Samish Island, an island that s only actually an island because of a river that crosses the farmland you have have to drive through to get out there. You don t think about white supremacists on your way to Samish Island. I didn t anyway. I thought about my niece s wedding and my grandpa s funeral, both held at the Samish Island Community Center. I think about the herons and red-tailed hawks that hang out in those fields. I think about my mom sometimes. She s a Trump supporter and a bigot, but she wouldn t stab anyone like Lane Davis did.Davis worked for Milo for a little while, and he went by the online name  Seattle4Truth,  under which he posted to Reddit, his YouTube channel, and later, a super-mega-extremely-far-right website,  The Ralph Retort  (which I just won t link, so get to googling if that s your thing). And really, the link at the beginning of the last paragraph has a pretty in-depth profile of his various exploits, after The Daily Beast got their hands on the 911 call his mother made that fateful day.But it s incomplete. This is a small place, and it s personal. The judge who signed off on Davis  probable cause affidavit was the same man who gave me custody of my son. My friends are friends with Lane Davis  friends. I guarantee without texting her to ask her that the saleswoman who used to sell furniture for me knew Lane Davis personally and had possibly been to his house. When I tell you about the little place I live in, and how I casually handed out smokes to an eventual murderer, and the geography and wildlife near where that murderer lived, what I want you to do is go back to the words in bold letters a few paragraphs ago.Before Donald Trump, the white nationalists, racists, skinheads, Klan members, and just generally hateful people around here might have said something racist in public once. Maybe they had  No Trespassing  signs all over their deep-woods properties 20 miles up the Skagit River. Maybe they sported  III%  or  Prius Repellent  stickers on their giant trucks with the smokestacks tuned to blast creosote every time they leave a stoplight.Now they kill their dad because he called them a Nazi and tried to kick them out of the house when he got sick of their bullshit.Heck, Lane Davis isn t even the first murderer I ve ever known. I used to play D&D when I was a kid with a dude who killed another guy after a party back in the early 90 s. But that guy, by the time we were teens, we knew he was going to end up in prison. He was disturbed. He was morbid. He was violent.Lane Davis was just a racist until Donald Trump came along.Featured image via screen capture