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Wow. Trump Derangement Syndrome has killed Tenacious D. On stage in Australia yesterday, when asked to make a birthday wish, Kyle said "Don't miss trump next time."
Today, Jack Black cancelled their tour and appears to have killed the band.
I've found the reactions of intense disappointment that Trump wasn't murdered to be really disappointing but unsurprising. My parents (who I was with when it happened and I broke the news to them) immediately expressed disappointment that he was still alive. Watching people post these sentiments publicly online as if they are completely unaware that advocating for the assassination of your political opponents is really bad and completely unacceptable has left me amazed. How can people not realize that it's a bridge too far? They're literally saying that to preserve democracy, they need to assassinate the leading candidate, a level of cognitive dissonance beyond anything I've seen.
That said, I also find the current cancelations hilarious. The very people who are calling Trump "literally hitler" are now pearl clutching that it's not okay to try kill Hitler. The catastrophizing wasn't acceptable before either - maybe this snapped people out of their delusions?
I was surprised by my own reaction, too. I was a lot happier that he survived, and a lot more impressed with his immediate response than I expected to be. Trump grew in my esteem a lot.
I’m surprised at the strength of the backlash tbh. I expected biden‘s condemnation of political violence to be less categorical than it was. As a centrist with a strong interest in maintaining the democratic peace & order , who doesn’t think Trump is that bad, it’s easy for me to say that the old geezer should live. But I confess I don’t understand the anti-assassination case for opponents of the status quo who have spent years denouncing him as an authoritarian threat.
We all agree Hitler should have been killed, right? That’s the most popular hypothetical ever. Although some (e.g., Lothar Fritze) have objected to dead waitresses and complained of insufficient self-sacrifice in the few attempts on his life.
Therefore, I must conclude that they don’t believe Trump is Hitler after all, and instances of anti-trump and anti-red tribe hysteria only came from extremes or were meant to energize the base, while the leadership remains sane and committed to the american project. Reports of the death of democracy have been greatly exaggerated.
It exposes the culture war these last years as a giant attack ad, clickbait, crude emotional manipulation for dull partisans, irrelevant and rightly ignored by people who matter.
I don't think Trump is Hitler, but I'd echo JD Vance's initial sentiment: he has some signs of being an early-stage Hitler. Or at least an early-stage Caesar figure. January 6 and the fake electors plot highly updated that probability in my mind. Would the senators have wanted to assassinate Caesar before he crossed the Rubicon? Probably not many.
I agree the people calling him "literally Hitler" are hyperbolizing and most don't really believe it, but the hyperbole is backed by the genuine belief (which I agree with) that he may pose a major threat to American democracy. The ascension of Vance, backed by the anti-democratic Thiel and who respects the anti-democratic Yarvin, also does not bode well.
So, just because I see him as an authoritarian threat doesn't mean I think he should be assassinated. A threat is just a potential until it's realized. There is some threshold after which I think assassination could be morally justifiable, and I don't think he's met it. Many people I know do think he has, which leads to some awkward conversations.
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