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I've been thinking about why some people are terrified of Trump while others, like me, are more indifferent. I mostly tune out Trump news because I assume much of it involves scare tactics or misleading framing by his detractors. When my wife brings up concerns about his supposedly authoritarian actions, my general response is that if what he's doing is illegal, the governmental process will handle it - and if it's legal, then that's how the system is supposed to work. I have faith that our institutions have the checks and balances to deal with any presidential overreach appropriately.
This reminded me of a mirror situation during 2020-2021 with the BLM movement, where our positions were reversed. I was deeply concerned about social media mobs pressuring corporations, governments, and individuals to conform under threat of job loss, boycotts, and riots, while my wife thought these social pressures were justified and would naturally self-correct if they went too far. The key difference I see is that the government has built-in checks and balances designed to prevent abuse of power, while social movements and mob pressure operate without those same institutional restraints. It seems like we each trust different institutional mechanisms, but I can't help but think that formal governmental processes with built-in restraints are more reliable than grassroots social pressure that operates without those same safeguards. Furthermore, the media seems incentivized to amplify fear about Trump but not about grassroots social movements - Trump generates clicks and outrage regardless of which side you're on, while criticizing social movements risks alienating the platforms' own user base and advertiser-friendly demographics.
Until the 2020 election, Trump's opponents were mostly crying wolf. His first administration was a shit show, but besides putting a few migrant kids into cages, he mostly harmed the reputation of the US.
His election denial changed that. The idea that the vote is generally fair and sacred was previously a universal of US politics. Sure, candidates would sometimes quibble over individual districts with irregularities and might need the SCOTUS to resolve their differences, but at least once a verdict was in, the losing side would accept the result and concede. Trump was the first candidate whose ego could not admit defeat, and his party mostly backed him in his lies. J6 showed that he was not committed to a peaceful transfer of power.
Of course, the Democrats reacted with a lot of lawsuits. Some with merit, some pure lawfare. In his 2nd administration, Trump seems completely free of traditional political advice, instead relying on his clique of yes-men to implement his personal ideas. Previous administrations had the decency to do corruption under a mantle of plausible deniability. With Trump it is ubiquitous and brazen.
While I am reluctant to defend the woke mob, I will also notice that government can do a lot of things that most social movements can not do at scale. The BLM riots happened because local governments were willing to turn a blind eye to rioting rather than employ police violence. So the government should at least get half-credit for them. But a bunch of criminals looting is small fries compared to the kind of damage the federal government can do.
Saying that you are less worried about government because it has checks and balances is like saying that you are less worried about nuclear weapons than you are about knives because nukes need a code to activate them while knives let anyone stab people. Sure, the median crazy killer will murder more people with a knife than a nuke, but if the safety mechanism fails the nuke-wielding crazy will be able to do orders of magnitude more damage.
Less crying wolf and more underestimating the efficacy of checks in the US political system. It has largely been memoryholed here, but the first Trump admin was constantly going for executive power grabs. He simply had not consolidated power within the GOP to the same degree and was facing a less friendly judicial environment. Likewise, there was an incredible amount of corruption, and while the presidential pardon has never been applied very fairly in practice, Trump was exceptional in the self-serving nature of his pardons.
Unfortunately, it’s clear now that even Trump can learn from his initial mistakes.
But hey, public was dumb enough to vote him in again, so I guess it’s time for us to collectively reap the whirlwind.
I'm sorry but as someone else on the left the fault here is entirely that of the Democrats. Kamala Harris was one of the worst candidates I have ever seen, and it looks like Biden did his best to sabotage her as well. Trump didn't even need to bust out the worst of the attack ads because Kamala was so disrespectful and contemptuous of her own base - to say nothing of the genocide she ran on supporting (which multiple post-election studies have claimed was enough to swing the election itself). She hurt her numbers by refusing to go on Joe Rogan, but she was such a charisma void that refusing to go on was actually the right answer - she would have melted down and been unable to respond to basic questions about her past actions or present beliefs.
The problem with that election was not that the public was dumb. The problem was that the DNC ran a candidate that was WORSE than Trump - they ran a terrible campaign for a terrible candidate and got a terrible result. If you actually look at the results of that election in greater detail there's actually a lot to be hopeful for as a left-winger. When they weren't tied to the Democrats, a lot of leftist policy proposals actually went through. Left wing values are generally extremely popular with most people - but the DNC is a terrible expression of those values and so nakedly corrupt that anybody with a soul would find it extremely hard to vote for them in good faith. Remember how Schumer attacked Trump? By calling him a coward who chickened out of starting another war and murdering more people in the middle east. The public was actually doing the right thing in this case by voting for the less bloodthirsty candidate!
I agree that Trump term 2 has been very poor (probably for different reasons) but let's not try and blame the public for this happening. The blame for this result rests squarely on the Democratic party and if the public deserve any blame it is for not recognising that the ghouls in charge of the Democrats needed to be removed from power years ago.
I’m quite comfortable blaming both the Democratic Party for being an incompetent embarrassment yet again as well as the general public for deciding that Trump’s flaws were somehow less glaring than Kamala.
Ah yes, let’s stick it to the DNC and those fake lefties who aren’t sufficiently supportive of the Palestinians by… helping the GOP opposition that’s even less sympathetic to the Palestinians win the elections and get into power.
Because surely that’ll help, somehow.
Fucking hell, sometimes I think we lefties deserve to lose for being unable to think strategically.
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