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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.
Since many people wrote about all my other thoughts:
J6 showed for the X time that Democrats cry foul when someone else does what they do.
J6 was actually mostly peaceful in a way the BLM riots never were.
Trump mostly told everyone to relax.
This is kind of the point of the post you’re replying to - the truth changes on political perceptions.
The BLM riots were never about challenging the peaceful transfer of power on a national level. The idea of J6 was to "stop the steal".
So the fact that the BLM riots caused a lot more damage than J6 is besides the point I am making.
From WP (which is clearly partisan here, but unlikely to make up fake quotes):
Are you arguing that he expected his followers to fight with prayers and slogans while what they believed to be a hostile coup to remove power from Trump was taking place?
Sure, he told this supporters to stand down eventually, but he had fanned the flames before.
Part of Seattle seceded from the union.
But we did get a great natural experiment in anti-racist policing, which started shooting unarmed black kids in just under two weeks.
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The CHOP/CHAZ incident was pretty openly questioning the sovereignty of the federal and state governments.
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If you slice things finely enough it's easy to find some difference between two things which makes their similarity not count.
BLM riots were clearly an attempt to coerce the government through violence, even if the details weren't identical.
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