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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.
I don't think I have any particular insights into this, but I do think other commenters have gotten at the truth of the matter, along the likes of Trump violating Blue Tribe sanctity and getting away with it or signalling OUTGROUP or whatever. Now, if you think about this for a few minutes, this isn't a dissatisfying answer. But, on first blush, I used to find this answer dissatisfying, because it just moves the question back a step: why did the Blue Tribe/Dems/liberal leftists/etc. decide that there were certain things that they held sacred, such that if they were violated without censure, they would lose their shit?
Because, in the decades leading up to Trumps POTUS run in 2015, much of Blue Tribe rhetoric was based around categorical rejection of one's emotional reaction as having moral authority. This had been happening for decades with narratives around stereotypes or implicit bias, and more recently with the victorious fight for gay marriage, which was quite explicit in stating that one's disgust reaction to something has no relationship to that thing's ethical or moral considerations.
One mistake that I personally think is reasonable to make - because I made it - is believing that the fact that much of Blue Tribe rhetoric supported this implied that much of Blue Tribe thinking supported this. Which would imply that, when members of the Blue Tribe noticed that they had an emotional reaction to Trump due to doing things that offended their sensibilities, they would understand that such an emotional reaction provides precisely the same amount of moral information as their born again Christian uncle Jim reaction to seeing 2 leather daddies kissing at the local pride parade and treat it similarly to how they treat Jim's homophobic rants. But evidently, a very significant portion of Blue Tribers do not do this and, instead, take this emotional reaction of theirs as seriously as if it were shot into their brains as a command by God.
I think what we observed 10 years ago now is a shift from the Blue Tribe being rarely challenged in its commitment to this idea, because the landscape was almost entirely filled with things that barely offended their sensibilities (i.e. "norms," which is really just another way of describing "tradition") - at best, they offended them just enough to create a credible-looking example of how, unlike those Red Tribe ignoramuses, they're virtuous enough to tolerate being offended! - to them constantly being challenged, and that commitment being proven to be just cudgels with which to beat their ideological opponents rather than actual principles they hold.
It's arguable if "no one is principled" is a satisfying answer, but I at least see it as the solution to the puzzle that I had first started noticing a year or two before Trump's 1st POTUS run.
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