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A lot of things shouldn't have happened prior to Trump doing the things he did, but they did happen and here we are. I can empathize the frustration from an intellectual standpoint, and I'm not saying the things he's doing are all good, but this country went through some radical shifts over the past 15-20 years leading to a massive cultural schism. The 2008 financial crisis, the explosion of social media, Trump's first term, and a global pandemic all played a big role in the gradual loss of faith in our institutions, for both sides.
The left's aggressive cultural takeover starting in 2012 and then peaking in the early 2020s served as my gradual, and then sudden psychological/philosophical turning point. There's plenty of blame to go around on the right side of the aisle, and I know for others (maybe you) it was Trump's brazen disrespect of our political norms and law breaking that served as their turning point. Going back to me (and millions of others) it was the coordinated takeover perpetrated by progressives in literally everything we interacted with when it came to the society we all shared. News, academia, entertainment, social media, social norms, even the definitions of words were all hijacked and rapidly moved into a new progressive framing that none of us agreed to. And yet, we were aggressively "encouraged" to comply or face the new social penalties, most of which involved formal and informal versions of ostracism and cancellation. We were subjected to it for years.
The people who supported all of that, who sat deep within all of these institutions, who literally could not distinguish between an actual Nazi and someone who wanted stronger borders and less critical theorizing all over the place, made their policy positions moral positions that could not be argued against. They couldn't help themselves from hating and othering and ostracizing. They still do not see themselves as part of the problem, and now, to whatever extent they do, the time for "I fucked up. Let's make a deal." has come and gone. I mean, I'm certainly happy to accept any mea culpa from a recovering progressive, but many others won't. Not now when they have the advantage. There are economic issues, and health issues, and birthrate issues, and AI issues, but underneath it all is an ideological issue that seems irreconcilable at this point; and even if they don't realize it, progressives started that fight.
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