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I have never considered it to be taken any other way? The truth is, the MAGA masses honestly, earnestly believe that these people have committed high crimes and treason, which a fair and unbiased trial would reveal the full details of, resulting in an inevitable and just execution that even the Blue Tribe would agree is just. Are they right? Likely not. But I have never doubted that this is what they earnestly believe.
Some among them, surely. The Qanon true believers who think he is fighting a secret war against the adrenochrome-addicted establishment.
Still, my model of the median Trump voter is that they know that Trump is bullshitting all day long and corrupt AF. But the establishment hating him so much makes it all worth it.
In particular, I would argue that outside your odd lizardman, none of the smarter MAGA people believe the narrative. I think it highly unlikely that Charlie Kirk thought, in his heart of hearts, that Biden was committing treason for which his countrymen would sent him to the gallows if they knew about it. But the narrative played really well with the idiots, so he spread it.
As much as I’d personally like to believe that, but I doubt it. I’m on record several times advocating for people to actually assume that the “other side” probably believes what they say they do, and I think that’s the case here as well- while, as an admitted partisan, I think right-wing influencers are full of shit, I’m sure they genuinely believe that shit; after all, after decades of the conservative media ecosystem being increasingly divorced from reality (at an alarmingly accelerated rate in the last few years), it’s probably never been easier to buy into ‘your side’s’ narrative than it’s ever been before.
The ‘smart’ people on the right don’t necessarily have to be any better-informed than ‘the idiots’ that make up the rank-and-file. Possibly even the opposite; greater reasoning can easily turn into greater capacity for rationalization.
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What's "the narrative"? I certainly think that Biden had been absolutely horrible. I don't have legal education enough to see if he could be plausible charged with treason (probably not successfully), but I think he certainly did not have mine or The People's interests in mind even in those rare moments he was able to keep anything in mind. And certainly whoever was running the autopen in his stead - which must be some kind of serious crime, though I again don't know how to properly call it - did not. Do I want Biden on the gallows? Shit no, what would it give me? I don't even really want him in jail, he probably wouldn't be able to even understand what's going on. But I wouldn't mind seeing in jail some of the people who were running the clown show. But much more important is to do everything possible to undo at least some of the harm that they inflicted on the country and the society. If believing all that makes me an "idiot" in your eyes, so be it, it's not my problem.
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...How closely have you been following the revelations about Russiagate/Crossfire Hurricane/Hillary's email server/Biden's Corruption/Hunter's Laptop over the last year? My working understanding of that mess (and it seems to me there's a fair amount of evidence that it is a coherent, single mess) is that we now have solid evidence that Obama, Hillary and Biden worked together to suborn the national security apparatus and turn it into both a partisan weapon against their political enemies, as well as a shield to their own serious malfeasance. As with, say, Watergate, but amusingly never ever with any Democrat scandal, the initial crimes seem vastly overshadowed by the institutional corruption used to cover them, which at this point appear to have run so deep and for so long that they put the viability of our political system itself into question.
More generally, there's this amusing pattern I see, where people are very willing to discuss things under a frame where Trump and MAGA are fascistic white supremacists who must be stopped by any means necessary, as we did here for years, and are also willing to discuss things under a frame where actually there's no difference between the parties, everyone's corrupt so none of the details really matter, but certainly are not willing to discuss under the frame where, no, actually it's the democrats who are uniquely, intolerably bad. Maybe it's just bias speaking, but it seems to me that this excluded third option is going to get harder and harder to exclude the more evidence accumulates. And while within the context of debate and one's own mind denial might be an invincible shield, it's less effective in the real world if sufficient numbers of the public simply stop being willing to cooperate with your tribe in any way ever again.
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