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One of my takeaways from the last few years is that both sides of the American culture war bark a great deal but have very little bite.
At the start of 2021, surely several million Americans, if polled, would have told you that the Presidential election had just been stolen from them by a deep state cabal. What happened as a result? One almost entirely unarmed act of trespassing into the Capitol building. This even though many of those several million were already heavily armed and most of the rest could have easily become heavily armed if they had wanted to.
Now in 2026, several million Americans, if polled, would tell you that Trump is erecting a fascist regime and that ICE are stormtrooper goons who are being turned into Trump's personal army and are waging a racist war against brown people. What has happened so far as a result? One or two incompetent armed attacks on ICE. Zero successful ones, even though it would be easy for most Americans to buy weapons and it's probably not hard to figure out how to kill a few ICE agents.
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