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But the bulk of the group running the country now is posting cringe memes about race and gender (I mean, I can probably find literal politicians and high-level execs posting cringe), that does not imply the show is being run by literal bottom of the barrel tmblrinas.
What is better, a very competent person enacting a very evil agenda, or an incompetent person attempting to enact a good agenda?
If somehow whoever got into office did exactly nothing, it would still be 100% better than somebody getting into office and continuing existing policy by Biden, Clinton, Bush, etc.
As it stands, bad people are the ones who have the most to lose.
Well this is all subjective interpretation, but the point is the same. If your top priority is X, you should vote for a fool gunning for X and perhaps Y, and Z that they have little chance of disturbing too greatly rather than a very competent person running for opposite-of-X.
I think the actual choice is usually a pick between different variations of politicians who claim they want X-lite, and offer proposals that match X-lite, but then immediately compromise or do the opposite of X-lite once in power.
People always suffer. Government system collapse can be a good thing if the government system has become too overbearing. This is not a new thing in North-American history.
'Haven't you considered that you too would suffer if the King's rule was upended?' said the Loyalist.
It's funny the way you talk about voters, malcontents, etc. It sounds like you think that a lot of people should not have political rights.
I have watched organized gangs of thugs publicly celebrate an explicitly political murder committed by one of their number. I have watched the local population shrug and state that the victim should have known better than to trespass in their territory. I have watched the local police and officials pointedly ignore the problem, while pursuit of the murderer was left to Federal authorities, who themselves had been castigated for attempting to enforce the law in the area. I saw the press celebrate the murderer and vilify his victim, and attempt to spin conspiracy theories about the officers who brought him down. I saw all these things excused and defended by thoughtful, rational, reasonable people here.
That is one thread of evidence within one sequence of events within one issue within one facet of the Culture War, broadly defined. There are numerous other examples of the nature of the problem, equally appalling, at all levels of granularity.
If people draw different conclusions from you, it might be because they're looking at a different picture. Maybe you think their picture is wrong, and maybe you're right. But if you don't understand the perspective that leads to their conclusions, arguing against a position you've invented for them is unlikely to be productive.
I am not sure this is entirely accurate. The local police did put out a warrant for his arrest and he was charged (by the state) (https://www.mcda.us/index.php/documents/state-of-oregon-vs-michael-forest-reinoehl-affidavits-warrant-da-info.pdf) with second-degree murder and unlawful use of a weapon 5 days after the shooting (the same day he himself was killed). They seem to have carried out a reasonably thorough investigation (as seen in the affidavit).
It was a Federal task force which confronted him, but given he had fled to an entirely different state (crime was in Portland, Oregon, he was found in Olympia, Washington State) jurisdictional issues mean we wouldn't necessarily expect that Portland police would have been the ones going to arrest him. Indeed the whole point of the task forces is:
"Task force officers are state and local police officers who receive special deputations with the Marshals. While on a task force, these officers can exercise U.S. Marshals authorities, such as crossing jurisdictional lines."
and in fact, it was Portland police who found his location and passed it to the task force:
"The team, which included a mix of federal, state and local law enforcement agencies, already knew that Mr. Reinoehl was staying in a brick complex of apartments in Lacey, Wash. The task force had information from an informant, passed on by the Portland police, about Mr. Reinoehl’s location and possession of firearms, said Lt. Ray Brady of the Thurston County Sheriff’s Office, who leads the team investigating Mr. Reinoehl’s death."
Local Portland police appeared to carry out an investigation as to who the shooter was, got information where he had fled to, and passed this to the Fugitive Task Force (who could cross jurisdictions) so that he could be apprehended. I don't think that can be reasonably described as "pursuit of the murderer was left to Federal authorities", as much as arrest of the murderer was delegated to Federal authorities.
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Oh you like peace? So you're a Trump-supporter then? Or do you support the conscription of broader and broader swathes of the remaining Ukrainian population?
And that's a good thing? Should we get more existential dread?
Syria is a fine country. Or was, before Obama. If anything, it's endless desert wars under Clinton, Bushes and Obama that did the most to turn the US into Syria. You must have loved Trump's muslim ban.
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The lovely thing about hierarchical structures, is that you don't need all that many people on the top, so you fill the top positions with people from the group most suited for it. I personally haven't noticed the trad side to be all that dumber than the progressive side (and sorry but "less educated" is not a mark against someone in this day and age). If you insist that they are, go off king, but don't fool yourself about making any sort of point. All you're doing is saying "outgroup dumb".
Not relevant, again, it's not the entire population running the show.
Much like I don't agree a sudden collapse in the legitimacy of the American establishment will necessarily mean violence, I don't agree it will necessarily mean midwit demagogery.
The bigger problem then the different priors is your unwillingness to go outside the "u so dum" framing of the debate. Even taking your priors that does not imply any of the things you want them to imply. Handing the reins to someone less intelligent doesn't automatically mean a descent into retardation - the communist block is still a handy example here. Another issue is you're assuming the current political split will remain locked in, and people won't change their loyalties in the face of a collapse of the legitimacy of the establishment.
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