So, there was a lot of violence, relatively speaking, during the Trump administration, though most of it was cops beating BLM protestors. (Generally violence erupted after police started it, though there were exceptions.)
There is going to be more during the Biden presidency, because Republicans don’t believe that Biden won legitimately. These numbers seem to be around 70% or so. Meanwhile Biden is unlikely to fix the economy, though hopefully he will get Covid get under control (an effort which will be hampered by the incompetence and stupidity of Governors, including many Democratic ones like Cuomo,)
My voice is small, the heyday of the blogs is done, but I will gently suggest that “cooling it” might be wise over the next few months. The fact is that the election wasn’t stolen. If it was, I would say so. You simply cannot get to the votes Trump needs with fraud allegations. The worst things the Dems did were actually voter suppression of third parties (keeping them off the ballots with specious bullshit), but Republicans routinely engage in totally egregious voter suppression of their own.
Biden is not going to be a bad President for Red America. He’s bending over backwards to try and appease Republicans. A lot of Democrats think this is a mistake, but this is how it is.
America is strongly polarized. Terribly so. Stories of family members turning in relatives for the Capitol storming are routine.
This is BAD. When you get to the point of families narcing each other out, you’re in a really bad place nationally.
Both sides are convinced that they are in the right. Republicans are, yes, wrong, but we live in media bubbles. I saw a stat that after Fox called the election for Biden it then continued calling the election in doubt hundreds of times. West coast elite techies came down on the side of Democrats, which is going to pay some awful dividends even if it was the right decision (because this has made them a partisan branch of government making decisions that should be made democratically. Places like Faccebook, YouTube and Twitter are Commons, and that they are privately owned does not change that fact.)
If you don’t want this to spiral out of control, find a way to cool it. I am one of the few blogs left who is read by both sides, even though I’m a left winger.
The people who are responsible for this are the people who have spent 40-50 years dividing America. Fox and conservative talk radio started it, places like MSNBC continued it by creating partisan media for centrists (there is no left wing media of significance, Jacobin and WSWS don’t cut it.). Matt Taibbi’s summary of how this happened is essential reading.
Right and center and left have been divided into tribes by the masters. The simple fact is that there is only one enemy, and that is the oligarchy. Everyone who isn’t in the top three to four percent is oppressed by them. They have used culture war to divide. The elites who supported Trump don’t want regular people to be better off: they’re willing to give them anti-abortion policies, sure, but they don’t genuinely want to pay them more or give them more rights.
The same is true of the elites who support centrists: the “Resistance”. Silicon Valley regularly engages in activities meant to suppress wages (the late, sainted, Steve Jobs put together an agreement they wouldn’t hire each other’s engineers, for example.)
Almost no members of the oligarchy support the left: BLM and Antifa have little actual support. They get some nods, but note that Democratic Mayors and Governors, with few exceptions, still let the cops crack down on them terribly and Biden’s response was “we should give the cops more money.”
If the people who stormed the capitol had been successful in overturning the election, it would just have been a victory for one set of nasty elites over another set of nasty elites.
The actual problem in America is people aren’t sharing a reality any more. This isn’t just isolated to Republicans; they’re wrong about the election, yes, but Liberals (centrists) have been terribly propagandized too. Remember the BS story about how Russia was paying bounties for the Taliban to kill American soldiers. It was obvious BS, at the time, and still treated seriously. There have been many such stories floated in the Liberal press, keeping Liberals in a frothing rage at Russia and Trump for the entire Presidency; insanely angry and unable to think even as Democrats voted for almost all of Trump’s bad bills and Democratic governors like Cuomo fucked up the Covid response terribly.
Killing each other; hating each other, at the behest of oligarchical factions is insane. Doing a coup based on lies (as opposed to a revolution based on truth) is insane and self-destructive.
You have an enemy. It is only your fellow Americans because they have been lied to for 40 years. This doesn’t mean they aren’t dangerous to you now, of course, but remember the cries of the Capitol protestors; their anger, when they realized that most of the cops were still willing to fight them.
The cops work for the oligarchy. The red-teamers thought the cops were on their side. Oh, they’re more sympathetic, yes, but they work for the Man.
Divide and keep conquered is the oldest playbook in the hands of ruling classes. America has been riven by it and may be destroyed by it.
Look past the hatred (often well deserved) and see the enemy: the one that manipulated you into hating each other so you wouldn’t go after them. The one who stole $26K in wage increases from you over the last two generations.
Someone’s pulling your strings, and you’re dancing like puppets.
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