This is clearly concerning as hell. It’s extremely dangerous. But that said, I think it’s hilarious how this same grouping that wants violence to be okay in their politics still gets extremely bent out of shape when any violence happens towards them.
“HANG MIKE PENCE (if he doesn’t do exactly what we want under threat of violence)!”
(Ashli Babbit)
“HOW DARE THEY! THEY HAVE BLOOD ON THEIR HANDS!”
Like, my guy, if Biden had some agents show up at your door and point guns at you and asked “Oh okay, so we can kill politically inconvenient people if we feel like now?” you’d feel a completely different way.
It’s because the current right has no imagination. They’re completely unable to formulate a thought that is original too. The lack of imagination is why they are surprised at the consequences of their actions. They literally never imagined it would happen to them AND they are unable to imagine what the realities of prison are so they cry themselves into a sloppy mess every time they are sentenced.
Btw, that lack of imagination is also why they have no empathy - it also literally never occurs to them what the consequences of their actions are for other people. The only way a conservative/right winger will understand the situation is by experiencing it. They do not have the capacity for imagining or empathizing.
It’s lack of a specific type of imagination though. Empathy, like you said is clearly lacking, but I think imagining consequences might be the same type, it’s just empathy for your future self.
They certainly display a healthy imagination when it comes to conspiracy theories. Maybe fantastical imagination, but not realism? (Sorry for the laymanisms, it’s been 25 years since I slept through my philosophy and psychology 100 classes).
It’s that they think white wealthy men who pray the right way have unlimited rights and nobody else has any
I think it’s even more severe than that. I think in the American version, each of them places their own individual selves on top of their own little hierarchy (whether white or not or whatever), and everyone else is in the “no rights” group. That’s why they booed Trump when he talked about the vaccine instead of suddenly falling into line 1984-style behind the new idea. That’s why they were genuinely confused by the capitol police fighting back against them – you hear over and over again in videos people saying things like “We’re on your side” to the cops, like they genuinely expected the cops in the capitol building to suddenly turn around and become part of the mob that was in their mind “the good guys.”
IDK, maybe it was always that way. But I feel like with classical fascism there was some kind of genuine awareness of the reality of what they were asking for. Say whatever you want about Hitler; he was in the infantry, he saw quite a lot of combat, he wasn’t scared of physical confrontation. Trump talks a big game but he mostly pussies out if it comes to any kind of real confrontation, and his followers are inspired likewise. Look at the tiny size of the post-January-6th rallies in support of Trump; his movement is still dangerous because a lot of them have appetite for doing anonymous violent things, but for the most part they don’t seem like they’re down for street fighting or going to prison or things that might come right back at them.
I think it’s inherent to the fundamental ideology of conservatism, that there are in groups that the law must protect and not bind, and our groups that the law must bind but and not protect. Every single conservative out there imagines that they are the living definition of the in-group, or that they have a secret pass they can use to get the out-groupers they like into the in-group, when neither is ever true. There is no amount of deviancy from the in group that is acceptable, and if you’re not part of the in group, you’re automatically in the out group. Conservatives who are not seen (pro tip: say “not seen” five times fast for a clue about the republican special guest star) to be promoting the interests of the in group as aggressively as possible aren’t serving the dynamic, who aren’t acting as part of the in group, are therefore part of the out group (bound and not protected). What they’re threatening these people with here isn’t just death, it’s exile into the out group, being made vulnerable to the very law they want to establish. So, that’s the secret here, comply or die isn’t just a political rallying cry, it’s the threat that they’d like to level at all of us, they’re only using it explicitly on each other because it’s all they feel comfortable with for now.
It’s not that hard to figure out why. They use violence because it works.
Here’s a list of what Trump has available to him in order to intimidate people into submission, up to and including judges and members of Congress:
- A following of literally millions of people, a significant percentage of which are willing to commit acts of violence and other crimes in order to get their way.
- An entire social media company literally dictated to drawing attention to his every word, populated by people who take that word as gospel.
- Unlimited coverage of every word he says and every action he takes from every media outlet in the country, including many of which that revere him as essentially a cult leader who’s words should not be questioned.
- An entire team of people who can and will focus their efforts on any random person who he even feels deserves his wrath, and the ability to spend far more money ruining their lives than they could even ever hope to earn in their lifetimes.
- A list of examples of people who have already had their lives ruined, ranging from Michael Cohen to Shaye Moss to show that his threats of life-ruining retaliation are legitimate and credible.
- A team of lawyers with virtually unlimited resources to ensure that (a) Trump never sees consequences for his actions, and (b) you will be forced to expend what few resources you do have just to stay afloat until you’re worn into submission
- An entire court system, much of which appointed by Trump himself, that is increasingly reluctant to rule against him
- An entire security detail to ensure he’s never even remotely threatened by physical violence
The average citizen can’t afford their own security 24/7, but would still have to worry about some random MAGA nutjob showing up at 3 AM with a shotgun and a Molotov or something. The average citizen does not have a team of lawyers, nor could they afford one, to take on Trump and his legal team. The average citizen doesn’t have an entire PR team ready to help them discredit Trump’s endless firehose of lies. The average citizen can’t go judge-shopping until they find a judge sympathetic to their case. The average citizen can’t just cry to the US Supreme Court for every little ruling they don’t like. The average citizen doesn’t have an entire political party backing them up. Heck, never mind your average citizen…there are plenty of examples of government officials who don’t have those resources either, and have literally gone on record saying they won’t because they won’t put themselves or their families at risk. If members of Congress are saying they won’t stand up to Trump due to fears of violence, what the fuck is your average citizen expected to do?
This is why it works. Because the battle is so lopsided. Trump has been using it successfully for decades. And the GOP are only now really beginning to understand how lopsided the battle is, and how easy it is to weaponize it especially when you know that the person or people you target don’t have the ability to fight back.
Why do you think that the GOP are targetting school board members, libraries, teachers? Because these are your average, everyday citizens, with few to no real resources, and everything to lose. These are people most likely to walk away because doing so would be infinitely easier than trying to fight a battle that they’re likely destined to lose anyway. These are people who wouldn’t know what to do every time some fuckhole walks up to them and makes threats. These are the low-hanging fruits. And once they control that, gaining and consolidating power becomes much, much easier.
The Dems hammered the GOP to the point of desperation when they elected a black man as president. In their desperation, they turned to a conman/Russian intelligence asset they didn’t understand.
Seriously though, this is a culmination of a sickness that has infected the GOP going back to Reagan and Nixon’s Southern Strategy before that. They decided to wrap tax cuts for the wealthy and broad deregulation around cultural issues that mattered to rural voters. Now, they’ve created a monster. Their willingness to appeal to the baser instincts of the populace has been their undoing and may ultimately be the undoing of American democracy.
It’s not just their willingness to appeal to extremism, it’s their core belief against compromise that they inherited from religious preachers during the implementation of the southern strategy. Religion seeks to dominate outside groups and they are willing to invoke the second amendment but ignore the first the same way they talk about judeo-christian values while ignoring scripture that is politically inconvenient for their own lives.
e; I’m adding an edit message at the top of this comment - don’t make death threats against Republican lawmakers. They’re not actually being intimidated into doing things, they’re just using these death threats as an excuse, and the cops and prosecutors are going to go way harder on anyone left leaning, so it won’t accomplish anything besides putting you in a prison cell.
If this is what works on these shitbags then clearly the problem here is that they aren’t getting enough death threats from people who want to keep their democracy in this country
Republicans fall in line because they’re amoral dirt bags who never had any interest in serving this country and just got elected to help themselves, the fact that they can be intimidated into serving Donald Trump is just further proof of this painfully obvious state of affairs
Don’t even be fooled by this. They want these things and so they allow themselves to be cowed by these threats, but if they started receiving threats from the left you’d be seeing a call to arms.
Yeah, totally agreed, the “they want these things and allow themselves to be cowed by threats” thing was exactly my point, I should probably edit that to be more clear
Also, beyond the call to arms for vigilantes, you would also see a much much more aggressive response from law enforcement (like, compare their response to the Bundys occupying some territory vs the cop city protesters)
If the political left and/or minorities engaged in the levels of political violence that the right does, the reaction would be swift and severe.
Recall that American conservatives were supportive, if not outright pushing for, firearms restrictions when it was the Panthers bearing arms.
Trump is just using social media to provoke random acts of political violence that are statistically predictable even if they are individually unpredictable. Republicans don’t see this as a problem because much of their ideology is predicated on the idea that anything that falls under “statistically predictable yet individually unpredictable” is a myth invented by the libs to turn the frogs trans.
Basically, stochastic terrorism.
