2019 and 2020 were fucking wild. There were global protests. Americans were fighting with the National Guard in the streets. They were burning down police stations and chased the US president into a bunker. The government was just mailing checks to people. Millions of people suddenly weren’t going to work and didn’t have to pay rent or student loans. Everyone got a taste of how radically different life could be and how powerful we could be together.
And then Joe Biden said “actually let’s just reset to exactly the way things were before and not fundamentally change the system that brought us to this point” and people wonder why we ended up with fascism.
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sidereal
in reply to HeavenlyPossum • • •He also encouraged folks to stop masking (after being elected for saying “we will follow the science”) and was far more successful at that than conservatives would have been. This was also when his approval rating started slipping and IMO is a major reason Harris lost.
He also neglected to go after Trump for all the illegal stuff he did in office, for reasons I still don’t understand.
Finally, Biden also still owes me $600.
CynAq🤘
in reply to sidereal • • •sidereal
in reply to CynAq🤘 • • •@CynAq I honestly don’t understand it, even from a very traditionalist perspective. He had nothing to lose, and everything to gain. I don’t understand how Biden views political power.
Trump after J6 should have been one of the most open and shut treason cases of all time. He advocated destabilizing the government for years and then did so in front of everyone. Trump said he would do something like J6 if he wasn’t re-elected /before he was elected the first time/
HeavenlyPossum
in reply to sidereal • • •@sidereal @CynAq
One of the bedrock beliefs of American politics is that elites should suffer no material consequences for their actions. Nixon was impeached but not prosecuted, Reagan never suffered consequences for Iran-Contra, Obama declined to prosecute anyone for torture, Biden declined to prosecute Trump for attempting a coup, etc etc etc.
It is far preferable to sustain the overall status quo, and tolerate your rivals committing even egregious affronts—such as Trump’s coup attempt—than it is to risk disrupting the status quo through intra-elite infighting.
This allows actors like Trump, who don’t care about blowing up the status quo, essentially bully their way into elite status by taking the status quo hostage.