Quote:
Originally Posted by Adder
Weird how not long ago you were warning that Trump was a signal of a coming revolution. Apparently everything staying mostly the same will ward that off?
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Almost half the people who voted voted for the guy. And the guy was extreme. That is a movement. But politically, it has been checked. Outside politics, how long does Trumpism persist as a movement? I don't know.
I think we have two would be revolutions afoot, left and right, both rooted in grievance. And now a silent majority will have to figure out how to appease or control them.
But I never expected this to turn out how it has, and how it has turned out is pretty great compared to the other possibilities. Will it hold? Again, I don't know. 2022 may be a mess. And 2024? Could be a shitshow.
Or maybe not. Maybe Haley runs against Harris, and we see some well crafted policy platforms pitted against each other by two candidates who speak to issues rather than engaging in personal attacks (I don't blame Biden for that, BTW... he was forced to respond in kind where he did), and our politics regains some sanity.
ETA: Trump did start a revolution of sorts. The white working class grievance politics he ginned up was and is a very potent force. But like most populist revolutions, it craters upon initial success because it's defined and exclusively powered by underdog status. It knows nothing about how to manage once it's in power as it's only relationship to power is to try to topple it. The extreme left's wokeism is moving in the same direction. It can't articulate moderate messages because it's effectively a cultural French Revolution Terror. It feeds on blood, always heightening the standards people must meet to appease it in order to justify exiling all but the most extreme. In this regard, it alienates itself from all allies, eventually devolving to parody. It's cousin, radical progressivism, isn't as rabid, but it shares a similar fate by refusing anything that even hints at incrementalism.
