I don’t paint every Democrat as a supporter of the violence and property damage that happened over the summer.
I think the vast, vast majority of people believe in non-violent protest and giving people room to express their views and hurt and frustration in non-violent ways.
I think politicians and the media is largely responsible for trying to paint groups they don’t like with an overly broad brush, and we should outright reject that as Americans.
The political flame war has to stop. The vast majority of Democrats and Republicans are in fact reasonable, kind, loving people who still believe in America even if it’s no longer popular to admit it.
The challenge is the fringe voices are amplified a million times more than the center-mass.
I read an interesting Twitter thread last week on how housing policy in SF is basically totally dominated by 6 people, private citizens, who scream down anyone who would dare to offer an opposing view, and are successful in setting policy with these tactics. I don’t know if that’s fully true, but it wouldn’t surprise me in the least.
There seems to be a poll floating around that 45% of republicans supported the storming of capitol hill. Of course polls can be twisted to deceive, but if we take that at face value, that is not a small "fringe"?
My personal poll of around 20 Republicans found only a single supporter. Sure that's not scientific, but that's such a difference I doubt the number is that high.
> Their worst right now is much worse than expected, I would be ashamed to be associated.
This doesn't follow. Trump has been promoting violence since 2016. There have been multiple attacks carried out by Trump supporters. Most Republicans think the election was stolen thanks to Trump. Anyone who was surprised by this hasn't been paying attention to the blatantly obvious signs that have been on display nor to the repeated warnings by many, many people saying this is where things were headed. I'm in no way surprised this happened. Why were so many other people?
It does follow if you think that most people that voted for Trump didn't actually think that Trump means most of the things he says. Which matches up with what Trump supporters say in interviews regarding Trump's stance on topics that even many of his supporters don't agree with. They will generally say something like "yeah, I don't agree with what Trump says about X and Y but I vote for him because of Z".
And to be fair their stance is not totally unreasonable. On both isles of the political spectrum most voters for some candidate ignore at least part of what the candidate says _and_ does. No candidate perfectly matches up with what you think should be done, that's normal and expected, democracy isn't perfect. A part of this process is trying to guess what the political candidate really thinks/believes vs what they say just to gain political capital. All people living in a democracy learn to do this early on. I guess for many Trump supporters they guessed that even with all the seemingly violence inducing rhetoric it wouldn't end up with a mob assaulting a federal government institution. Mistakes were made. :)
My point still stands. Anyone surprised by violence from Trump supporters have not been paying attention for the last four years. All the warning signs have been there. You've got documented evidence of Trump and his followers setting small fires for four years and half the country shouting "HEY WE'VE GOT A FIRE!" suddenly people are surprised that the building is burning down around them? Mistakes were made, the President and supporters everyone has been warning about do the thing everyone has been warning about and try to stage a coup. Oops!
Their worst right now is much worse than expected, I would be ashamed to be associated.