One could observe this on Jan.6th - a couple of hundred "exited" MAGA's, and just some dozen of radical religious-racist extremists (Proud Boys). However taking the MAGA propaganda and their propagated hate-stories into account - tens of thousands of MAGA's storming, ransacking and burning down the Capitol should have been expected.
This has been a very slow boil, and it's been building over decades. These people have grievances -- and I have agreements with them on several of them -- but their media (this began with Limbaugh many years ago) has has been amplifying this in their minds 24/7/365. This cannot be underestimated, and I don't think it is being recognized for its importance. This is not only a rage most of us will never know, but it's deep and it's not going away now that it's out.
In other words if these MAGA's and their conservative allies would have learned how to "manipulate politics via peaceful means" (make use of ones intelligence) and abandon their conviction (not to challenge authority physically) since the 70'ies - the USA would have a similar society, and as such constant clashes and violent demonstrations - such as e.g. France. Major difference is that France doesn't have millions of firearms distributed amongst their population. !!!
Well, this is key, and it relates to my comment above. I've mentioned this many times here, my frustration that they are so poor at articulating their thoughts, particularly in real life and on the spot. This goes back to their reliance on their propaganda media. They absorb the supposed arguments from their media, but they're not able to process them and articulate them in their own words. They don't need to! So what we get are platitudes, slogans, myopia, shaky facts and personal attacks based on emotion,
which is how their media provides the input.
Like any other country, America has problems. And like a business or a relationship, the way to address problems for long term answers is to communicate, collaborate and innovate, so that new ideas appear and all involved have skin in the game. This is not a secret. But they have been convinced by those voices
that they can't do that, that the other party is so corrupt and evil and dishonest that it can't happen. So they have virtually ZERO ability in communicating, collaborating, or innovating. They don't even know how to begin.
What made me realize this is their constant use of the word
fight. "Fight" in this context would usually be a metaphor in a more sophisticated conversation, but they can only take it literally. So they end up with "leaders" whose primary skill is aggression, who share their lack of ability to work constructively with others, and just, well,
fight. This is low-level, underdeveloped, primitive thinking. It this a lack of intellect or the result of the conditioning? I don't know.
So now America is burdened with an asymmetrical conversation in which one side -- even though it has perfectly legitimate concerns -- can't communicate in a normal, adult, constructive way, and doesn't even WANT to. I don't know how this manifests.
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