Yeah, I get that it’s fun to demonise human beings, but that’s really silly shit. The proportion of the right that is like that is pretty small, and trying to understand the entire right as being like that is maniacal and as long as the left/centre keeps on pushing this sort of idea, they’re not going to get significantly more votes than they already do. I say this as some with views to the left of most of the left, not some kind of centrist eejit. As I’ve noted, there are people like you think, but the vast majority of the right are considerably more reasonable (on a sliding scale), just with some dodgy ideas or poor reasoning. They’re often not very different from the people voting Democrat in terms of values (as can be seen with people I know IRL in the US, especially in the Midwest).
Republican politicians are another matter. They’re a bunch of slimy fucks at this point, and keep getting worse. But this is more about stealing votes from them than anything else. A lot of Americans are not party-married. Like a LOT. A lot even vote for both parties (it’s a classic to vote one way for president, and then another for senator, some Americans of certain age even think it’s “the right thing to do”). The risk with a pardon of any kind if more that you cause the very people who helped get Biden in (young people, minorities, women) to think “Hey fuck you Democrats!”. But I think that may be a risk worth taking, depending on what the evidence is.
Re: Defamation, I’m confused. You said the only civil lawsuits against him were defamation ones which were non-damaging. That page shows that isn’t remotely the case.
Re: NY court, you don’t seem to really looking at the fact that Trump got 42% of the votes in NY. I’m still asking you - do you think people who voted for a candidate are going to turn around and convict him on some kind of complicated financial crime, which the defense will be almost certainly able to spin as “he had no knowledge”? If it was a personal crime like rape or murder or something you’d have a lot better chance.
DC… there you might have a chance. Trump got 5% lol. I dunno if he got less anywhere else in the the USA. But I don’t know if there are any DC courts after him. However because he’s so unpopular he might well successfully be able to argue for a change of venue for a jury trial.
Re: CRIMEZZ!!! Yeah I admit that is a hilarious possibility. If they have managed to do that, then I say don’t pardon, but I strongly suspect they’ve been desperately shredding and perma-deleting stuff for the last few days, and it will only speed up as Jan 20th nears. If they’ve failed to do so and there’s a giant pile of “CONVICT ME PLS” then convict away.
The TLDR of this whole thing is that the right and floating voters who sometimes vote right are generally problematic in the US when there is a cause to rally around, particularly when it’s feeling persecuted. Trump and “drain the swamp” and so on was precisely that cause. He articulated feelings of persecution, irrational desires, fears, and so on, better than any previous US politician. It’s important to neuter him for a few years to prevent some kind of comeback or successful baton-passing to another leader.
One positive is that despite all the dire warning of a “More competent Trump” in the future, the fact is, if Trump was competent, he wouldn’t have been nearly as popular. His messaging, instead of being wild and almost bacchanalian in a weird sense, a liberation of a white id, would be too on-point, too precise, too obvious in its button-pushing. The sort of people who worshipped Trump, built shrines to him, and so on, would not be fanatics for a professional version of Trump. Part of it is that Trump is just weirdly enjoyable. There, I said it. Yeah he’s a creepy old dude, but he’s kind of fun, in like a really sick way. His nonsensical rants are more enjoyable to listen to than they have any right to be, disgusting as they often are, weedy and mobster-ish as his voice is. His facial expressions are clearly truthful ones - he’s actually saying what he feels, as dumb and fuckheaded as that often is. He lies and lies, but he buys most of his lies, if only for the second he says them (notice when asked to repeat them his demeanour often changes and he becomes less convincing). Some of the people voting for him are undoubtedly voting solely for the spectacle, the clowning, his sheer ludicrous presence almost mocking the majesty of the United States Government (but somehow not a more Platonic USA). Any successor won’t have that. People like to point to Tucker Carlson, but he’s about as fun as being slapped repeatedly. He’s reasonably good-looking, charismatic, and speaks with some verve, but he’s not fun, and usually doesn’t seem honest. He’d have poor judgment about whether to nod to far-right groups and so on as Trump often did, too. Either he wouldn’t do it, or he’d lean in too far, and too consciously, and could never maintain this hilarious/insane “I’ve heard of them and they like me but that’s all I know!” pretense Trump consistently did.
The US may have another nasty right-wing president, I mean it surely will, but it’s never going to have one quite like Trump, and a future one won’t have the same kind of supporters.
(As a random note, Trump also managed to piss off old people somehow this time around - his support with Boomers and older dropped quite a lot - but his support with older Gen Xers was stronger. I suspect his cavalier attitudes to COVID were a major factor here.)
