Who could have known?!? I guess all it took was for one showboat with a Twitter to come along and normalize the hyberbole. Obviously, there's more to it than that, but Trump allowed his followers to embrace their worst selves, and then cashed in on it with remarkable effectiveness. You're not gonna get too much out of this, except for maybe appreciating the effective prose and presentation, but Timothy Snyder's essay on the situation should be required reading for people still in the dark.crazy-ass hyperbole has been common while legitimate rebellion and coups are new
Naah Tim Snyder is a tedious fuck. Read any? Here lemme give you the capsule on Black Earth: Snyder points out that tribalism led to the Holocaust but then pretty much completely ignores what makes a tribe. Judt pointed out that Europe has always persecuted Jews and that postwar Europe blamed Germany for the Holocaust while also keeping all the spoils they took from the Jews, even in supposedly "friendly" countries like Belgium and the Netherlands. Snyder basically says "look one group can hate another group enough to exterminate them therefore any group can hate any other group enough to exterminate them" and here he doesn't even bother with groups. He doesn't talk about what formed the group that wants to overthrow the election, he doesn't talk about how an incoherent message has led to an incoherent attack, he doesn't talk about how most of these people have been radicalized in less than four years, and he leans into the idea that his familiarity with Hannah Arendt means he's an expert on QAnon and it's fucking tedious.Germans were told they could help take the Jews' stuff or join them in the ghettos. Poles were told they could murder the jews and take their shit or get in the firing squad with them. This is exactly the situation we in America face today.