The average American in 2008 was not walking into a synagogue and murdering people. Let's not pretend that far-right extremism is something other than what it actually is.
The average American in 2008 wasn't setting fire to courthouses. Let's not pretend that far-left extremism is something other than what it actually is.
My mother believed for the majority of her adult life that “semi-automatic” meant “fully automatic”, as in “squeeze once, all the bullets come out”. It’s incredible that people with little to no knowledge of the mechanics of guns want to regulate exactly that.
That is classic, soviet-style whataboutism. Yes, there are some left-wing extremists who have committed terrorist acts in recent years, but no, it is not the same as right-wing extremism. There are no left-wing militias running drills and planning to kidnap governors. Right-wing extremists exist in greater numbers, are more organized, and have been responsible for more violence in recent years than left-wing extremists.
FYI: In 2009 a 88-year-old white supremacist started murdering people in the Holocaust Memorial Museum [0]
That period was also heavily dominated by Islamophobia in the US with firebomb attacks on Islamic Centers and random brown people getting assaulted and called "terrorists".
Heck, a mere 4 days after 9/11 happened a Sikh was shot for being mistaken as an Arab Muslim due to his turban [1]. Which actually makes no sense but hate rarely does.
Again, the average American was not out doing these things. I am not denying that there was a problem then, I am only saying that it is not representative of the average.
How do you even define the "average American" and in what context?
Are these people average Americans? [0]
No offense, but this sounds a lot like the argument how Trump supporters are allegedly just a "loud minority", a claim that's factually disproved not just by results from the public votes of two presidential elections, but the fact that he won one of them and only barely lost the other one.
Where does the "average American" fall in that context? Is there even an "average" when the only two valid political choices have become distilled down to a superficial "We are not the other party" forcing everybody to pick between two allegedly completely opposing sides?