[_ykl9]

Both sides have a tendency to cry wolf. Bush was awful, but he wasn't Hitler. Romney was treated particularly unfairly during his presidential run.

Regardless of one's feelings on Trump, it's clear that he wasn't treated entirely fairly by the media from the start. Sure, for a while they would tiptoe around calling him out for outright lies, but I also saw how his words and actions would at times be twisted and presented with with bad faith or the worst possible meaning taken as a presumption.

He may have been extraordinarily corrupt, and a constant embarrassment to the country on Twitter, but in terms of policy he was a relatively vanilla conservative. I've even given him credit for being the first president to enter office supporting same-sex marriage, and more broadly I don't dislike the libertarian-ish element of his base that also supports that in addition to legal weed.

None of the above negates the fact that Trump and his allies spent at least the second half of 2020 attempting to subvert our electoral process, came very close to succeeding, and then attacked the United States with intent to violently usurp control of the government. It doesn't negate that Trump-inspired white nationalist militias are currently the greatest domestic terror threat in America, while Trump continues to stoke their anger with lies. Whether his coup was "fascist" or parallels the actions of 34-year-old Adolf Hitler is irrelevant. I'll criticize the left for crying wolf as loudly as anyone; it doesn't logically follow that wolves don't exist.

[mythrwy]

I'm with you up until "and then attacked the United States with intent to violently usurp control of the government".

That isn't what happened and is exactly the type of inaccurate and unfair characterization you mention previously.

[_ykl9]

It absolutely is not. Unless you're claiming that the 1/6 footage was all deepfaked and/or an Antifa false flag operation, the issue seems pretty unambiguous.

[mythrwy]

Agreed, absolutely is not what happened. I don't deny a riot happened that day. Which is the kind of thing people are actually being charged with. As they should be. I'm not in favor of riots.

But where do you see "intent to violently usurp" in that footage? That's inaccurate and over the top rhetoric of exactly the kind you call out earlier.

I don't believe false flag. There may (or may not) have been agitators who were other then Trump supporters, but if so it wasn't too hard to do and a large number of Trump supporters behaved criminally. No argument with that. But it was not an "attempt to violently usurp the government" by any reasonable definition.

[_ykl9]

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2021/jan/10/hang-mike-pe...

https://www.washingtonpost.com/lifestyle/style/nancy-pelosi-...

https://www.npr.org/2021/03/19/977879589/yes-capitol-rioters...

If it's "over the top", it's because what happened was over the top. The language I used is literal and accurate.

[mythrwy]

I'm sorry I strongly disagree your language is either literal or accurate.

[mythrwy]

A guy in a viking suit with bear spray was out to take over the government? NPR and Washington Post say so (after 4 years of claiming Trump was the antichrist).

They are grasping at straws trying to build an (unreasonable) narrative.

Where are the insurrection charges in court?

No, what happened was a bunch of people were upset about an election they perceived as fraudulent and wanted certification stopped until an investigation was performed (also not reasonable, the electors had been certified at that point and it was done deal). Also Trump didn't help matters. Once the state electors were in it was over for him, fraud or no fraud. There wasn't reasonable time to audit anything and he did no one any favors by getting the crowd whipped into a frenzy.

[_ykl9]

Being an idiot in a viking suit justifies attempting to assassinate multiple acting government officials for the purpose of interrupting the certification of the election. OK.

[klyrs]

Trump was treated more than fairly by the press. He thrives on and encourages controversy. They played directly into his hand at every step of the way. When he plays the victim, that too is an act. He's a reality TV star, he's a heel, and people on both sides gobbled it up.

[_ykl9]

I'm not disagreeing with most of that, quite the opposite. What I take issue with is the media being brazenly unfair in select instances, which needlessly gives Q cultists ammunition to help radicalize "normies".

It's something I would take note of every once in a while, but I would have to think and/or research to come up with more than one or two examples offhand. The biggest one that immediately comes to mind is the infamous "very fine people on both sides" quote.

I've watched and read the full context[1]. He's not saying that all people on the neo-Nazi side are good, but that some of them were there only to peacefully protest in support of the legacy of Robert E. Lee. It's like the difference between Archie Bunker (a bigoted goofball, but mostly just an earnest guy struggling to deal with changes in society) and a literal militant Klansman/neo-Nazi.

That sentiment may be distasteful in itself to many people (I personally think Lee is just as undeservingly venerated as Rommel), but it's far less extreme than what he's been presented as having said. I'm not even saying that Trump's statement was necessarily correct; I'm saying that if he misrepresented the facts on the ground, and/or if what he (actually) said was arguably a dog whistle, that's what he should have been criticized for.

I'm a huge fan of Joe Biden these days, and it still leaves a sour taste in my mouth that during the campaign he cited that out-of-context quote as his motivation for running.

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1: https://www.politifact.com/article/2019/apr/26/context-trump...