[remarkEon]

>How the hell did we get here?

Since 2016 about half the country has been fed a steady stream of rhetoric that seeks to define Trump as a literal - not figurative or metaphorical - existential threat to "our democracy". A Hitler 2.0 or worse, and the mark of Fascism finally coming to the United States.

If you take those arguments at face value, and really and truly believe they are true, then it is unsurprising that someone took a shot at "New Hitler". Because why wouldn't someone do that if it was true?

Of course it isn't true, and even the people who say this stuff don't believe it[1].

[1] https://x.com/Timodc/status/1811136469911711877

[mrguyorama]

If you think "threat to our democracy" rhetoric started "from the left" in 2016, you should go lookup what Fox News has been saying for decades.

War on christmas? War on Christianity? Obama isn't even a real american so he is an illegitimate president? "They're coming for our children"? Christ that one regularly gets drag story time cleared out due to violent threats. How dare someone read a book to a child while wearing a dress.

Or maybe you forget the decades of bombing abortion clinics?

You know we USED to have violent hard left organizations like the Black Panthers and Weather Underground. Now the right has to wave vaguely at "auntie fa", a "group" as real as "anonymous".

[remarkEon]

Honestly? I think the difference here is that Bill O'Reilly saying a bunch of BS on his TV show is pretty starkly different from the "paper of record" and the sitting President telling voters that "if this other guy wins the election democracy ends". You can see the difference in authority of voice here, right? That's a rhetorical framing that justifies a lot of extreme action. Arguably, it justifies preventing Trump from assuming office if he wins again in November. Is this what people really believe? I don't think so, because if it was people in government would've celebrated the assassination attempt.

[archagon]

Would you recognize a literal Hitler in the making if you were around in the 1930’s? Plenty of people didn’t, or didn’t care. There was nothing particularly special about the man: just a hateful, populist asshole who gathered a disproportionate amount of power. Politics as normal until they weren’t.

We can’t know for sure who will become a monster when handed unfettered power, but we can take a pretty good guess. And there are few people in American politics who are as hateful, vindictive, and anti-democratic as Trump.