Mega Thread: I am so fed up with right wing hardliners on …

by that weekend, however, I'd started to reflect upon what he'd said and the events and begun to move away from the absolute position that it was all his fault. There were many reasons for this. One was that his rally happened while the break-ins were occurring, 2/

another was that so few people relative to his total followers showed up. Another was the fact that most of his followers I know were similarly outraged and disapproving. Another was that he explicitly said peaceful in all his remarks. And another was that 3/

upon reflection, I realized nothing he said was an escalation in his normal rhetoric, which had never caused any violence beforehand. But now, weeks later, I'm being radicalized in my aforementioned position by the right-wing hardliners who cannot discuss 1/6 4/

without resorting to the most melodramatic hyperbole imaginable. You simply will not gaslight me into viewing a small riot at the Capital as somehow orders of magnitude more grave and dangerous than months of left-wing rioting, or a left-wing insurrection 5/

Sure, the conditions for them aren't the same (but he's the President! they whine), but make no mistake, both are acts of political violence ostensibly sparked by the rhetoric of politicians. One can't be an honest broker and think one urgently needs 6/

punishment where the others are sufficiently addressed by randos condemning them on Twitter. The two go hand-in-hand as symptoms of the political culture in this country currently. And the outsized focus on Trump, plus the melodrama and hyperbole about 1/6 7/

being like the worst thing that's ever happened to the country, the gravest threat to Democracy ever! leads me to assume that Trump is less culpable than portrayed. If he were so clearly at fault, there's no need to hyperbolize that day to the degree impeachment freaks are 8/

Lastly, while impeachment is not a legal process, but a political one, underlying the arguments made for impeachment is that Trump's rhetoric had a predictable outcome. After all, if it was a surprise outcome, then how could Trump be to blame? In law 9/

"foreseeable consequences" are used to derive guilt or lack thereof. To make the argument that the riots were the foreseeable outcome of Trump's rhetoric (as people are) you need to ignore the fact that the people who showed up weren't average MAGA, or the fact that 10/

as a % of his total supporters, the amount who showed up was a rounding error. If half his supporters descended on the Capital on 1/6 you could argue the riots were a foreseeable outcome of his rhetoric, but no one showed up and most of his supporters objected strongly 11/

I keep repeating this last point and it's continually ignored but it really is the only point that matters. A foreseeable consequence of bad rhetoric is not 500 Boogaloo Bois showing up out of 75 million trump supporters. 12/

Based on everything I've just outlined, Trump shares some blame for contributing further to an environment rife with political emotion but he is not impeachment worthy and the more you insist he is, the more I think he's a victim in this. Now whine in my mentions. 13/13