From Trump Assassination Attempt #1, one year ago: Why do the non-Deplorables deplore the Trump shooting?
I’m still baffled by the Democrats who say that Donald Trump is Hitler 2.0 and yet won’t wish him dead. But at least some are logical.
For example, here’s a 2/28/2025 Facebook post from a Democrat (my late mother’s cousin) who previously explicitly compared Trump to Hitler and who makes the logical inference:
Comments from her friends:
- …but then we’ve got Vance, who is no better.
- Today is not soon enough
- Echoes from a house in PA!
- I keep hoping for an aortic aneurism.
Another post from the same Facebooker:
Figure Grok 6 will replace the human in chief. They’re already replacing doctors & they’ve just about had it with human politicians.
So, here’s what I think that might reconcile it. One simple parameter I have observed having interacted with folks from different cultures is the ‘word-action delta’. I define ‘word’ as what a person is communicating verbally and non-verbally to others, so this become independent of high or low context cultures. And by action I mean what the person ends up doing, or what they are communicating with their actions.
IMO, since people are on an average becoming more and emotional (in the sense of ‘Amusing ourselves to death’), they tend to have a large word-action delta. So, when people say Trump is Hitler, it’s just a way to incite emotions in other people, not acting like Trump is Hitler. Calling Trump Hitler is more amusing than calling him ill-informed or something neutral like that, you’d agree, and that’s what we’re going for.
So, reconciling calling Trump Hitler and then grieving when he’s shot seems easier when we take into account the word-action delta parameter.
Is it really so difficult to imagine people worried for the future of US democracy* might not think encouraging and celebrating political assassinations will lead to a great future for US democracy? Both can be bad.
I mean, I have read enough of your thoughts to infer you tend to think very black-and-white about things, so probably “mixed feelings” don’t often come up a lot in your day-to-day (at least for politics). That’s fine, I imagine there’s a spectrum with the opposite end being “analysis paralysis”
*yeah yeah yeah, democratic republic
In my opinon, what’s being mocked is the use of an extreme word like Hitler to describe Trump, assuming that Hitler is used with some sincerity.
Philip, it is really simple: when Democrats or liberals say nasty and harsh things about Republicans or conservatives, it is “for the good of the country.”
If you cannot grasp this simple logic, I am sorry to break it to you: you are uneducated and lack critical thinking.
Orange Hitler is making inroads in Hamtramck MI!
I suggest two bumper stickers:
1. Palestinians for Orange Hitler (superimposed on Trump’s angry face)
2. My golden retriever is smarter than your college professor!
https://hamtramckcity.gov/wp-content/uploads/2024/11/Unofficial-General-Election-Results-for-November-5-2024-Copy.pdf
Well, many of the ingredients are there. Rhetoric about how we’re entitled to neighboring land? Demonizing and deporting the “undesirables” to foreign lands? (The “first solution” was Madagascar.) Threatening to revoke citizenship of political opponents? (“First they came for the communists.”) Instigating a failed coup? Railing against the “lying press?” Those are just off the top of my head.
(Now the strawman is to claim this must mean any critics are in favor of illegal this and criminal that rather than the obvious “due process protects the innocent, dummy”)
This isn’t to offer some magic solution or simple explanation, other than “inequality is fertile ground for hateful/divisive rhetoric” and “do you think the US is the only country that can do propaganda and destabilize governments?”
@Christopher, I fully understand all your points, but yet here we are. An “orange man” with all his flaws on full display, in public, has managed to win the presidency twice. If you are still unsure why, here is a comedian, a lifelong Democrat, who actually gets it and explains it in plain English. Let’s talk after you have had a chance to watch this ~8-minute clip.
Oh, I get it, Democrats couldn’t sell an umbrella in a rainstorm.
To take the inequality theme a bit further: Republicans blame inequality on minorities and Democrats blame it on the majority (white men). (In a related topic, think of how relatively uniform the reaction was earlier this year when Mario’s brother visited New York to make his views known on health insurance)
But there’s also an asymmetry: Republicans can direct attention to some niche culture war issue (trans bathrooms for example) and now Democrats are in zugzwang: do they take the bait (easy result: “Kamala cares about they/them, Trump cares about you”) or do they say “this isn’t that important right now” and get the circular firing squad treatment?
Isn’t it amazing that the trans bathroom culture war fired up right after gay marriage was legalized?
—
It’s funny, because you can probably tie it all together thus: as I recall for 2020 Bernie was doing well in the primaries until South Carolina. How did Biden win South Carolina? By winning the black vote. How did he win the black vote? By promising (Clyburn?) to pick a black VP. And there you go, identity politics in action. Wasn’t Kamala the first one out of the 2020 primary?
Imagine if instead the Democrats decided “Trump is too dangerous, we can tackle representation after the threat has passed” – but how could they possibly do that and alienate someone?! (Other than white men of course)
But if someone did say that, would they win the primary..?
Anyway. Maybe a game theorist can answer, what America might look like with open ranked-choice primaries instead of the swamp factory we have now. No more “voting for the lesser of two evils” perhaps?
@Christopher, once again, you are missing the point or just unwilling to acknowledge it. What Bill Maher is very correctly stating is that Democrats need to look inward and start addressing the issues voters actually care about. In fact, he answered every-single-point you made and clearly shows how wrong you are.
Voters are asking for stronger border control, restrictions on gender-related medical procedures for minors, an end to DEI policies, and the list goes on and on. The frustration with the current Democratic and liberal agenda has grown so strong that voters chose to elect someone as crazy as the so-called “orange man.”
Sadly, figures like Bernie Sanders, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Gavin Newsom, and potentially Zohran Mamdani continue to promote progressive policies, even as public opinion disagree with them.
I don’t know what you think I’m saying that is in disagreement, but my main point was that the little gotchas Maher talks about are distractions from the topics people actually care about, but it’s very easy to get the spotlight disproportionately on them and/or exaggerate them into unreality. I’m surprised no one brought up those illusory litter boxes yet.
Like, when you talk bring up DEI and I said “the Democrats blame the majority (white men)” just what is it you thought was different there?
In any event, I don’t think any of it has any bearing on “why is it so surprising that Democrats don’t get excited about assassinating odious political opponents?” Surely folks have heard the apocryphal quote, “I’ve never wished a man dead, but I have read some obituaries with great pleasure”
BTW, I am not sure if there’s actually any real practical difference in the term of a president not playing with a full deck, average intelligence president, and an intelligent president. Perhaps only a dumb president (who’s very unlikely to be elected) and a really smart president can make any difference.
I am saying this because when there wasn’t so much connectivity and social media, how it was, say in the 80s, (which I read about in some books), maybe we wouldn’t have known how intelligent politicians are. And perhaps there might already have been worse presidents than the current one. Maybe it was better to not know in such detail about what the president is saying because it adds too much noise in the analysis of their policies which actually matter.
Philip, the posting screenshot has 5 comments but you gave only 4 comments descriptions. Was 5th comment yours? Did you react to the post? How do the creepy posts affect overall relationships with the relatives?
I didn’t comment on it. If I left out a comment summary it’s likely just because it didn’t seem as interesting as the others.
Vance would be awful as President but still vastly preferable to Trump. Vance is quite smart, while Trump is simply stupid. Vance does not have a long list of enemies the way Trump does; Trump is intent on settling scores. Vance lies a lot but one-tenth as much as Trump does. And Vance is much more secure with himself, so he wouldn’t be demanding that members of his Cabinet spent much of their time praising the Supreme Leader.
James Mitchell
http://www.JamesMitchell.info
Think that progressive and conservative brains schematic shifted. In progressive brain, oversized “smarter then though” lobe is now dwarfed by “smarter then Trump” and TDS lobes. Conservative brain got new “Tucker” lobe, which looks for support and self-validation from communists, taliban, iranian mullahs, putin and antisemites.
I saw a TC speech for a few minutes. To me, it looks like he talks to his audience as if they are children. After every few sentences, there are a few sentences that are meant to connect with his audience — to assure them that his life is like theirs and that he is one of them. He seems to consciously reiterate that he enjoys the simple pleasures of life and that he values his family just like his audience values theirs, etc. But to me, it all looks very affected and studied. Nothing specifically bad — just an observation.
PhilG Fan, I referred to “Tucker lobe” as a place, not mixing him up with those down my list. As of recent TC has been interviewing oddballs and odious (at least in America and the west in general, especial conservative and classical liberal America) individuals, very different from his previous neocon and later classical conservative personalities he used to wear.
I absolutely agree that TC has right to speak and sometimes does service or America by highlighting dark corners of American policy. Not too often as of recent. His strange new agenda is coming out in his recent interviews and many of his recent interviews border on direct misinformation, something that I do not wish to spend my time on. But he has absolute right to express his opinions.
OK! I haven’t seen much of him, but I found it unusual that he had to constantly reassure his audience. To me that behavior speaks more about the state of the public listening to him than TC himself.
Since public figures like him often modify their public personalities based on what will get them more viewers, his public persona seems to tell me that his audience is in a desperate need of someone who actually understands how their lives are and what they value. As if they don’t even know by themselves what they should question and need to be told that.