We have to remember that Democrats are not the only group in the country with agency. Nobody was forced to vote for Trump; those voters made their choice and are somewhere on this handy hierarchy of hoo-boy. The terrible thing (OK one of the terrible things) we have to come to grips with is that a lot of people in this country, for a variety of reasons, want to see others hurt, and will even absorb a certain amount of punishment as long as Those People are seen to be getting it worse. The Republicans have run on this since at least 1980.
The political media, meanwhile, is all about the horserace, who's up, who's down, who's leaking. This is PRECISELY why they HATED the Obama and Biden years: quiet competence is boring. This tends to distort, to say the least, coverage of current events.
OK, where was I? Oh, right.
We may all have agency, whether we acknowledge it or not, but one thing that seems to be lacking on the other side (indeed its absence seems to be actively encouraged) is empathy. It does not matter (in this sense, and pardon me CRH) that CRH has a trans sister; I know that he would support trans rights regardless because he can empathize with that. The ability to put ourselves in other people's shoes without reference to personal experience is one of the greatest attributes of humanity if only we would let it, and there is no reason it should not influence our politics.
But fuck Elon Musk.
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