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There is no “both sides” to Donald Trump’s threat to democracy

Just because Republicans choose unreality doesn’t mean the media should ignore the facts of January 6.

On January 6, 2021, I watched CNN as thousands of Donald Trump supporters stormed the US Capitol. As someone well-versed in watching tragedy on television, I was struck by just how indisputable the facts were at the time: violent, red-hat-clad MAGA rioters, followed by Republicans in Congress, tried to stop democracy in its tracks. Trump had told his followers that the protest in Washington, DC, “will be wild,” and in the assault that followed his speech, some rioters smeared feces on the walls of the Capitol. Hundreds of them have since been convicted on charges ranging from assault on federal officers to seditious conspiracy. These are stubborn facts, the kind that do not care about your feelings. These facts include the inalienable truth that Trump is the first president in American history to reject the peaceful transfer of power.

It never occurred to me that these facts could somehow be perverted by partisanship. But three years later, we are seeing just that, as Republicans cling to the lie that the 2020 election was “stolen” by Joe Biden and are poised to make Trump their 2024 nominee. And perhaps even more dangerous than the GOP ditching reality is the news media’s inability to cover Trumpism as the threat to democracy that it very much is.

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But the problem is, when all you have is conventional political framing, everything looks like politics as usual. One candidate makes a claim; the other disputes it. Two sides are divided, etc. This framing only works if both parties operate within the frameworks of a shared reality. But Trumpism doesn’t allow for the reality the rest of us inhabit. Trump’s supporters believe their leader’s reality and not, say, the reality the rest of us see with our eyes. As Trump once told a crowd: “Don’t believe the crap you see from these people, the fake news. What you’re seeing and what you’re reading is not what’s happening.”

Journalists may be well-intentioned in trying to be “objective,” or they’re simply afraid of being labeled partisan. Either way, coverage of January 6 that gives equal weight to both sides—one based in reality, one not—is helping pave the road for authoritarianism.

217 comments

  • Why sober, thoughtful conversation like this is not happening is beyond insane to me. Like I just do not know how to deal with a reality that treats this as normal.

    Well said, I agree with every word.

  • The downfall of American democracy, like all democracies is lack of protection for its principles. If democracy becomes so radical about the principle of freedom of expression that there is no utterance that isn''t worthy debating, no matter how debased it is while at the same time anything and everything is up for debate and nothing enshrined in principle democracy becomes its own worst enemy. Freedom of expression becomes the tool with which it destroys itself.

    The crux however lies in the fact that if institutions exist that protect democracy from itself, like the Austrian "Verfassungsschutz" , that watch the radical ends of the political spectrum and hamper their political efforts, sometimes trying and convicting individuals as members of a criminal organisation they could easily be accused as stifling democracy.

    Ultimately the democratic principle rests upon its subjects willingness to practise it and to participate in it. If enough people are unhappy or uneducated enough to believe in the statements of demagogues and radicals its downfall cannot be stopped by institutionalized violence, political will, or anything else. Democracy cannot defend itself against its own worst enemy: People that for some reason or other have given up on that idea. Democracy therefore will always come with its own 5th column.

    What makes a working democracy is that everyone is actively participating in the dicourse and does what they can to stop the 5th column from rising to the top. A working democracy depends on a working educational system that produces strong critical minds. It relies on making sure everyone gets their share and that each and every subject has a stake in a system. Then the 5th Column is small enough to not really damage democracy and there is no instituion necessary to protect it.

    These days however the world is far beyond that tipping point. There are enough people unhappy enough with democracy that collective supression no longer works. And its troublesome to watch. I am terrified that someone like Donald Trump could even get to the point where he is the presidential candidate for a major party, let alone serve a term as president of the United States.

    Usually these sentiments are met with endless barrages of whataboutism... Literally no one, no matter what they have done with their emails or how many lobal conflicts they started in their term could be a worse president then someone whose aim is to just aimlessly wield power like a European monarch whose mind is impaired by the hereditary conditions that come with generations of incest.

  • It's not a both sides thing. In my opinion, everyone needs to stop thinking this is a knowledge or coverage problem. It's not a media influence problem.

    It's a fuck you problem. And the worse they are, the more appalling their actions, the bigger the fuck you. You can't argue your way out of this.

    People need to deal with the fact that roughly half of all voters in this country don't give a fuck about you, and every time you get upset about a new rule broken, a new law violated, or a new constitutional principle ignored, the fun is in the fact that you get upset about it.

    That's the fun. You're mad. They like to make you mad. Because this isn't about political discourse.

    They're way more mad, they're way more organized, they're way more revolutionary, and they are way more armed. You can be as smart and knowledgeable as you want. They will put you up against a very smart and knowledgeable wall and put a very smart and knowledgeable bullet into your very smart and knowledgeable head.

    You ever wonder how, during revolutions of the past, the people that were overthrown always seemed to have been surprised? This is how. Arrogance and a belief in a system that the others aren't playing by or within. Revolution exceeds the system. Leftists think they have a monopoly on revolution, but they don't.

    You don't have to agree with it. Your agreement or disagreement Does. Not. Matter. It's watching worms on a hook trying to explain how soil works. Who cares?

    • People need to deal with the fact that roughly half of all voters in this country don’t give a fuck about you

      There's so much gerrymandering, vote caging, and deliberate disenfranchisement in the US that "roughly half" is heavily overstating it. Elections are decided by closer to 15% of eligible voters, as everyone else is packed or cracked or screened out of the process so as to be functionally irrelevant to the declared victor.

      And this sentiment does go both ways. I can't count how many times I've been told that I deserve whatever dogshit policy Ken Paxton and Greg Abbot are heaping on me today because I've committed the crime of living in a Red State.

      This sentiment isn't just confined to hotheads on social media either. When you've got guys like DeSantis and Paxton and Jay Ashcroft and Christie Noam flagrantly breaking state and national laws with zero response from the Biden DOJ, wtf do people expect some simple civvy like myself to do?

      Leftists think they have a monopoly on revolution, but they don’t.

      Leftists think they need a revolution to succeed, because reforms don't work when the Right has the police on their side. And when you consider how many scalps J. Edgar Hoover had on his wall by the time he left office, you begin to see why.

      The country is already deeply fascist. We have people living in relative (abet deteriorating) comfort who think we can just politely ask the next crop of politicos to fix problems for us. We have people living in far more dire circumstances who are scrambling to take direct action before they suffer irreparable harm. And then we have a large, heavily armed contingent of mercenaries who were taking selfies with the Jan 6th rioters not that long ago because they thought the Q-Shaman was making a lot of good points.

      The Right doesn't need to do a Revolution because they're already the ones in control. The only real question is whether they decide Biden gets to keep his seat or Trump needs to be put back in charge come this November.

    • Boy I wish we could give Lemmy Gold to posts like this

  • Calling out the false "both sides" thing (h/t to The Professional Left, by the way!) is something that should be common currency in the "liberal media".

    Thanks to the silliness of false "objectivity" and, let's be honest, corporatism, it is hardly ever discussed. But thank goodness Vanity Fair did here...however, they still called these treasonous insurrectionists (really: terrorists) "rioters", FFS.

  • It's useful to consider both sides of a political controversy when both sides actually fall within the realm of respecting and sustaining the democracy and social contract keeping people bought into it.

    When the choices are between 'you get some human rights' and 'you get no bodily autonomy', one of these doesn't fall within the bounds of reasonable discourse, where 'reasonable discourse' isn't lighting the basis for democracy and individual rights on fire.

    The exercise of gamely considering 'both sides' like it's genuinely for the good of democracy when one side is actively hostile to democracy is... gaslighting, hostile to said democracy and to the social contract.

  • But there are two sides.... There's the citizens, who believe in the process and support the peaceful transfer of power, and there's treasonous scum.

    See? Two sides.

    One should be voting later this year, the other should be found, prosecuted, and thrown in jail... Or at least have their rights to participate in a democratic election taken away. I'd prefer the former, but I'd settle for the latter.

    There's zero reason that anyone should continue to believe the election was stolen. The 2020 election was one of the most scrutinized and examined elections in recent history. I don't know of another election with this much scrutiny. The fact is, "both sides" examined ballots and found the results were accurate; or at least didn't have enough inaccuracies to change the outcome. Fact is, the current president was elected. He is president. To deny that, is to deny not only the election, but the multitude of recounts after the fact, both by Trump supporters and by the systems in place to perform such counts and recounts.

    Biden can be "not your president" if you disagree with the decision. You didn't vote for him, I get that you're unhappy with the outcome. You're free to say whatever you want about the president, short of threats of violence or physical harm (in which case, secret service may want a word with you). The fact remains he is the president of the United States of America, voted into office by the people of the USA. Saying he "stole" the election by defrauding the election system, at this point, is just delusional.

217 comments