Joe Biden can save America

[EarlG]

117. I don't blame them either

This is a horrible situation.

I'll note that I don't have any problem with people rising up and throwing out abusive, oppressive, illegal regimes. I came of age during the end of the Cold War, when the Soviet Union collapsed and the Berlin Wall came down. It was remarkable to see millions of people rising up and throwing out their abusers, moving their countries moving from dictatorships to freedom and democracy. And revolution is obviously how this country got started.

Trump tried to throw his own revolution, but like everything else about him, it was fake. January 6 was a phony shadow of a revolution, carried out by a weird combination of violent white supremacists and middle class realtors and salespeople. It wasn't a real revolution because you only get real revolutions when people are really desperate. In fact, that's the only time you can morally justify them.

It may be morally right to overthrow an abusive, oppressive, illegal regime. But at this moment in time, the Trump administration is not an abusive, oppressive, illegal regime. It is certainly threatening to become one, and it seems quite likely to become one. But what we have right now is what people just voted for. That's representative democracy -- the thing we stand for. It has to be allowed to play out, otherwise we never believed in it in the first place. Elections really do have consequences. When people go without a taste of how bad those consequences can be, they do dumb shit like re-elect Trump, because "what's the worst that can happen?"

It remains to be seen where this choice will take us, but getting here was a choice.