> Neither have a lot of the people paining Trump as a monster and making him as the scapegoat for everything that's going wrong in the US (and the world).
These responsibility and reality denying assertions fuel division. Obviously Trump isn't responsible for everything wrong in the world. But he is certainly responsible for some. Trump hamstrung the federal public health response, gave speeches encouraging everyone to be irresponsible, pushed snake oil cures, stole PPE from states, sucked all the air out of the room for intelligent discourse, and seemed to generally do anything he could to make Covid worse (likely due to denial and disrespect of experts). If the office of the President had been vacant for the past year, we would be in better shape pandemic wise.
Trump was elected for very valid concerns, as I've been trying to tell my blue friends since 2016. Where he went after that was very destructive (and no, not in the "creative destruction" sense). This election should have been a landslide, but for a massive propaganda push discrediting outgroup media as "fake news". Propaganda driven groupthink is the real dynamic of our division, and until people start becoming immune to falsely authoritative sources, it's only going to get worse.
> Neither have a lot of the people paining Trump as a monster and making him as the scapegoat for everything that's going wrong in the US (and the world).
These responsibility and reality denying assertions fuel division. Obviously Trump isn't responsible for everything wrong in the world. But he is certainly responsible for some. Trump hamstrung the federal public health response, gave speeches encouraging everyone to be irresponsible, pushed snake oil cures, stole PPE from states, sucked all the air out of the room for intelligent discourse, and seemed to generally do anything he could to make Covid worse (likely due to denial and disrespect of experts). If the office of the President had been vacant for the past year, we would be in better shape pandemic wise.
Trump was elected for very valid concerns, as I've been trying to tell my blue friends since 2016. Where he went after that was very destructive (and no, not in the "creative destruction" sense). This election should have been a landslide, but for a massive propaganda push discrediting outgroup media as "fake news". Propaganda driven groupthink is the real dynamic of our division, and until people start becoming immune to falsely authoritative sources, it's only going to get worse.