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The Seditionists Need a Path Back to Society

• jfengel 6y ago
  The article gives only a passing, buried mention to the thing I consider the most important part. It cites "34 percent of Americans said they did not trust the outcome of the 2020 election", but it's 45% of Republicans, outnumbering the 43% who oppose it. There's also 12% who claim to be unaware, which seems highly unlikely. If they are receiving official support, at least tacitly, that this was OK, then nothing anybody else says or does is going to matter. If the party can't take a strong position that this is a bad position to hold, for fear of offending a near-majority of the party, what can we possibly hope to achieve as partners? You'd have thought that "it's bad to violently interrupt the peaceful transition of power" was the one thing we could agree on. In the absence of a partner in government, the other party must do what it thinks is best for the country, and hope that that's positive enough to change some minds. But if they're being encouraged to think of them as somebody who must be opposed violently, that seems unlikely. To make a path back to society, we need a society for them to come back to. If half the country insists that there isn't one, then there isn't.