The choice then (2016); the choice now (2020).

Well, I just saw this, so I’ll go against my previous desire to wait until youze guys respond. It’s a good article, and relevant, IMO. I think a great deal of the rise of the lunatic right is due to this massive grading on the curve.

Too many Americans have just accepted this radically low bar for far too long. Too many Americans claim — in effect, if not in actual words — there isn’t any difference between centrists and the folks who try to turn the Rittenhouses of this world into heroes:

From QAnon to Kyle Rittenhouse, the Right is Sinking Deeper Into an Alternate Reality By Meagan Day

Excerpt:

Instability is a permanent feature of capitalism, but the coronavirus pandemic has introduced a whole new level of volatility. Amid the turmoil, the American right is dreaming more feverishly than ever of apocalypse and heroism.
On August 19, President Donald Trump gave a nod of approval to believers in the QAnon conspiracy theory, which maintains that the president is secretly fighting to save the world from an elite satanic pedophile network, calling them “people that love our country.”

One week later, on August 26, Fox News host Tucker Carlson sympathized with Kyle Rittenhouse, a teenager who killed two Wisconsin Black Lives Matter protesters and maimed another. Carlson suggested Rittenhouse felt he “had to maintain order when no one else would.”

At a glance, these provocations might appear disconnected. But they are deeply intertwined. In the span of a week, Trump and Carlson both gave the green light to extremist elements on the Right, QAnon conspiracy theorists on the one hand and armed pro-police adventurists on the other. In the process they each drew on the same bedrock narrative: that the streets of America — especially Democrat-run cities, but nowhere is safe — are teeming with lawless agents of anarchy who flout authority, terrorize innocents, and threaten civilization itself. Thus besieged, right-wing extremism of one variant or another is not really extreme at all. It is rational, even heroic and patriotic.

Trump played dumb about QAnon, though of course he’s familiar with it. Most news-literate Americans now know the broad outlines, and Trump watches more news than anybody, not to mention he’s fascinated by anything starring himself, which QAnon does. But even as he attempted to downplay both his awareness of QAnon and its fundamental lunacy, he also played up the idea that he and his administration are defending the world from total destruction at the hands of shadowy evildoers, which is at the heart of QAnon.

Trump: I don’t know much about the movement other than I understand they like me very much, which I appreciate. But I don’t know much about the movement. I have heard that it is gaining in popularity…

These are people that don’t like seeing what’s going on in places like Portland and places like Chicago and New York and other cities and states. And I’ve heard these are people that love our country and they just don’t like seeing it.

I don’t know anything about it other than they do supposedly like me, and they also would like to see problems in these areas, especially the areas that we’re talking about, go away, because there’s no reason Democrats can’t run a city, and if they can’t we will send in all of the federal, whether it’s troops or law enforcement, whatever they’d like, we’ll send them in and we’ll straighten out their problems in twenty-four hours or less.

Reporter: The crux of the theory is this belief that you are secretly saving the world from this satanic cult of pedophiles and cannibals. Does that sound like something you are behind?

Trump: Well I haven’t heard that. But is that supposed to be a bad thing or a good thing? If I can help save the world from problems, I’m willing to do it. I’m willing to put myself out there. And we are, actually. We’re saving the world from a radical left that will destroy this country. And when this country is gone, the rest of the world would follow.

Naturally, QAnon supporters did not interpret these remarks as a repudiation of their worldview but instead took it as encouragement that they’re on the right track. Emboldened, they held rallies — branded as innocuous protests against “child trafficking,” with participants wearing “Child Lives Matter” T-shirts — in dozens of cities across the country last Saturday, just days after Trump’s comments.

Fox News host Tucker Carlson has studiously avoided QAnon. It’s not his style. But he has aggressively promoted the bedrock narrative of nebulous but mounting chaos designed by those who consciously seek to dismantle society and carried out by their unwitting liberal foot soldiers. When the second wave of Black Lives Matter protests began, Carlson spoke about them in ominous terms, characterizing them as indiscriminately violent and charging that they constituted “a form of tyranny” and posed “a threat to every American.” Those comments are consistent with Carlson’s usual oratory, which gives the overall impression that hordes of enemy invaders — from Central American immigrants to politically-correct college students — are perpetually breaching the castle walls.

Carlson’s comments on the actions of Rittenhouse, who crossed state lines with an assault weapon to assist police with crowd control and, as he put it, “protect from the citizens,” are perfectly indicative of Carlson’s rhetoric over the course of the protests. Like Trump, Carlson implied that the police should have been more aggressive with people protesting the Kenosha, Wisconsin police shooting of Jacob Blake:

Kenosha has devolved into anarchy because the authorities in charge of the city abandoned it. People in charge from the governor on down refused to enforce the law. They stood back and they watched Kenosha burn. So are we really surprised that looting and arson accelerated to murder? How shocked are we that seventeen-year-olds with rifles decided they had to maintain order when no one else would?

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Time to raise the bar across the board. No more excuses. No more separate standards.