Yet such fantasies are now the common currency of politics on the American right. Remember the days when pundits solemnly declared that Trumpism was caused by economic anxiety? Well, despite a booming economy, there’s still plenty of justified anxiety out there, reflecting many people’s real struggles: America is still a nation riddled with inequality, insecurity and injustice. But the anxiety driving MAGA isn’t driven by reality. It is, instead, driven by dystopian visions unrelated to real experience.
That is, at this point, Republican political strategy depends largely on frightening voters who are personally doing relatively well not just according to official statistics but also by their own accounts, by telling them that terrible things are happening to other people.
I cannot in good conscience upvote the OP, bc of exactly that sentence. However, their (NYT) gaslighting I think is of a different kind. For one, there are THREE entities involved here - which they hoped you would not notice: there are MAGA Republicans, there are the Dems, and then there are the billionaires who control both regardless of who wins (guess who owns the NYT btw:-P). The billionaire class would like it very much - please!? - if you would pretend that they did not exist, and were not the cause of there being no money available for common folks to eat/breathe/everything else, as they send rockets into space, self-admittedly bc they have literally no idea how to spend all that amount of money…
But as for BlueMAGA, there I disagree with you, bc the two sides are nowhere close to being equal. You might have no idea how close this country came to an actual coup - and I don’t even mean merely January 6. The Republicans winning is worth being afraid of, and I mean literal and actual fear not figuratively by any means. As in by-by democracy as Trump declares himself dictator for life, and then we have a literal civil war over it. It’s no joking matter, in that direction. While if Democrats win, school shootings won’t diminish in any way, so… also not great, but again nowhere close to being equal.
The BlueMAGA cult is as deranged in their loyalty to anything with a D in their name as a mainstream MAGA.
Nearly 100% of the stuff claims he will do cant happen. If the President had that type of unilateral power to change stuff without Congress why hasnt Biden exercised it? He couldn’t even repeal the ACA with a Republican Congress.
There was no coup or coup attempt, there was a bunch of hillbillies that stormed the Capital building. And the same gaslighting media like the NYT, among others, see dollar signs from liberals and call it coup. In the end we will see the entire Jan 6 dog and pony show was just a distraction to keep the rabid dogs at attention and barking.