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Jon Stewart Reacts to Trump’s Assassination Attempt: “We Dodged a Catastrophe”
(www.hollywoodreporter.com)
this post was submitted on 17 Jul 2024
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Hard to say what would have been better.
There's no doubt removing a Hitler from the US elections would benefit everyone.
But given how dangerous his cult is, can you say without a doubt they would stay calm and just accept their leader got killed? And, above all, that the one coming to take his place would be a less fascist person?
OK, but if it did trigger a civil war, it'd be better to do that now than after they hold the government.
His cult will (and already does) do damage if gets in, so it doesn't matter if they might if he doesn't.
The current one already is a fascist person, at that point it doesn't matter if they're more or less, any fascist needs to go.
There are levels of fascism. A fascist like Trump is dangerous, but given his lack of intelligence, he's less dangerous than a fascist that's smart. You don't want a smart Trump.
Edit: typo
If Trump is stupid, what does that say about the person losing to an idiot?
You can be popular without being intelligent.
There’s a popular misconception trump is an idiot - he’s under educated and has a learning disability that discourages him learning further. He’s very clever with people and can charm them for 5 minutes while stealing their wallets. Remember he runs his own brand, and surrounds himself with people like himself… clever with people but with no strong logic or science background.
Our real problem is that he is good at fooling people like himself; people who are functional in society but could not flip their own breaker when the lights go off. There are a lot of those people, and they have no concept of long term consequences for their short term actions.
I'm going to agree with this although I actually think he's smarter than that. I believe he's a narcissist which a lot of people think is an idiotic position and in a wholesome functional idealistic society with equality it would be. However, that has never been America. America prides itself on inequality. From differences in education, opportunity, healthcare and quality of life, that is just free market capitalism doing what it does best.
We live in a society where most people equate and idealize money more than ideas, and if you have good ideas .. how little can they buy you out for. Will preventing climate change and living in harmony hurt corporate profits. People may have moments of clarity or hope and inspiration if they believe things can and will change, but a majority of people believe it is too late. That America has chosen this path and there is no going back.
For the forgetful, I write to remind us that Biden beat Trump last election - and Trump did not even have the small consolation of having been the smarter man.
About the person losing to him? Nothing. But about the voters? It means that at least half of the people voting (and also a good portion of those who can vote and don't) are either Nazis or dumber than a rock (or both).
Trump has an amount of media savvy to him which matters a lot in popularity contests. He's also incredibly intellectually lazy and unwilling to put in the work to get things done. The signs of this are all over his first presidency and a matter of public record.
Trump embodies fascism on an instinctive bedrock level. By the time he saw the democracy, he was already a man, and it was nothing to him but stupid.
It’s unlikely that the person that replaces him will be as spiritually aligned with fascism. On the other hand, just like with Hitler, Trump’s pure stupidity and laziness is the one bright spot in what would otherwise be an unbroken landscape of horror that we’re currently driving into.
I think replacing him, atop the machinery that’s been created at this point, with someone who really knew what to do with it and could apply themselves to getting it done, would be probably the worst catastrophe possible out a set of possible futures that doesn’t have any shortage of catastrophes.
You remove Hitler and you get Chancellor Göring. As you suggest, it's just not that simple.
It gets harder every time. Do you think it's going to be anywhere near this easy to take a shot at a major presidential candidate again?
Yes, because presidential candidates insist on holding rallies and pressing the flesh. There's only so much you can do to defend someone who insists on putting themselves in situations like that.
"Only so much" and "more than they're currently doing" are two different things.
There level of martyrdom would be insane
They're already delusional and obsessed about their new prophet, what difference would it make.
Most likely they would take significant action. There'd be a lot of terrorism.
Though, probably not much more than if he loses.
You'd think that but significant action required significant coordination. Coordinating these people without their guru would be like herding cats. Possibly, the leaders and influencers would tear each other apart, leading to mixed messaging, leading to apathy in the ranks.
You mean like the attempted coup?
Or like the guys that were hitting substations?
Or like the guys driving through peaceful marches?
The attempted coup made sense because they were united under their leader. Even then, while it was shocking, it didn't accomplish any of their immediate goals. Without Trump, my guess is the high level individuals that effectively coordinated it would be too busy fighting each other to accomplish anything significant.
The other examples are individuals committing criminal acts, not significant actions. Maybe you'd see a flare up of those, but probably not that much as crazy individualists get bored quick.
I disagree with "significant action required significant coordination."
One person can take significant action, as we saw in the news the other day.
I'm not agreeing with you and then saying that single people were coordinated; I'm saying that coordination isn't necessary to perform significant acts.
I think we're not talking about the same thing. Individual acts of terrorism are not significant in my view, the US gets a bunch of politically motivated shootings every year and it accomplishes absolutely nothing. They are horrible tragedies, but not political drivers.
I'm not Nostradamus but my guess is that if Trump were to suddenly up and die, his movement would fizzle out pretty quickly. His lackeys would fight for power Game of Thrones style, which would fragment the movement and make it essentially toothless. His fans would be agitated for a while, most wouldn't do shit about it, a few would attempt shootings, even fewer would succeed and make headlines for a couple days. But nothing politically significant would happen. Just my $0.02 !
"Individual acts of terrorism are not significant in my view"
You can go find someone else to 'argue' with.
Pfff haha. Read the comment again. Slowly. You can do it !
You really can't see how a smart Trump would be the worst possible scenario? Trump is dumb. A person as evil as him but with half a functional brain would make the world tremble. Of course the world is better without Trump but do we want an alternative that could be more dangerous than him just by the fact of being smarter (something really easy at this point)?
An organic cause would play out different than an assassin's bullet. Both candidates have the best Healthcare available, so I dunno that organic is likely tho.
Him dying of an illness or simply old age would remove a good portion of the followers ire (not 100% because I'm sure there would be an interesting portion thinking the cause is fake and someone killed him; and of course some nutjob would try to capitalize it). The problem of a potentially worse successor remains.
The solution is by no means simple and, to do it well, you need a long term plan that includes not only defeating him but also a shock plan for anyone trying to copy him until they return to being a moderate right party.
The solution must include too opening the elections to a more complex system with more than 2 parties and actual alternatives that make people able of voting for something that's not just "the lesser evil".