"Legitimate political discourse?"

[Dill]

(02-10-2022, 02:06 PM)Tiger Teeth Wrote: Does this not scare any sane rational human?  No matter which side you're on?  Why are they being so silent?  Biden is a failure, I agree.  But Trump pulled an attempted coup, almost a military coup involving OUR military, to deceive our entire Nation.  And that includes ALL of us.

I'm scared by it--though I think it premature to call Biden a failure.

The MSM has certainly not been silent about any of this. Rachel Maddow has examined the coup attempt (from Nov. '20 to Jan '21) more completely and systematically than any other news source I am aware of. But her viewership is rather smaller than Tucker's.

I don't think people are being "silent" so much as 

1. A considerable, party-organized chunk of the electorate no longer follows the MSM. They are immersed in a RW media bubble which takes for granted that the election really WAS stolen--by Biden--and that the MSM media actively work in lock step with an imagined "left" to back the coup, rather as Fox does with right, so you can't trust anything they say. In this RW camp, Trump was PREVENTING an illegal take over of the government by what we call a behind the scene coup attempt. So when they say they want Trump back, in their minds they are backing a guy who tried to save the nation from "socialism," not a wannabe dictator who attempted a coup. (Not that some wouldn't be ok with a dictator, if it were their guy.)

2. The mass of less committed independent or in-between voters not immersed in the RW bubble still have difficulty recognizing that MAGA world REALLY believes that Biden successfully and illegally took over the government, and so cannot see the imminent danger, as they easily would if they heard a network of ISIS cells had become active in the US. They have difficulty recognizing the pronounced structural differences between the current GOP (now a regime party) and the Dems, not to mention between the MS and RW media, which make the former a much more reliable source of info than the latter. 

Further, they have so long been subject to good governance in the US, especially at the local level, that they take it for granted, like the changing of the seasons. When Trump was first elected, many supposed that electing an unstable, celebrity grifter with no knowledge of history or government would not really do much damage; the system naturally rights any imbalances and democracy as we know it goes on forever. "Something" will happen to stop the Trumpists if they go to far. "Someone" will take care of it. "Somehow." No reason to get all shook up and vote in the midterms to keep the party protecting democracy in power.

Some in the latter group may even see MSM warnings as just more politicization and polarization.  "Both sides do it." 

In other words, a sizeable number of voters have lost the sense that it matters who leads, why and how, that they are themselves ultimately responsible for understanding and preserving their democracy, and that their votes do matter.