For the benefit of other countries dealing with their own rightwing dickhead movements, what we did wrong was slow-roll prosecuting them for blatant crimes.

Biden should have announced prosecutions into far right agitators during his inauguration speech. It shouldn’t have just been the useful rubes from 1/6 that faced consequences. The people and organizations that backed that coup, who fanned the flames and incited violence should have been in cuffs in less than a month, including Trump. From jail, he can’t tweet, he can’t truth social. He can still write to newspapers, and have interviews, and have his lawyer make statements, but all those options have an extra layer of accountability, which would have put a lid on his rampant race-baiting and fear mongering.

I know some of you are going to be worried about appearing partisan. The truth is, bipartisanship is a weapon of the far right. When they are in power, they ride roughshod over everything and everyone, with absolute glee when they can foist terrible policies on the other side. When they call for bipartisan compromise, they are saying “hey! You need to accommodate the views of our bigots and 1% base! Won’t you think of them!?” and we should have told them to fuck off.

People need to vote, and they need to vote effectively. If you’ve got ranked choice, great, vote for the candidates that represent your views the best. If you have a first past the post system, then you need to vote for the least worst candidate that can actually win, even if they don’t align with your morals or ethics. I know it sucks to do it, but you have to consider risk versus reward when making your decision. Taking a big risk on our rights and lives to make a small statement about historical support to a historical ally in a conflict practically as old as history itself, is a really fucking stupid thing to do. There was practically nothing to gain and everything to lose.