An incident like the Gracchi brothers' populist power grab, which led to the first significant outbreak of political violence in Rome in centuries, was not immediately transformative but it did sow the seeds of conflict.
I personally think Trump, and especially Jan 6th, is the Gracchi brothers moment of the USA.
All of the powerful psycopaths have seen what one aspiring dictator can get away with. Trump will keep pushing over norms and other pillars of society and the next one will be starting much further along.
On the other side every democracy looses a bit focus over time and laws to keep government clean get softened, IMHO.
But let’s say the next election happens and the opposition will be voted in (if not, god knows where this ends) , then there will be a government with a state apparatus in tatas. They have the burden but also the opportunity to rethink how things are supposed to work and can make changes that most previous governments did not even thought possible.
Maybe, I don’t know. But maybe this slightly painful time is part of a renewal process that in the end will be helpful. And Trump of all people makes it involuntary possible.
the current events provide a wakeup call that has the potential to galvanize change. as i said, what we need is a consensus. hopefully the next government will realize that too, and work towards that. otherwise it is up to us individuals to work on that too.
The main response was a series of milquetoast foot-dragging prosecutions that accomplished little more than ralling the Republicans around him and giving him even more media attention.
i think the reason there is no pushback is that things are happening too fast at an unprecedented scale that we can't even envision the consequences, let alone predict them. we are completely unprepared for this and by the time we can figure out how to deal with it, or even stop it, it will be to late.
it is also possible that many believe that this will stop by itself with the next president, and so there is no point in trying to stop things now. in a way i actually agree with that. walking in unity but realizing your error and changing course is a better choice than risking a civil war.
civil war sounds alarmist, and maybe it is, but i fear that without consensus on what is the right course of action, worse without consensus that the current trajectory is bad, i don't see any other outcome. before anything can be done, a consensus on what that should be is simply necessary. and unfortunately, it should be obvious that there is no such consensus now. if there were, we wouldn't even have this controversy.