This remains one of the key points about where we are and how we got here. https://twitter.com/wesyang/status/1347529122419978242

How could Donald Trump and Josh Hawley and Ted Cruz, cynical-to-the-bone players of games, have anticipated that whipping up a mob with accusations of the death of democracy that none of them could prove might result in people acting as though that were generally true?

How could major media outlets have anticipated that promoting and encouraging insane fringe extremists with loathsome views might result in people taking those views as part of the mainstream political sphere?

How could anyone have anticipated that actively encouraging and celebrating mob violence as a remedy for the failure of law to achieve a desired end might result in that becoming a viable tool in people’s minds?

How could anyone foresee that celebrating violent riots as legitimate political action might lead to them becoming an increasingly regular park of the political landscape?

The problem here is not “hypocrisy” in any vague sense of immorality, though that is true. The problem is that all of these people who occupy leadership roles cannot think one step ahead about the consequences of their actions. It’s all desperate lunging for first-order gains.

And evidently no one has learned from these repeated failures in which a meaningless short-term personal gain is exchanged for a long-term cost to both themselves and the wider society. We have people in power- we do not have leaders, statesman or adults. https://mobile.twitter.com/ggreenwald/status/1347542374952677377

I worry a lot less about some idiot in a plastic Viking helmet than I do about the fact that everyone with their hands on the controls is no wiser or more far-sighted than he.