Missing The Point

Once again the mainstream media is missing the point of the January 6th pardons. All the outrage is directed at the hypocrisy of Trump and his GOP ‘law and order party’ enablers giving a get out of jail free card to the people who violently attacked and injured the Capitol police - when they say they support ‘the men and women in blue.’ Fact is no one much cares about hypocrisy in politics anymore. They’re all hypocrites, some more than others. The point isn’t that they attacked the police officers. The point is that they attacked the Capitol. The police were unfortunately standing in the way. This was trump’s assault on lawmakers and democracy. Like all autocrats he was showing that he rules, not them, and sending a violent mob against them was designed to send that message. That’s the point. He’s the law, not them.

Another thought: The paradigm of left-right politics is no longer relevant. 

Most mainstream commentators are still operating within the left-right analytical framework. Those are their terms of referral. They see trump as the vanguard of right-wing anti-woke, anti-DEI efforts, and a reactionary against the far-left identity politics agenda. Trump is actually the product of identity politics, and takes it to its maximalist (and sometimes absurd extremes ie. renaming the Gulf of Mexico.) Trump thinks only in terms of identity as expressed through labelling and branding. His discourse is based on reducing people to single (most often false) characteristics, especially if they are rivals or opposition. The simplicity of it is politically appealing to a lot of people. His base of support are wholly committed to their identities, usually white, Christian, and evangelical (but he also has a strong base of support within orthodox Jewry). Right versus left politics implies ideological differences. There is no ideology or principle with trump (except personal self-interest). He is prepared to do or so anything at any moment if he thinks it will benefit him. He uses buzz words as emotional triggers, for example 'radical leftist' but it carries no substantive ideological meaning, which is why contradiction and hypocrisy is pervasive in his rhetoric. 'Radical-left' simply means 'the enemy'. The point is that the ideological basis of political discourse is not relevant. We live in a moment of hyper-identity politics and trump's ascension is emblematic of it, not counter to it. The irony is that it's increasingly looking like trump's radical identity politics will be responsible for pushing the Democrats away from their type of identity politics, and back to the center.