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How unscrupulous criminals were able to attain high government offices, even though it was perfectly obvious that there could hardly have been more unsuitable candidates.

And in a similar vein: how so many people in today’s democracies can be so ideologically blinded that they vote against their own interests – even though the internet makes it very easy to obtain basic information so that you don’t fall for obvious lies.

I think with the passage of time, this will seem so absurd that people will wonder how we could have been so incredibly stupid.

I am curious to see what historians will call this period. Perhaps anti-Enlightenment or the age of misinformation. However, this is of course conditional on us not overdoing it in the coming years to such an extent that the future resembles Idiocracy. That is also a possibility that is not entirely unlikely…

Yes, that’s why there must be legal and social consequences for people who systematically and continuously spread lies. If a democracy is to function even remotely, we cannot let them get away with it, forgive them for their actions, or dismiss them as harmless campaign tactics.

Otherwise, exactly what we are experiencing will happen: political discourse is moving further and further away from its purpose, which is to negotiate compromises based on the exchange of (rational and factual) arguments.

It goes without saying that marketing, charisma, and rhetoric are part of this, but deliberate misinformation is something else entirely.

One example: Trump’s claim during the presidential debate that foreigners eat pets—this is a blatant lie with no basis whatsoever. It is unacceptable that this was not immediately clarified.

Trump has been acting this way throughout his entire career, and he can do so because no one is prosecuting him for it, at least not in a way that would prevent him from doing so. He has already been ordered to pay high fines for defamation, but he will probably never pay them – and even if he did, it would not stop him from continuing in exactly the same way.

Anyone who votes for him anyway is either misinformed because of all the lies or has other motives.

Of course, it is commendable to believe in the good in people, and there are certainly those who are simply so gullible that they believe the mindless far-right propaganda despite all its obvious contradictions.

In this case however, which seems to me to be typical of the current behavior of many MAGA demagogues, I think that it is just a matter of pure selfishness, of self-preservation: the regime is losing credibility even among its loyal supporters because it is going too far with its criminal activities and its boundless greed. It seems only fitting to me that those opportunists who, like this lady, have loudly supported it for a long time are now trying to portray their support as a naive misstep. That’s also how it was before the Nazi regime was overthrown in Germany: suddenly, no one wanted to be a Nazi anymore because then, of course, they would have had to answer for all the crimes they had made possible or even participated in themselves.

Furthermore, I have no tolerance for intolerant people. I don’t think that’s a contradiction, because I believe that people’s freedom ends where it interferes with the lives of others. There must be good reasons for this – for example, when the actions of individuals pose a danger to the general public. Blind racism or intolerance towards minorities who simply want to live their lives cannot be such a reason. That’s why I have no sympathy for people who think it’s okay to impose their twisted worldview on others—I can’t muster any sympathy for them and want nothing to do with them, especially since it’s pointless to try to have a rational discussion with them, as this post shows (she lost friends and family just to support some hardliner party who couldn’t care less - and that is because she just would not see reason).

I realize, of course, that in the US in particular, due to the sheer number of deeply racist and poorly educated citizens, it is necessary to build bridges, but I still think that people like this woman or MTG should not be accommodated. The reason: with their ideology, from which they are unwilling to deviate, they are a danger to the general public, to democracy, and especially to the groups against which their blind hatred is directed.

It is simply impossible to work with people who are so deluded. I think it would be dangerous to respond to them with anything other than strict rejection, because that would only reinforce their unshakeable conviction that their ideology and inhuman actions are even remotely acceptable.

You are right, of course, that democracy requires discussion and a willingness to compromise, but that is not possible with this kind of MAGA cultists because they refuse to accept rational arguments. IMO this disqualifies them as discussion partners, since rationality is a fundamental prerequisite for reasonable, productive discourse and thus for any democratic process.

So I don’t think that strictly rejecting deluded extremists will lead to further extremism. Rather, I think that extremism can only be stopped by strictly excluding people like this woman from the discourse – anything else will only lead to the discourse sinking to their level, as has unfortunately long been the case not only in the US.

In short, I think we have tried long enough to keep extremists in check by treating them with understanding—this has led to the situation in which not only the US finds itself today. I don’t think we should keep this up.

Edit: By “these people,” I don’t mean conservative voters in general, but only demagogues like this woman, who poison the discourse with their loudly expressed hatred by spreading racist slogans and untruths instead of presenting arguments. I think the woman’s post, if it is genuine, says very clearly what kind of person she is.

Why are they complaining? After all, they didn’t vote for the orange rapist because he would do anything for the little people, but because he is a racist and just as dull-witted and intolerant as they are themselves—that was so important to these people that they voted for him against their own interests.

Now they don’t want to pay the price, but claim they voted for him because they supposedly believed, against all common sense and against the advice of even their own families, that he would stand up for the people? No one believes that.

I think it’s simply impossible for reasonably rational people to understand this peculiar cult of personality. You either need people who are crazy themselves or psychologists to even begin to understand the motives behind it.

Maybe it’s just me, but I don’t think political interest or commitment to a cause can explain these people’s complete loss of touch with reality.

This is why the world is so terrible: centralization of capital and thus also attention in the hands of unscrupulous monsters.

In Western countries, we may convince ourselves that we are better than the neglected Third World countries because of all our technology. That is not the case—in fact, the opposite is true, because our inhumane rulers have incomparably more power.

Robin Hood, but modernized as a 21st-century hacker type so that he can cope in today’s world. But I’d still like him to look like he belongs in an edgy 90s movie, complete with green tights, for authenticity’s sake.

Due process is recognized as a human‑rights protection in almost all democratic countries and generally applies regardless of citizenship; it helps prevent arbitrariness and abuse of power.

The fundamental safeguard against arbitrary state detention is habeas corpus or its functional equivalent: a person detained must be brought before a judge so the lawfulness of the detention can be reviewed and so the detainee can be informed of the charges against them.

ICE denies detainees even this, for which there can be absolutely no excuse in any reasonably civilized country.

That’s my impression too. After everything the regime has done so far, I think it’s pretty clear that it can no longer be removed by legal means - the legal system already seems to me to have been infiltrated too deeply for that.

It also seems likely to me that MAGA will no longer allow free elections, because that would carry the risk of being voted out of office, which, even in the corrupt US system, could mean severe legal consequences for many of the regime’s followers and for all the misdeeds that have already been committed in less than a year. I don’t think MAGA will take that chance, especially since ICE is already set up as a kind of secret police force with a budget equivalent to the military spending of a medium-sized country. I mean, what else could an agency like this possibly need such an astronomical budget for other than as a private army loyal to the regime and thus a safeguard in case of resistance from the regular army or the police?

In short: I think the outlook is very bleak, and like you, I’m not convinced that the majority of US citizens are aware of how dangerous the situation is.

I am German and I am appalled by the behavior of our government: Instead of standing up to Trump and his henchmen and becoming independent from the US, they are kowtowing to him, even though it is completely obvious how little Trump cares about his so called allies—and since the US is nowadays blackmailing Europe with tariffs and so on, it takes a lot of imagination to still call them allies, especially when all halfway rational people are particularly disturbed by all the inhuman Nazi shit.

Unfortunately, however, the weak position of the current German government was already absolutely foreseeable before the last federal election, because the Chancellor, Friedrich Merz, is actually more of a US lobbyist than a politician (among other things, he was chairman of the supervisory board of Black Rock Germany until 2022 and held various positions in business lobby organizations such as the Atlantik-Brücke – a conservative think tank). Nothing can be expected from these people, although I unfortunately also think that US citizens should not count on any external support anyway.

Does the US legal system still exist in any sense that it should in a democracy?

I ask because I don’t understand how all this is possible in a constitutional state: Masked brutes who arbitrarily kidnap people on the open street without even identifying themselves, people who are interned without due process and then often simply disappear without a trace in the administrative system, total surveillance without cause, and many other massive violations that the US legal system seems to enable rather than prevent, as it should.

All of this already looks very much like a dictatorship to me, i.e., an unjust state, as none of this can be possible with a democratic constitution - at least not with one that is actually upheld by the legal system.