nice thread, I think a lot of the difficulty in parsing the transitional flux is that these events have yet to have clear narratives around them yet. once people start to claim ownership, perform some hagiography, intentions and desires become more clear

they are fodder for ideological negotiation

they have mistaken controversy for wisdom! Said's controversy came from the depth of his ideas, not the shallowness of his performance

just checked in on them again, now there's a different post where it's back to "well, looks like Robinson was indoctrinated into violence by his trans lover, time to hate them again"

the irony is that dems treat them as "simple policy debates" and are willing to do "politics as normal"—compromises that inch us closer to fascism despite sounding the alarm for "attacks on democracy." the disjunct is the problem for dems, whereas reps have enlisted voters in an existential crusade

equally frustrating is that some right-wing spaces (r/Conservative) are now patting themselves on the back for their tolerance of trans people because "this one" helped out. no apologies, no introspection, just a feigned "genderblindness": e.g., whoever they are, they helped us out today

yeah but if you make judgments about the values you're biased, at least we can all agree on the aesthetics...

as someone who teaches the youth marxist theory i am, if anything, de-radicalizing them from the utterly unhinged, almost paranoiac default state of online political discourse

trying at least

"this is an AI video, the AI chatbot me it isn't real" wow

people now know that it's real, but it was stunning how many initial posts I saw from the right (Twitter) and left (TikTok) about how they first thought it was AI, followed by conspiracy theories about who planned it

and this dialogue is necessary for the right, because they cannot understand political violence as the outgrowth of any of the many issues affecting real people. political violence is the expression of ideology, and you do not analyze the cause of ideology, you blame the ideologues.

should a right-wing attack occur, it'll be the fault of the baseball field shooter or the Kirk shooter. by controlling the backdating and sequencing, the right can ward off accountability: "you started this when you killed Kirk, it's the left's fault."

Re: the crime drop, I think it's important to think about his audience. It's difficult: there are communities in Chicago which Pritzker needs for support, some of whom strongly endorse tougher crime. They require different messaging than more "swing" voters outside of Chicago. But he has to do both.

He has never been the most charismatic speaker. He flubbed miserably in 2018, often awkward, especially in his appeals to "regular folk" and was memed for it. Like Waltz, folksy earnestness/emotionality are his strong suit, which he needs to put into attack mode without becoming smarmy (aka Newsom).

not trying to call out OP, i think this was a similar case to the JD Vance pope/couch stuff, but just thought it interesting that OP used the exact defense conspiracy theorists use!