"There is only one party in the United States, the Property Party; and it has two right wings: Republican and Democrat. Republicans are a bit stupider, more rigid, more doctrinaire in their laissez-faire capitalism than the Democrats, who are cuter, prettier, a bit more corrupt, until recently, and more willing than the Republicans to make small adjustments when the poor, the black, the anti-imperialists get out of hand. But, essentially, there is no difference between the two parties."
- Gore Vidal (1975 or before)
Let's not confuse "huge differences" with huge emotional polarization over "small adjustments". Even on ICE tactics there aren't huge differences in method between Biden's and Trump's admins. The scales are different but the methods are the same, "administrative warrants" were upheld by SCOTUS and were/are used by both admins - as recently explained by IL Gov. Pritzker (D) on Jon Stewart's show.
> and completely asymmetric levels of radicalization.
I don't keep exacts stats but the numbers of politically-motivated murders seem to be very similar for both sides - it's a good argument in favor of rather symmetric levels of radicalization.
Yep. There's shit lite and ultra shit where some bet on ultra shit accelerating towards less shit and other believing ultra shit is really a fragrant utopia that smells like roses. Ultra shit really wants permission to start a civil war purge while shit lite is worried about magazine capacity and the "scary look" of forward grips while a flood of diarrhea is already ankle-deep.
They are just reaching for punishments that they think will stick. Removing someone’s citizenship for speech is too far outside of the overton window right now. But perhaps they can persecute political opponents this way. It’s a game of inches over many years.
They want people that disagree to stay so that an example can be made of them. The people who voted them the regime into office want to see those people suffer.
