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Culture War Roundup for the week of November 4, 2024

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I finally got Robinhood event contracts working and put down a trivial amount of money on Harris. I find it hard to believe that after January 6, Trump is more popular than ever. I have a feeling that the movement reflects how pollsters are adjusting for their big misses in 2016 and 2020, not a change in sentiment on the ground.

Normies don’t give two shits about J6.

I mean, it helps that Jan 6 has been extensively relitigated, and found to not be what it was at first sold as. No police officers were killed, down from initial claims of 3-6. There is extensive footage of capital police just waving grandmas into the capital, contra the sizzle reel that the media put together. Trump is consistently reiterated that he told people to march "Peacefully and patriotically". The FBI has never disclosed how many agent (agent provocateur?) they had in the crowd, but the former head of the Capital Police claims his agency was excluded from briefings and intentionally kept in the dark about it. In fact, the former head of the Capital Police contradicts many "official" claims with his narrative of the events of that day. And effectively the only person willing to get his side of the story was Tucker Carlson, who was coincidentally fired before the episode aired. So he interviewed the guy again when he went independent.

So yeah, a lot of people are now willing to overlook January 6.

Hell, a lot of people are motivated by it because a from the outside it appears that many ordinary people were put through the wringer and many are still in prison or will be heading to prison over it.

That was probably the biggest misstep. Making a big deal of out J6 was one thing, but slamming people with no criminal records with prison time reads as pure political payback.

This is the one time it would have been helpful to exercise some restraint and leniency, but it'd be hard to square that with the narrative that the republic was inches from being overthrown.