Is Trump a Threat to Democracy?
How to understand the post-assassination reactions of Destiny and the Progressive Left through the ONE QUESTION that matters
Is what happened yesterday shocking? Yes.
Surprising? Hardly.
You already understand how the idea of “you would be happy if it had happened to Hitler” is the natural, incepted conclusion to the kind of rhetoric we’ve been seeing our media institutions push in recent years.
And let’s face it, it’s not just from our media.
Whether you like Trump, your reaction yesterday was likely one of either:
A) You were sad that someone shot a US president.
B) You were sad that he missed.
Now, most decent people, irrespective of political persuasion, would fall into category A.
I had people leave me comments on X that they would be surprised if there were many people in Category B.
. . . And then we run into Destiny.
Destiny (real name: Steve Bonnell) is an internet streamer who has garnered more than
600 million views
debating people online and playing video games.
I had never come across Destiny before, until I saw his conversation with Jordan Peterson a few months ago, linked below.
He’s a very relevant voice in cultural political discourse, to say the least.
So what did Destiny have to say about the attempted assassination on Trump?
Take a look:
As one would expect, his tweets caused an uproar and influencers have been denouncing him left and right since yesterday.
To his credit, he hopped on an X space today to speak live with a panel of conservatives, as well as anyone from the audience who wanted to ask him questions.
Why do you think it’s funny that an innocent bystander was shot at the Trump rally?
Here’s Destiny’s logic, in my best attempt to steelman it:
Trump tried to overthrow democracy via an insurrection that started with fake electors plot and culminated with January 6th.
This means Trump is a threat to democracy / against the will of the people.
Anyone who supports Trump supports an insurrectionist and is against democracy.
If you go to a political event supporting someone who overthrows democracy, you don’t deserve any sympathy if you get hurt.
So in other words, according to Destiny, the individual who died at the Trump rally had it coming.
Americans love 1776, and a lot of people died in that fight.
The attendees at the Trump rally are all revolutionaries, as far as Destiny is concerned, and revolutions involve death.
Does he have a point?
It comes back to this claim of whether Trump tried to overthrow democracy.
Factually speaking, we must all agree that Trump tried to delay the transfer of power to Biden.
The question is, did he have any reasonable, good faith, sincere rationale for wanting to do the delay or not?
And of course the question behind that is:
Was it reasonable to believe at that time that there was an above-average chance the official vote count of the 2020 election could have been inaccurate?
This is a different question than the yes/no binary of “Was the election fair?”, by the way.
For example, you could believe the election was ultimately fair while also acknowledging that this “fairness” was unknowable with sufficient certainty at that moment in time.
Consider these scenarios, if only hypothetically:
Scenario A: It wasn’t obvious whether the election was fair (due to some irregular patterns and events taking place), and more investigation would be required to clear that up.
Scenario B: It was obvious that the election was fair, and only “bad” people would ever question the outcome.
Scenario C: It was obvious that the election was unfair, and only “bad” people would want to avoid an investigation and move forward with it.
I know it’s hard for many people today to entertain the different scenarios without getting angry, but here in our community we don’t let emotions or ideology keep us from critically thinking.
So let’s think. And let’s see the core heart of the matter.
Regardless of where you stand on this issue, for the purposes of the thought experiment, empty your mind and be agnostic for the next 2 minutes.
If it’s the case that any reasonable person should think it was obvious (~99%+) that the 2020 election was fair (Scenario B)—that there was nothing “suspicious” about it compared to other elections—then one would have to be of the opinion that Trump did indeed threaten democracy.
If you knew an election was fair, and you saw the losing candidate orchestrate plots to delay or stop the transfer of power, wouldn’t you be concerned too?
Yet what about scenarios A and C?
If, somehow, you had inside access and knew that an election wasn’t fair, what would you consider to be the right thing for the losing candidate to do?
Would it be reasonable to support a delay in the transfer of power such that a deeper investigation could take place and clear the air?
Or should the losing candidate always, in 100% of circumstances, accept the outcome, even if the process were broken and the candidate should have actually been the democratically elected victor?
Is advocating for a delay in the transfer of power EVER ok? Or is it ALWAYS “anti-democracy”?
Obviously, the gravity of pushing for an electoral delay is so massive that you better be dang sure you can substantiate the suspicions.
And on the flipside, to the degree the suspicions have any merit, you would be obligated to not move forward automatically and instead take the time to address the concerns of the citizens, rather than shutting down the conversation.
All this to say, based on the division within our country, you could, from a modern historical perspective, say that what exactly happened in the 2020 election is an open question, as the loose ends continue to get tied up.
The pressing issue today is that this one question is the key thing separating the views of:
“People comparing Trump to Hitler have completely lost their minds.”
VS
“People who don’t see that Trump tried to stop the peaceful transfer of power have completely lost their minds.”
In other words, when you fully trace back the cause-effect idea chain, the attitude one has towards to the attempted assassination of Trump correlates almost 1:1 with whether one identifies with the belief of:
”If you thought there was any chance that the 2020 election was rigged, you’re nuts.”
VS
“If you thought that, after all the other Political Hoaxes perpetrated by the “regime”, there was no chance (0%), even in theory, that someone would have tried to tip the scales, you’re nuts.”
So where does that leave us with Destiny?
For him to think it’s justifiable to laugh at a Trump supporter getting shot by an assassin means he better be 100% certain that Trump is against democracy, which means that Destiny must be 100% certain that it was completely unreasonable for Trump and his ilk to try to delay the 2020 election, which means that Destiny must believe there was a 0% chance that someone tried to alter the legitimate votes of the electorate.
But if Destiny is right about these absolute assumptions, would he really be in the wrong?
Would it be a tragedy for a supporter of Hitler to accidentally die?
How many people do you think share the same attitude as Destiny?
—Drago
P.S. It’s clear the assassination attempt has given Trump the energy and attention to propel him to November. Yet the Democrat Party won’t just sit around until then.
They will need to act strategically to preserve their power.
The only strategic move is to redirect energy away from Trump.
But with what? You need something bigger than this:
In theory, something bigger would involve a story like Biden “passing away” or having a critical health condition, such that he needs to be replaced. After all, any sympathy Trump would have for getting his ear grazed would be dominated by the news of an actual loss of a US President.
Either that, or you need some major nationwide crisis.
That’s the Game Theory.
Whether or not the powers at be who need to prevent Trump at all costs from getting the keys to the office will choose to play that game remains to be seen. . .