Most People Didn't Care About January 6th

For at least a generation now, there's been a growing disconnect between the priorities of the mainstream media and the people on the receiving end of their coverage.  That's not exactly a secret to anybody who's been paying attention to American politics and culture going back to at least the Clinton years, but the reelection of Trump two months ago laid bare just how large the divide had become.  And the schism has been most profoundly clear based on the response to the January 6 insurrection.  Virtually everybody in the media treated January 6 with an intensity not seen since September 11, 2001, and they were convinced for most of the last four years that a significant majority of the country was just as deeply appalled about it as the media was.  I don't think it fully hit them just how little people cared about it until November 5, 2024, when the guy who instigated the insurrection was rewarded with 312 electoral votes and a clean sweep of every battleground state.

To be clear, I'm on the media's side here.  The events of January 6 showcased with the brightest possible spotlight the consequences of having a malignant narcissist running the country--and the corresponding consequences of a radicalized electorate devoted to that malignant narcissist running the country--in the rawest and most extreme form.  To watch more than 77 million American voters reward an evil this cartoonish with their eyes fully open has frozen me out from ever again indulging these people by standing up for their singing of the national anthem or cosplaying a deep reverence for veterans when they voted for a man who called them suckers and losers and vowed to use the military against political opponents.  I'll never be able to look at this country the same as I did before they elected this monster fully aware of what he's capable of.

With that said, I saw it coming.  And I didn't have to wait until November 5, 2024, to see it coming.  I predicted on January 7, 2021, in the immediate aftermath of Trump's attempted assassination of his Vice President, that if voters were given a chance for a do-over of the 2020 election that it wouldn't move the outcome more than 1 percentage point.  The tribalism is so baked in that absolutely nothing matters anymore, and that remains every bit as true now as it was four years ago.

This is important because, as of this writing, Trump is one day away from beginning his second term.  Every indication is that he plans to go on a consequence-free four-year crime spree, and it's a safe bet that that crime spree will begin within hours of his of inauguration when he pushes the limits of Presidential authority with dozens of executive orders.  Sociopath that he is, Trump will continue to test the most sacred of boundaries just for the hell of it even outside the context of criminal activity (i.e. "I can appoint a child molester to head the Justice Department and not lose any votes for it").  Will voters care about any of it?

Zero Trump voters will care about any of it so long as they're convinced the trains are running on time.  Some may express their "exhaustion" with his antics, but as we've seen in the last three Presidential elections, that doesn't translate to a loss of support.  Knowing that, it'll be very interesting to see how the opposition party and the media respond to Trump's provocations and criminality in his second term.  What's the appropriate response in a country where we've definitively learned that the majority of people are incapable of doing the right thing no matter what?  Report at length over every boundary Trump blows past knowing that the majority of the country can't be bothered to care?  Or shrug it all off to avoid giving him the megaphone he wants and continually try to undermine him by constantly asking the country if they're paying any less for eggs than they were last Thanksgiving?

Obviously, it'll happen on a case-by-case basis, but it's impossible to imagine that in a culture as saturated in infotainment as ours that the media and Democrats can avoid going down every rabbit hole Trump's diabolical team digs for them.  And they shouldn't let most of it slide as crime needs to be reported when it happens....and it's gonna happen a lot for the next four years.  But I hope a lesson has been learned by the media about its detachment from the people as the January 6 insurrectionists that the media held in such contempt get full pardons in the days ahead with the complete support of at least 49.9% of the electorate.  The media loses its effectiveness if it's as out of touch with the public as it has been, no matter how deranged the public happens to be.  If they find that they're in another situation where the issue they're aggressively pressing has diminishing resonance, no matter how important, it will do more harm than good to continue to press it.