Both sides are bad. No doubt about it. It has always been that way. But, one side takes being bad to a whole new level.
Our choice has always been between bad and less bad. The voters decided to pull the lever for "massively bad" during the last presidential election because they could not tell the difference.
>The voters decided to pull the lever for "massively bad" during the last presidential election because they could not tell the difference.
That is being intellectually dishonest, we had already had 4 years of Trump and similarly had 4 years of Kahmala with Biden.
Saying they were ignorant or didn't understand is to ignore the electorate and their issues.
My impression of the US electorate is that they don't want illegal immigration, at least not in the volume and with the openness it was happening. They don't want immigrant trains rolling through Mexico. But they don't want the brutality and violence of the current crackdown, either.
They don't want trans people on womens' sports teams, and they don't want the US taking over Greenland.
And so on.
So after four years, the majority of voters were choosing "not Biden, and not the Biden things we don't like" rather than "yes Trump".
The place where it was "yes Trump" was the Republican primary. If you want to fix US politics, get involved with a political party - either one - and have some influence on who comes out of the primary process.
I'm not a "whatabout" guy, I'm actively opposed to both extremes. The far left is just as capable of ruling with violence as the far right, they just haven't got the opportunity in this country yet.
The politics of emotion and absolutism is the cause, which flavor of extremism you pick isn't the core issue.
How could you possibly think that the establishment dems that have formed government are 'a set of extremists'?
It's not comparable.
Elected democrats are stuck between trying to appease the radical left and trying to actually govern along with republicans and those two are very incompatible goals because the radical left knows very little about actual government policy and just has a couple of very narrow issues that most of the country opposes that their social bubble convinces them are the only important issues in this country.
Democrats lost the last election because of the radicals AND didn't get any of their goals done. Democrats needed a more centrist charismatic leader and instead they keep nominating candidates who "deserve" the nomination opposed to the actual will of the people OR continue nominating ancient relics who needed to retire a decade earlier... 6 of whom died in office over a period of 13 months in a period where every vote counted.
In short, I blame stupid leftist radicals and corrupt self-interested Democratic cowards in office for our current situation.
Pol Pot[0] was a leftist extremist. Chairman Mao[1] was a leftist extremist. As were the Red Brigades[2] and the Symbionese Liberation Army[3], etc., etc., ,etc. Who in the US Democratic Party advocates for the same things as those guys? Let's see. No one.
In fact, the only ones in the US who've shown an interest in nationalizing the means of production (c.f. Intel) or putting down the Intelligentsia and normalizing violence against those who criticize the regime are just one set of extremists. Because extremists end up going full circle -- because for them it's about power and not ideology.
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pol_Pot
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mao_Zedong
[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Red_Brigades
[3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Symbionese_Liberation_Army