Debra Douville: Some people channeled it into Bernie. But tat wasn’t going to be allowed.

Whomp Biscuits: Great comment. This idea that economic hardship breeds radicalized violence is thoroughly wrong. This was one of the worst Radars because it fuels an all-too common myth that's been circulating in leftist circles.

Holden Green: I was one of those people. I gave ~$200 of my hard earned money to his campaign over the course of the last primary.

Holden Green: @Whomp Biscuits What? Everything in this country is about money. There is no floor or ceiling. People intrinsically know this.

Joyness333: @Holden Green I saw an article about Biden's plan to make community college free the other day; the comments below it? "not with my taxes," "I don't want to pay for anyone's education," "I had to work for my education, so should everyone else," etc. No doubt Republicans, or right leaning Democrats, and no doubt mostly normal to middle class. Another article about minimum wage being raised to $15: "those jobs were never meant to be careers," "get a better job," etc. If economic hardship is a root cause of the republican outrage in this country there's no hint of it anywhere in their behavior, or even in the collective subtext of their discourse, or undercurrents of their protests. The targets for their frustration, and political leanings may not necessarily need reflect their situations, but their complaints should in some way. Yet the evidence for economic hardship being some sort of emotional catalyst is virtually nowhere to be found. They don't want the help or the improvement that the left wants for them and everyone else. As a matter of fact they reject it, and denounce it as the cause of our ills -- it's part of what they're fighting against. It isn't so much that their anger is misdirected, it's that the issues they have are almost entirely unrelated to any financial circumstances, and rest more in religion, immigration (God and country), social issues, and the prevalence of jobs (the last is the closest you'll get to anything economic in nature). And there were both boomers, and young people alike in the crowd at the Capitol that day. This is why this narrative always gives me pause at first, but then gets to me every time I hear it through, because all one has to do is look to the crowd's actions, and rhetoric to hear what they'd really think about it. Suffering is looked at as a right of passage to the older culture in this country, and it's tied closely with religion, cult mentality, or tribalism. The more one suffers the deeper it's embraced. Any threat to the religion/tribe/cult is met with major backlash -- even when it's an attempt to ease the suffering.

Holden Green: @Joyness333 Thanks for the thoughtful response! My experience general backs up what you say about conservatives. I will add that democrats aren't so great either. A lot of our discourse focuses on the more vapid differences between democrats and republicans that I could care less for. They are non-issues for me. This gives a lot of opportunity for democrats to make incremental change on issues that really shouldn't have been an issue in the first place (because repubs are high on batshit all the time with zero common sense) and get political credit in the process. When it comes to all of the change that really needs to happen (ex. Green New Deal or destroying the military industrial complex and reducing the military) democrats seem to be ineffective. Maybe more of them than we know do believe in those things, but from a distance you wouldn't know it.