Trump - love him or hate him, he's certainly in your head to keep talking about him. Trump is not the problem, it's your own brain that hasn't got the capacity to move on.
Carlin explains why you are mostly right. Of course, it doesn't solve anything, but it does throw a light on the subject.
No, it doesn't. You made a false claim - an error of fact. I listed a few that aren't, or weren't. They have in common one significant attribute - guys like you don't like them and refuse to support them or vote for them or even learn anything about them. You back grifters and con men, instead. You seem to be trying to avoid acknowledging that not everyone is as big a sucker as you have proven to be. The distinction is that the rational right, left the Republican Party when what we now call Trumpism took over - that would be when Rush Limbaugh, who differs from Trump in no politically significant way, became the ideological leader and public face of the Republican Party, joined by Newt Gingrich (also a Trumpian figure) as the political muscle in Congress, and so forth. That was 1992 at the latest. There has been no significant power center of the rational right in the Republican Party since then (if you need evidence of such a self-evident fact, recall and list the Republican establishment and leadership figures who publicly and prominently kissed Limbaugh's ass in the 90s). The rational right in the US is what elected Clinton, opposed W's invasion of Iraq, backed Obama, and so forth - it's mostly Democrats now, and has been for a generation. The Republican Party of 2021 has the same voting base and political ideology and legislative strategy it has had since Reagan - right down to the crowds of thugs waving Confederate battle flags at rallies, the Congressional bimbo with crazy eyes raving about black helicopters and the like, the insane rhetoric and reality denial (Reagan was famous for that), and the ass-kissing of the latest voice of the base. It would be as accurate to call it "Rushism" as "Trumpism". You could call it "Reaganism" if you could get anyone except a fringe lefty to remember what Reagan was like in reality. Trump took over a pre-existing fascist movement by the simple expedient of joining the Party it had become and running a long con on the suckers it had assembled - he built none of it, and changed nothing about it. To put it obviously and simply: The Republican Party did not somehow magically and suddenly convert to being a shitpile of fundies and bigots and imbeciles with a straight up fascist agenda in the summer of 2016. It was decades in the making, and failure to see that happen disqualifies any claim to coherent and rational ideology of any kind - and that holds as much for the Republican lifeboat refugees every single major media news outlet has hired to continue to be irrationally and incoherently wrong about everything for big bucks on the grounds that they disparage Trump, instead of hiring the lefties who have been right about all that stuff for an entire generation (and would have been much cheaper to hire).
Moving on can be a bad idea. "Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it." -- George Santayana
I agree with that and that's why I propose any politician who obstructs the raising of the debt limit which is payment of a debt that has already been incurred, be withheld their salary and benefits to pay back the debt they helped incur and now want to avoid paying back. I say to Biden, attach their wages just like any individual who cheats on their taxes. Do it by executive order and if anyone complains let them vote for honouring the nation's full Faith and Credit, before lifting that individual tax collection. Instruct the Treasury to withhold (attach) the wages of any politician who purposely withholds consent to pay the incurred debts to which they were a beneficiary. Time to play hardball according to the Republican rewritten rules of governance.
You are underestimating the problem. It is much more pervasive than may appear to the casual observer.
Trump is not the problem. He is just the figurehead, the populist mushroom that emerged out of the muck of modern neo-Fascism and Ultranationalism that has been expanding its tentacles in the USA for decades. Make no mistake, January 6th was not an isolated occurence, this was simply a trial run for the next time, which could be as early as 2024. If "Republicans" (Trumpists) control Congress after 2022 midterms, we may very well get to see if they can manage to complete their legislative coup in 2024. Once they are enthroned, we will get to witness the full power of their eliminationism campaign. Not sure that will work out quite as well as they hope, since the American people won't go under the boot quietly. The Democrats seem absolutely clueless about how to deal with this, Biden is just as much a hope addict as Obama was. They really don't seem to understand the immediate threat to the American Republic, instead they pretend it is business as usual. The only thing preventing a complete trashing of the Constitution and the establishment of one-party rule are the few Republicans that have the courage to stand up to these fascists.
