Honestly, my big thing with right-wingers is that they come with no proof, and get mad when you start asking for facts and figures. Right now, I can see the effects of 40 years of trickle-down economic theory: it means that you need a degree to get just about any decent job in this country, and also unions should not exist because reasons. It really kind of biases me against right-wing talking points, to the point that I need to see proof. Treat it like a math problem and show your work or gtfo.

If you explicitly define what far-left and far-right means, you could probably have a straightforward answer. You mention holodomor skepticism and holocaust skepticism as some kind of far-left and far-right examples (unless I am misreading your comment), but I personally am not sure exactly what the holodomor was. I assume it was some genocide-level event perpetuated by the USSR, but I am not at all sure. Maybe my internet experience is in some kind of enclave composed of SF literature discussions, 8-bit computers and King of the Hill clips, but I really don’t run across holodomor skepticism at all.

Of course, I know what holocaust skepticism is (the denial that millions of Jews [and a whole bunch of gays and Christians and Roma peoples) were systematically killed by the German regime during WW2, as directed by Hitler), but that’s only because the types of people who would embrace (or worse) holocaust skepticism are feeling more emboldened by the current political climate.

Personally, I define far-left and far-right as being ‘armed militants’ and/or ‘large groups of people calling for the eradication of one or more types of people.’ ‘Types of people’, in this case, means ‘people who are born with a certain characteristic that is not changeable, such as race or sexuality’ Currently, we have armed militants protesting libraries (libraries, of all places!) but I have yet to see an armed militant demanding government-funded healthcare or seizing the means of production. Therefore, you will have to forgive me if I don’t buy into the ‘both sides’ equivalence that your post requires the reader to hold.

When the far-left becomes as bad as the far-right, we can (and should!) talk. Until then, miss me with that shit.

note: I’m not a Democrat. I’m more ‘Democrat’ than ‘Republican’, but it’s the same way I’m more in favor of consuming brussels sprouts than dirty sink water. I don’t like brussels sprouts, and would rather have something better, but the only other option is somehow light-years worse. And it will stay this way until we get rid of first-past-the-post voting. Of course, Dems and Repubs both know that the biggest thing keeping them in power is the fact that we have first-past-the-post voting, so there’s no chance of it going away nationally.

But anyway, I disagree with your premise that the big thing keeping us from having to deal with far right extremism is quality candidates / better turnout. We had some pretty damn decent candidates in 2020, but the media (especially NPR and the like) are too busy going to small-town diners in order to hear local yokels repeat Fox News talking points to talk about why Fox News is so scared of the candidate. The right-wing media machine is going to target whichever Dem candidate will actually make progress, and the mainstream media just goes along with it. Mainstream media goes along with whatever ridiculous thing the right says about a Dem candidate because mainstream media wants right-wing viewers. Challenging right-wing viewpoints doesn’t increase the right-wing audience share for CNN and NPR, going along with their talking points does (well, not really, but CNN and NPR seem to think it does, despite years of evidence to the contrary).

Also, Biden got the most votes out of any candidate ever in 2020, and we still have a rise in right-wing extremism. Just over 2/3rds of the voting-eligible public turned out to vote in 2020. And I think I can safely say that right-wing extremism is worse now than it was in 2019. My local library is getting flack because they had the audacity to acknowledge the existence of LGBTQ+ people this month. Like, protests and loud angry attendance at monthly board meetings. This has never happened before to my library.

Right-wing extremism is enabled and promoted despite how much the majority of this nation disagrees with it.

No one really wants Biden. He was the least worst option in 2020, the milquetoast-iest politician the Dems could offer.

But for some reason Republicans seem to think the rest of the country wants Worse Than Last Time. “Trump lost because he wasn’t unhinged enough,” they seem to be saying. I mean, Chris Christie is running as the moderate Republican option. Chris Christie!

I don’t want another 4 years of Biden either, but sigh I guess.

If I learned nothing from the movie ‘Hackers’, it’s that all hackers need to know how to rollerblade. It’s like, if you don’t know how to rollerblade, are you really a hacker?