Easter Sunday, 2024. The Day Joe Biden lost the 2024 Election by choosing to lose it by lurching to the Progressive Left.

Just below this post, is this one:

Hurling invectives.

That post isn't limited to the left or the right, although right now, invectives are coming more loudly from the Populist right.  They do come from the Progressive left as well.

I note that, as people may misinterpret the post below as being solely aimed at Populists.  Indeed, Populists are likely to look at it that way, as they tend to be very shallow in their political analysis. All their opponents are members of "the Radical Left", they believe. Even Conservatives who oppose them are members of the "Radical Left".

Not hardly.

The actual Radical Left is in the news today through its capture of much of the Democratic Party, which started before the Populists became as influential as they currently are in the GOP.  Indeed, as we discussed last week, the Progressives, which are not the same as the Liberals, have roots in the Democratic Party that go back at least as far as the collapse of the Progressive Party in 1912-1914.

I've often said here that Democrats don't lose elections, they throw them away.

When future historians go back and find the point at which Conservatives who were teetering on the edge of supporting Joe Biden determined to reluctantly give their votes to Donald Trump, they'll cite the issuance of this proclamation:

A Proclamation on Transgender Day of Visibility, 2024

On Transgender Day of Visibility, we honor the extraordinary courage and contributions of transgender Americans and reaffirm our Nation’s commitment to forming a more perfect Union — where all people are created equal and treated equally throughout their lives.  

I am proud that my Administration has stood for justice from the start, working to ensure that the LGBTQI+ community can live openly, in safety, with dignity and respect.  I am proud to have appointed transgender leaders to my Administration and to have ended the ban on transgender Americans serving openly in our military.  I am proud to have signed historic Executive Orders that strengthen civil rights protections in housing, employment, health care, education, the justice system, and more.  I am proud to have signed the Respect for Marriage Act into law, ensuring that every American can marry the person they love. 

Transgender Americans are part of the fabric of our Nation.  Whether serving their communities or in the military, raising families or running businesses, they help America thrive.  They deserve, and are entitled to, the same rights and freedoms as every other American, including the most fundamental freedom to be their true selves.  But extremists are proposing hundreds of hateful laws that target and terrify transgender kids and their families — silencing teachers; banning books; and even threatening parents, doctors, and nurses with prison for helping parents get care for their children.  These bills attack our most basic American values:  the freedom to be yourself, the freedom to make your own health care decisions, and even the right to raise your own child.  It is no surprise that the bullying and discrimination that transgender Americans face is worsening our Nation’s mental health crisis, leading half of transgender youth to consider suicide in the past year.  At the same time, an epidemic of violence against transgender women and girls, especially women and girls of color, continues to take too many lives.  Let me be clear:  All of these attacks are un-American and must end.  No one should have to be brave just to be themselves.  

At the same time, my Administration is working to stop the bullying and harassment of transgender children and their families.  The Department of Justice has taken action to push back against extreme and un-American State laws targeting transgender youth and their families and the Department of Justice is partnering with law enforcement and community groups to combat hate and violence.  My Administration is also providing dedicated emergency mental health support through our nationwide suicide and crisis lifeline — any LGBTQI+ young person in need can call “988” and press “3” to speak with a counselor trained to support them.  We are making public services more accessible for transgender Americans, including with more inclusive passports and easier access to Social Security benefits.  There is much more to do.  I continue to call on the Congress to pass the Equality Act, to codify civil rights protections for all LGBTQI+ Americans.

Today, we send a message to all transgender Americans:  You are loved.  You are heard.  You are understood.  You belong.  You are America, and my entire Administration and I have your back.

NOW, THEREFORE, I, JOSEPH R. BIDEN JR., President of the United States of America, by virtue of the authority vested in me by the Constitution and the laws of the United States, do hereby proclaim March 31, 2024, as Transgender Day of Visibility.  I call upon all Americans to join us in lifting up the lives and voices of transgender people throughout our Nation and to work toward eliminating violence and discrimination based on gender identity.

IN WITNESS WHEREOF, I have hereunto set my hand this twenty-ninth day of March, in the year of our Lord two thousand twenty-four, and of the Independence of the United States of America the two hundred and forty-eighth.

JOSEPH R. BIDEN JR.

Defenders of this will no doubt state that Joe is just honoring the "right to be yourself".  Maybe he thinks of it that way.  Indeed, the statement is sufficiently bland enought to nearly be calculated to attempt not to really offend.

This isn't how many will take it.  Many will take it as "you are forcing me to accept a radical fraud about yourself and pretend it's okay".

And frankly, they're right.  Words actually do have meaning, and not only the spoken ones, but what they suggest.

This comes down, in a way, to the essential difference between how conservatives, liberals and progressives see the world (yes I've left populists out of this intentionally).  Only Progressives believe in the Existential Me, or the Isolated Absolute. Everyone else believes that you are part of a community.  Indeed, Progressivism is, ironically, the ultimate extension of a belief that Progressives claim to hate, that being American Individualism written large.  You can' be just what you want to be, and ignore everyone else.  

In reality, Homo sapiens are a community animal with a fixed nature, and you can't.

I'd normally be reluctant to cite Jordan Peterson, the right wing Canadian pundit, but he is a psychologist and he and a reporter have an interesting podcast episode entitled The Biggest Medical Scandal Of Our Time.  I'm not going to link it in, people can simply look it up, but it does a good job of pointing out the degree to which the entire transgender thing is simply a fraud.  Peterson spends much of the podcast being outraged, as he's a very poor interviewer, but what you'd basically learn is that in the extraordinary rare instances in which gender confusion arises, it's confusion and nothing else.  The basic proper course for minors is not to treat it, with most who are generally afflicted, according to Peterson, coming into adulthood comfortable with their genders, but being homosexuals.

I'm no doubt more radical yet, as I don't believe that transgenderism actually even exists, but is rather a psychological affliction that is limited to the Western world and expresses something else going on in our culture.  It's deeply contrary to nature, as much of our society is in general.  It's a reaction to some sort of unnatural stress, not an expression of nature.

There's utterly no reason whatsoever for the Federal Government to recognize transgenderism and the fact that it does, and that it's even crept into surgeries being allowed within the Armed Forces, is in fact evidence of how deeply woke some elements of our society have become.  There's no reason to oppress people who express this, but going the next 100 miles and pretending everything about it is okay about it is frankly going a bridge too far, and most people instinctively know this.

People have become used to various months being declared to represent the history of one group of people or another.  Originally, it was a few definable groups who deserved to have their history brought forward.  Black History Month was a good example.  March is National Women's History Month, which was as well. 

November has become Transgender Awareness Month according to some, or there's a month in November that's been declared Transgender Awareness Week.  Now we're all learning that March 31, the last day of National Women's History Month, is Transgender Day of Visibility.

Some time ago I heard a podcast by somebody, I can't recall who, who discussed how transgender mutilation of men into women goes an extra level in being an existential insult to women.  That it's a fraud is self-evident.  You cannot change your gender, you can only surgically and chemically attempt to partially mask your actual gender.  

But what hadn't occured to me is that actual women go through, due to their natures, something that men can barely understand.  To experience in your youthful prime an event in which your young healthy body suddenly starts bleeding monthly and your hormonal system subjects you to a raging hormonal cyclonic storm is something men do not experience and cannot grasp.  To take pills and subject yourself to surgical butchery doesn't mimic that in any fashion.  Women's entire bodies, after a certain point in their teens, remind them of our species elemental genetic roles.  Boys have things turn on, but not in a way that can result in them bearing another human being, and in fact monthly demanding that they do so.

To have the Oval Office recognize something that, at this point, is basically hurled in everyone's face, and which all humans know at an elemental level to be existentially wrong, is insulting.

Do declare it on Easter Sunday is an insult beyond that.

That Biden did this is tone-deaf beyond belief.  His defenders are pointing out that this day is "always Transgender Day of Visibility", which is absurd on its face, as it hasn't "always" existed.  It's new, and it's misdirected.  Noting those who fall into this self-declared group is worthwhile, but to sympathize with their plight and seek to address it honestly, rather than to verify that their condition is a dandy one. But this is what we do now since the Progressive Left has become so inserted in our society.  We honor the afflicted in their affliction rather than seek to help.

Recently, an insulting event occured at St. Patrick's Cathedral in New York, in which a funeral that openly insulted conservative beliefs in general and the beliefs of the Catholic Church occured.  The tone-deaf appearance by those whose duty it is to protect the beliefs of the Church were widely discussed on the Catholic Blogosphere.  This, however, is wider yet.

No matter how imperfectly understood, a major element fueling Populist rage (and there are multiple ones, not just one) and horrifying genuine conservatives is the forced demand of acceptance of certain things that actually are part of somebody's "radical left agenda".  While much of the invectives that cite that are baloney, this much is in fact true.  When Justice Kennedy and his fellow robbed travelers insisted that Obergell didn't mean the onset of a societal revolution, they were obviously wrong at the time, and they set off the inevitable counter revolution.  We noted then:

These justices have perhaps assumed too much if they've assumed that they can now act so far that Marshall would be horrified, and I'd be surprised if, long term, this decision doesn't either mark the beginning of a Cesarian court and a retreat of American democracy, or the point at which the roles of the Court began to massively erode in favor of a more Athenian democracy.

Either result is really scary.

Well here we are.

So, with Joe Biden, who supposedly is an adherent Catholic (which based on his public positions, he obviously is not), having signed a proclamation that places a day honoring something that repels conservatives and enrages Populists, and which actually does offer insult to Christian tenants in general, and which places the honoring on Easter Sunday in an election year, he's sealed his doom in the Fall.  Those defending him that this "always" occurs on this day are essentially noting that Joe was too distracted to take note, which only fuels the fire that he doesn't know what he is doing.  Never mind that Trump either doesn't know what he is doing either, his adherents already know that the Führerprinzip means he'll follow their lead, as it gets him attention. And indeed, they are already.

And this points out once again the tragedy of a moronic "two party system". There's no reason that real conservatives, or real liberals, should have to vote for these two fallen parties and their ancient, unappealing candidates.  

Indeed, there's a good argument that thinking people shouldn't.

Related threads:

A Primer, Part I. Populists ain't Conservatives, and LIberals ain't Progressives. How inaccurate terminology is warping our political perceptions.

Conservatism, Democratic Party, Economics, Liberalism, National Conservatism, People's Party, Politics, Populism, Populist Party, Progressive Party, Progressivism, Republican Party

We like everything to be all natural. . . . except for us.

Agrarianism, Agriculture, An hoc pertinet ad naturam?, Commentary, Daily Living, Food, Friday Farming, Medicine, Men, nature, The roles of men and women, transgenderism, trends, Women

The Agrarian's Lament: A sort of Agrarian Manifesto. What's wrong with the world (and how to fix it). Part 6. Politics

The Agrarian's Lament: A sort of Agrarian Manifesto. What's wrong with th...: 

A sort of Agrarian Manifesto. What's wrong with the world (and how to fix it). Part 6. Politics

James Monroe.  

And, yes, we're still not on to the Agrarian finale in this series.  That's because we have one more important topic to consider first.

Politics.

If you read distributists' social media, and you probably don't, you'll see that some people have the namby pamby idea that if we all just act locally everything will fall in line.  While people should act locally, that's a bunch of crap.

What these people don't realize is that politically, we're a corporate capitalist society, and we are where we are right now, in large part due to that.  Corporations are a creature of the state, not of nature, and exists as a legal fiction because the state says they do.  This is deemed, in our imaginations, to be necessarily because, . . . well it is.

Or rather, it's deemed to be necessary as we believe we need every more consolidation and economies of scale.  

We really don't, and in the end, it serves just itself.  We do need some large entities, particularly in manufacturing, which would actually bring us back to the original allowance for corporate structure, which was quite limited.  Early in US history, most corporations were banned from being created.

Legally, they would not need to be banned now, but simply not allowed to form except for actual needs.  And when very large, the Theodore Roosevelt proposal that they be treated like public utilities, or alternatively some percentage of their stock or membership would vest in their employees, would result in remedying much of the ills that they've created.

Likewise, eliminating the absurd idea that they can use their money for influence in politics could and should be addressed.

Which would require changes in the law.

And that takes us back to politics.

Nearly every living American, and Canadian for that matter, would agree that a major portion of the problems their nations face today are ones manufactured by politics.  The current economic order, as noted, is politically vested.

The United States has slid into a political decline of epic proportions, and its noteworthy that this came about after Ronald Reagan attacked and destroyed the post 1932 economic order which provided for an amplified type of American System in which there was, in fact, a great deal of involvement in the economy and the affairs of corporations, as well as a hefty income tax on the wealth following the country's entry into World War Two.  It's never been the case, of course, that there was a trouble free political era although interestingly, there was a political era which is recalled as The Era of Good Feelings due to its lack of political strife.  

That era lasted a mere decade, from 1815 to 1825, but it's instructive.

The Era of Good Feelings came about after the War of 1812, which was a war that not only caused internal strife, but which risked the dissolution of the nation.  Following the war the Federalist Party collapsed thereby ending the bitter disputes that had characterized its fights with the more dominant Democratic-Republican Party.. . . . huh. . . 

Anyhow, President James Monroe downplayed partisan affiliation in his nominations, with the ultimate goal of affecting national unity and eliminating political parties altogether.

Borrowing a line from the Those Were the Days theme song of All In the Family, "Mister we could use a man like James Monroe again".

Political parties have had a long and honorable history in politics. They've also had a long and destructive one.  Much of their role depends upon the era.  In our era, for a variety of reasons, they are now at the hyper destructive level.

They are, we would note, uniquely subject to the influence of money, and the fringe, which itself is savvy to the influence of money.  And money, now matter where it originates from, tends to concentrate uphill if allowed to, and it ultimately tends to disregard the local.

"All politics is local" is the phrase that's famously attached to U.S. politics, but as early as 1968, according to Andrew Gelman, that's declined, and I agree with his observation.  Nowhere is that more evident than Wyoming.

In Wyoming both the Republican and the Democratic Party used to be focused on matters that were very local, which is why both parties embraced in varying degrees, The Land Ethic, and both parties, in varying degrees, embraced agriculture.  It explains why in the politics of the 70s and 80s the major economic driver of the state, the oil and gas industry, actually had much less influence than it does now.

Things were definitely changing by the 1980s, with money, the love of which is the root of all evil, being a primary driver.  Beyond that, however, technology played a role.  The consolidation of industry meant that employers once headquartered in Casper, for instance, moved first to Denver, then to Houston, or were even located in Norway. As the love of money is the root of all evil, and the fear of being poor a major personal motivator, concern for much that was local was increasingly lost.

The increasing broad scope of the economy, moreover, meant that there were economic relocations of people who had very little connection with the land and their state.  Today's local Freedom Caucus in the legislature, heavily represented by those whose formative years were out of state, is a primary example in the state.  Malevolent politics out of the south and the Rust Belt entered the state and are battled out in our legislature even though they have little to do with local culture, lands or ethics.

Moreover, since 1968 the Democratic Party has gone increasingly leftward, driven at first by the impacts of the 1960s and then by its left leaning elements.  It in turn became anti-democratic, relying on the Supreme Court to force upon the nation unwanted social change, until it suddenly couldn't rely on the Court anymore, at which time it rediscovered democracy.  At the same time Southern and Rust Belt Populists, brought into the Republican Party by Ronald Reagan, eventually took it over and are now fanatically devoted to anti-democratic mogul, Donald Trump, whose real values, other than the love of money and a certain sort of female appearance, is unknown, none of which maters to his fanatic base as they apply the Führerprinzip to his imagined wishes and he responds.

We know, accordingly, have a Congress that's completely incapable of doing anything other than banning TikTok.

Distributism by design, and Agrarianism by social reference, both apply Catholic Social Teaching, one intentionally and one essentially as it was already doing that before Catholic Social Teaching was defined.  As we've discussed elsewhere, Catholic Social Teaching applies the doctrines of Human Dignity, Solidarity and Subsidiarity.  Solidarity, as Pope John Paul II describe it In Sollicitudo rei socialis, is not “a feeling of vague compassion or shallow distress at the misfortunes of others. It is a firm and persevering determination to commit oneself to the common good”.  Subsidiarity provides that that matters ought to be handled by the smallest, lowest or least centralized competent authority.

We are a long ways from all of that, right now.

Politically, we're in a national political era that is violently opposed to solidarity and subsidiarity.  Supposed national issues and imagined remote conspiracies, dreamt up by political parties, swamp real local issues.  Global issues, in contract, which require a competent national authority, or even international authority, to deal with, cannot get attention as the masses are distracted by buffoons acting like Howler Monkeys.

Destroying the parties would serve all of this.  And that's a lot easier to do than might be supposed.

And more difficult.

Money makes it quite difficult, in fact.  But it can be done.

The easiest way to attack this problem is to remove political parties as quasi official state agencies, which right now the GOP and Democratic Party are.  Both parties have secured, in many states, state funded elections which masquerade as "primary elections" but which are actually party elections.  There's utterly no reason whatsoever that the State of Wyoming, for example, should fund an internal Republican election, or a Democratic one.

Primary elections are quite useful, but not in the fashion that most state's have them.  A useful example is Alaska's, whose system was recently proposed for Wyoming, but which was not accepted (no surprise).  Interestingly, given as the state's two actual political parties right now are the Trumpites and the Republican remnants, this a particularly good, and perhaps uniquely opportune, time to go to this system.  And that system disregard party affiliations.

Basically, in that type of election, the top two vote getters in the primary go on to the general election irrespective of party.  There doesn't need to be any voter party affiliation. The public just weeds the number of candidates down.

That is in fact how the system works here already, and in many places for local elections. But it should be adopted for all elections.  If it was, the system would be much different.

For example, in the last House Race, Harriet Hageman defeated Lynette Grey Bull, taking 132,206 votes to Gray Bull's 47,250.  Given the nature of the race, FWIW, Gray Bull did much better than people like to imagine, taking 25% of the vote in an overwhelmingly Republican state.  Incumbent Lynn Cheney was knocked out of the race in the primary, being punished for telling the truth about Дональд "The Insurrectionist" Trump.  But an interesting thing happens if you look at the GOP primary.

In that race, Harriet Hageman took 113,079 votes, for 66% of the vote, and Cheney took 49,339, for 29%.  Some hard right candidates took the minor balance. Grey Bull won in the primary with just 4,500 votes, however.

I'd also note here that Distributism in and of itself would have an impact on elections, as it would have a levelling effect on the money aspect of politics.  Consider this article by former Speaker of the House Tom Lubnau:

Tom Lubnau: Analyzing The Anonymous Mailers Attacking Chuck Gray

A person could ask, I suppose, of how this is an example, but it is.

Back to the Gray v. Nethercott race, Ms. Nethercott is a lawyer in a regional law firm. That's not distributist as I'd have it, as I'd provide that firms really ought to be local, as I discussed in yesterday's riveting installment.   But it is a regional law firm and depending upon its business model, she's likely responsible for what she brings in individually.  Indeed, the claim made during the race that she wanted the job of Secretary of State for a raise income was likely absurd.

But the thing here is that Nethercott, as explained by Lubnau, raised a total of $369,933, of which $304,503 were from individual donations.  That's a lot to spend for that office, but it was mostly donated by her supporters.

In contrast, Jan Charles Gray, Chuck Gray's father donated a total of $700,000 to Chuck Gray’s campaign, Chuck Gray donated $10,000 to his own campaign and others donated $25,994.

$700,000 is a shocking amount for that office, but beyond that, what it shows is that Nethercott's supporters vastly out contributed Gray's, except for Gray's father.  In a distributist society, it certainly wouldn't be impossible to amass $700,000 in surplus cash for such an endeavor, but it would frankly be much more difficult.

To conclude, no political system is going to convert people into saints.  But it's hard to whip people into a frenzy who are your friends and neighbors than it does people who are remote.  And its harder to serve the interest of money if the money is more widely distributed. Put another way, it's harder to tell 50 small business owners that that Bobo down in Colorado knows what she's talking about, than 50 people who depend on somebody else for a livelihood a myth.

Last prior:

A sort of Agrarian Manifesto. What's wrong with the world (and how to fix it). Part 5a. What would that look like, and why would it fix anything, other than limiting my choices and lightening my wallet? The Distributist Impact. The Professions.

The Grand Old Party. 1854 to 2024.

Lex Anteinternet: The 2024 Election, Part XIV. Wishful Thinking.:

March 12, 2024

North Carolina Republican Party Chairman Michael Whatley was chosen by the RNC to serve as the party's new Trump sycophantic head, and Trump's daughter-in-law, Lara Trump, as co-chair in unanimous votes.

The Republican Party has died, which makes up my mind in my earlier "shall I stay or shall I go" question I posed here.

Positions with the RNC are being slashed as the party merges with the Trump campaign organization so that it can more effectively apply the Führerprinzip.

The Republican Party, founded on March 20, 1854, nearly 170 years ago, has died.  Donald Trump killed it.  Ronald Reagan, who was a Republican, and Newt Gingrich, who was too, gave him the weapons and ammunition to do so.

The GOP was founded as a left wing progressive party that embraced Federalism and the economic thoughts of the American System.  It opposed a party, the Democrats, that was racist, nativist and provincial.  The GOP used the absence of the Democrats during the Civil War to expand the nation's railroads and agriculture through direct government involvement.  It retained its essential views through the Taft Administration, after which it entered the political wilderness and stood for "business".  It became isolationist during the Great Depression, but returned to its traditional views, which it retained throughout the Cold War, at the start of World War Two.

It became, in the post Taft era, the conservative party due to in part its economic views, which were not laissez-faire, and in part due to its social views.  The social views became much more paramount following the Democratic Party's lurch to the left starting in 1968, causing the rise of Ronald Reagan, who obtained the Presidency by making a deal with Southern Democrats, bringing them and their laissez-faire, extreme populists, ideas into the party.

Though a combination of factors, which we have dealt with elsewhere, that wing of the party has now supplanted the party itself.  Lincoln, T. Roosevelt, Hoover, and Eisenhower couldn't recognize this party, nor would they wish to be part of it.

With the co-opting of the RNC, there's no going back.  The current Republican Party doesn't resemble the party of old at all.  It's more Francoist than Buckleyite.  

If Trump fails to win the Oval Office in the Fall, it'll destroy the new GOP.  It's already throwing itself apart.  If he does win, that'll destroy the GOP, as the next four years will be ones of totally unpredictable turmoil.  Nobody really knows what Trump believes in, other than himself.  His followers apply the Führerprinzip to what they believe he reflects in their beliefs and belief that he reflects them back.

Sic transit gloria mundi.

Rich Men North of Richmond, Part II. American Fascisti

 I just posted this item:

Lex Anteinternet: Rich Men North of Richmond, Part I. Resisting the...: Rich Men North of Richmond , which is independently produced, I think, had made a big Internet and music scene splash, and frankly, not beca...

This, and it's not a new theme here, took a look at how we got to where we are, where populism has taken over the Republican Party.  How, the question ultimately is, can people who see the plaint truth about Donald Trump and his attempt to subvert American democracy continue to support him?

Most of the comments along these lines never really are able to answer the question.  Indeed, we haven't here. That's because they all assume that most people are rational, and this is at least somewhat true, and that most people will yield to truth in the end, which is also somewhat true.  Indeed, droves of people have left the Republican Party and become independents.  However, and this is important, more than 1 million voters across 43 states switched to the Republican Party from 2021 to 2022, and that trend hasn't stopped. 

That is, while a lot of educated "country club" or middle class conservatives have abandoned the GOP, a lot of people are coming in.  And they're coming in during the current political atmosphere.

Which leads us to this.

What if it isn't the case, deep down, that populist Republicans, who now control the GOP, aren't aware that Donald Trump is lying about losing the election.  What if, at least deep down, and on some level, they know that he's lying.

What would that mean?

Well, what it would mean is that the disaffected class that intends to vote for a Rich Man north of Richmond while complaining about Rich Men North of Richmond have reached to the point where they no longer regard their class as legitimate, and therefore what they are doing and supporting as completely legitimate, because the other view doesn't count.

Consider this Facebook exchange I saw the other day: 

"I almost lost my Corvette and my cat!"

All reactions:

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27 comments

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Their bullshit needs to end through constitional revolt.

Eh?

Or:

Office Hours: Why are Republican voters more willing to believe every sort of lie?

Tonight’s Republican debate and Trump’s discussion with Tucker are likely to be cesspools of lies, but lies don’t turn off Republican voters.

Maybe the first reply answers the second.

Maybe Republican voters aren't really willing to believe every sort of lie, or at least not in the way baffled pundits of all types are baffled by, myself included.

Maybe they know they're lies, but lies that seem, to them, to serve a greater truth, in their view.

And that's what is really scary.

The first comment, boxed in the way some people like to do with Facebook comments, refers to one of Joe Biden's endless blundering statements, which in this case related his bad experience with a house fire to what occured on Maui.  It was a really goofball thing to say.  But the fact of the matter is that there isn't anything Joe Biden says that populists don't hate, even things they would have fully supported if he hadn't said them. And that's because Biden, who started off a centrist, went to the center left, and then went fully to the left, is a representative of Democrats, whom the populists essentially see asn objectively evil.

This is almost impossible for main stream and conventional Americans to grasp, and even though in the populist movement who fairly clearly hold these views would be unwilling to usually admit them in this fashion, but all the signs are there.

Class reduction through objectification is an old and very established thing.

The Communist Parties of the world practiced this extensively.  They represented "the workers" or "the people". Their opponents were exploiters of the people, in their propaganda.  Ultimately, that meant that they could be killed in the millions, as they weren't really people.

The Nazis did this with the Jews, as well as with the Slavs.  Jews and Slavs were lessor, in their propaganda, although bizarrely they were also supposed to be a super crafty opponent.  Never mind that none of that was true or that any rational thinking would dispel such an absurdity, that's what they promoted and that's what the German people adopted, resulting in the death of millions.

Lesser fascist movements and near fascist movements held the same view of Communists, and to some extent Socialist, that the Nazi Party did, which hated Communists along with the Jews (and indeed generally assumed that all Communists were Jewish), and therefore felt perfectly justified in suppressing them to the point of death if necessary.  Of course, in many places, the Communists (who weren't majority Jewish by any means) felt the same way about right wing movements. At any rate, therefore, this produced severely repressing governments like that of the Italian fascists or Spanish Francoist, who nonetheless quite frankly enjoyed widespread popularity with large segments of their people.

And notable with all of these movements, they reduced their ideology, at the street level, to a single man.

The Nazis of course reduced it to Hitler.  Indeed, the Führerprinzip held that everything should "work towards the Führer.  People didn't really know what Hitler might want to do on any day to day level, but they generally could grasp it, and that was the thing to do.

Hitler in armor as "The Standard Bearer".  I doubt Hiter ever rode a horse, and certainly not one like this, but goofball uberheroic portraits of autocrats is an autocratic thing. Witness all the portraits of Trump as a Revolutionary War patriot when he was never in the service.

And the Italians did that with Mussolini, 

Typical portrait of Mussolini, focusing on his face with his jaw jutting out defiantly.  To most people, he looks like a jackass, but to true believers, this was his admired visage.

And the Reds in Russia did it twice, first with Lenin, and then with Stalin, before becoming sufficiently entrenched that later leaders didn't need a personality cult.

The PRC did it with Mao, and North Korea has done it with every single one of their leaders.

And all of this is highly instructive.

Reduced to a man, thinking over the complicated failed thesis that these movements put forth was unnecessary.  People didn't read Mein Kampf.  Most Russians at the time of the Revolution could barely read, and they weren't going to sit down a read a pamphlet by a British Library Butt Sitter.  Most Chinese weren't going to bother with Mao's Little Red Book.  People just figured that they weren't doing well, and it was somebody else's fault, and it seemed that the Communist, the Fascists, etc. ,had their back and grasped it, at least right up until the state came for them, or conscripted them, or confiscated everything they had.

Or, by way of another example, it may very well be the case that Southern secessionist grasped that blacks were in fact people and equal people at that.  Their actions clearly demonstrated, that, from entrusting their children to slaves for care to the Jeffersonian expedient to wifely succession.

In each of these instances, it should be noted, the supposed "difference" was emphasized as an excuse for acting with extreme bias towards the other group.  Nazis called their opponents Untermenschen, "below people".  American Southerners certainly portrayed blacks that way.

German propaganda poster, which appears to portray Soviet paratroopers as Untermensch.

Have you listed to the comments of populists?

Hearing random Republicans accuse Democrats of being Marxists and Socialists is common.  Republicans that don't toe the extreme right wing line are "RINOS" or Democrats, with that being said as if being a Democrat meant you were an Untermensch, which pretty much what is meant.  Even run of hte mill Republican conservatives in Congress, who at one time would have "disagreed with my distinguished colleagues" now hurl the invective "Democrat" or accuse somebody of "supporting Biden's radical. . . " as if there's any truth to the accusation.  It's pretty much the same thing as a Communist in Stalin's ear accusing somebody of harboring incorrect views, of a Nazi accusing somebody of being Jewish, or of a pre-1970 Southerner claiming that "somebody has a 'nigga' in the wood pile", without any credit being given, respectively, to 1) harboring different views isn't a criminal act, 2) being Jewish isn't either, and 3) having African American ancestry (which a huge number of Southerners do) isn't shameful, except for the compulsion that ancestry may indicate.

I fear we're here:

And if we are, that answer the question of why criminal activity doesn't phase some Trump supporters.

Now, this doesn't explain it all.  Some of it is the phenomenon of extreme frustration with having been long ignored.  Some of it is a long-running American belief in conspiracy theories.  Some of it is the disbelief that thing could have really gotten so astray, which would mean, in part, that we let them go so badly.  But not all of it, and not all populists.

The question is, therefore, how large is this group, and what does that mean?  If Trump takes the Oval Office a second time, it will be disastrous, although to what extent, cannot yet be told.