#like yes previous presidents have been evil genocidal racist despots who've ruined millions of lives

[furryprovocateur]

we're seeing such huge overcorrection from the "trump is a function of the system and not an exception" crowd that now we're struggling to have nuanced conversations about the harm he caused. he pushed for a new wave of deregulation that resulted in a large upward trend in nationwide food recalls. further, by backing the US out of the paris agreement and pulling funding for it, he severely damaged climate research and support in a critical time, and it is still struggling to recover. this is to say nothing of the things like the muslim ban, the corruption and nepotism, etc.

there is a middleground we can meet in where we discard irony and say "trump was not exceptional, but he did cause macro-scale harm in his position of power" instead of going "eh he was an average president that had an unremarkable term". none of this has to be black-white, we can talk away from extremes.