Sort of. Miller has been involved in developing and test running the concept on years, see Hungary (field test of the fearmongering populism + the “Mike Johnson” special - we had “don’t know, wasn’t there, didn’t hear about it, ask someone else” press conference memes like 12 years ago) and other examples. Definitely involved to some degree with Fico and Putin, and to a lesser extent, Babis, Meloni and Simion. They weren’t sure they could get away with it last time Trump was up there, although if my memory serves, national guard was deployed due to maybe BLM?
I mean really, it’s shocking how fast it ramped up but I cannot say that I’m truly surprised it did happen, and if I look back at the people involved in it, it seems more like a gentle increase of the knob than a sudden twist. It’s also just that the higher you are on the dial, the closer together are the red lines.
No, see, you were given a choice.
a) Reasonably tepid president’s vice president. No great achievements, but no strongly notable transgressions against the people of the country. Policies not actively progressive but not actively hostile. Supports Ukraine. Supports Israel. Runs on the platform of moderate politics.
b) Multiple times convicted felon, strongly suspected of being a pedophile and child trafficker. Catastrophic first term. Weak foreign policy in first term, already schmoozing up to military enemies of the country. Supports nothing but his own pocket.
How is that not a purity test? Even if you’re a normal person that is sternly anti-Israel, you have singled out one issue in which one candidate performs (probably, we don’t even know) worse than the other one. And still outperforms the other one on all other issues unless you’re a ten toes down white supremacist with the sole life goal to make sure people with a darker skin color suffer and a deeper pocket prosper. That’s what we call, say it with me, a purity test. Your refusal to go out and vote is complicity in the murder of Renee Good and Alex Pretti. Don’t preach to me about humanity, you’re probably not even from the US.