Political Memes

There are in denial or ignorant people who don't have fascists beliefs yet that are politically adjacent to the GOP who might waver, we just can't put all our eggs in one basket.

Pretty much. Like I said elsewhere, fascists only pay attention to Epstein when they're upset about other things, with it merely being a conduit to express general dissatisfaction that they otherwise wouldn't admit. Facts aren't the important part for fascists; it's all emotional.

At the heart of the "we mustn't be distracted away from the Epstein scandal" crowd is the naive belief that we have simply yet to find the perfect argument that, when shown to the frothing genocidal fascists, will somehow magically turn them 180 degrees and renounce american fascism.

I see it exactly the opposite. The focus on the Epstein files feels much more like an admission that they won't listen to rational, logical arguments, and replacing those efforts with rhetorical tactics that do seem to be effective; namely, moralistic outrage.

We've seen that some of his base does respond to the Epstein fishiness. It's driving a wedge between subsets of his base, and I personally know several former MAGAs that have really soured on Trump over it.

i think there's also this small "hey, this is the one thing that everyone agrees about" element to it

I was agreeing with your argument but you seem to come to the opposite conclusion as me.

These fools already vote against their own interests. They had pensions, union jobs, government funded infrastructure, benefits. They voted to give all of that away and embrace fascism because they were emotionally manipulated to do so. You can give a Truml voter all of the facts you want: climate change, vaccines, immigration, taxes. They aren't moved by any of that. The people who would be moved by that already know better and never would have supported Trump in the first place. I understand a lot of people here fall into that category, but we must be careful not to fall into an echo chamber and ignore just how dumb and irrational huge swathes of Americans are because that's how we got into this mess.

If you want to dislodge Trump's current supporters, you need to attack their emotions. Bombing thousands of Muslim kids in the middle east doesn't move the needle, but a dozen or so good white Christian girls who had their precious virginity stolen from them? (I don't mean to belittle the suffering of the victims, just to illustrate that this appeals to mysoginists and Christian nationalists). That gets clicks, that drives outrage.

the naive belief that we have simply yet to find the perfect argument that, when shown to the frothing genocidal fascists, will somehow magically turn them 180 degrees and renounce american fascism.

This is also why the left infights so much, they are so desperate to have intellectual fights and showcase their logic and reason in a way that matters that all you can really do with that is just pick at other leftist's takes and beliefs.

We probably could have made a lot better progress in effecting change in our country if we all digested the reality a lot sooner that we are NOT arguing our way to a better outcome, that all we could really hope to do is change narratives and change the way the right feels about topics.