and so it's probably important to look at what's happened in the last few days through that lens, which is, you know, it's it's almost like people first were shocked. And then now we're in the midst of that reflexive reaction to what is a simple choice, which is you can basically forgive the guy, or you can re affirm the institution, which means to sacrifice the guy. And I think that's the thing that's happening in real time. And it's going to be, I think, over the next few weeks, a super messy conversation because you're going to have a bunch of dumb decisions, you're going to have a bunch of overreaching, you know, you're going to have a bunch of, um, dramatic sort of bellyaching on both sides.View on YouTube
Within days of January 11, 2021, the House impeached Trump a second time (January 13) for “incitement of insurrection,” and the Senate trial ran February 9–13, 2021, ending in acquittal after highly partisan arguments over both Trump’s responsibility and whether trying a former president was even constitutional, with Democrats depicting his conduct as an unprecedented constitutional crime and Republicans framing the rushed impeachment as a political attempt to silence a rival. (en.wikipedia.org) This matches the forecast of a “super messy” institutional response centered on whether to “forgive the guy” or “reaffirm the institution” by sacrificing him.
At the same time, Washington was placed under an extended, militarized security posture—thousands of National Guard troops and razor‑wire fencing around the Capitol—that quickly drew criticism from both parties; senators and representatives questioned why 5,000 Guard troops and fencing were still in place weeks later, with Republicans mocking the complex as “Fort Pelosi” and Democrats like Sen. Tim Kaine saying the fence “sends such an ugly message” and pushing to remove it. (washingtonpost.com) This fits the prediction of “dumb decisions” and visible overcorrection that produced loud complaints on both sides.
Big Tech and corporate America also reacted aggressively in that same period: major platforms banned or suspended Trump and related accounts, and dozens of large companies abruptly halted political donations in response to January 6, moves later criticized as overbroad, ad hoc, or performative. (en.wikipedia.org) Civil‑liberties advocates at the ACLU warned that indefinite or poorly‑grounded bans on Trump highlighted serious problems in Facebook’s content‑moderation regime, and world leaders including Angela Merkel and Mexico’s Andrés Manuel López Obrador publicly called the permanent social‑media bans on Trump “problematic” and a “bad sign,” underscoring that many saw these as overreaches. (aclu.org) Taken together—the rushed and polarizing impeachment, heavy‑handed security measures that drew bipartisan backlash, and aggressive tech/corporate sanctions widely criticized as overreach—the weeks following January 11, 2021 did in fact feature the messy, error‑prone, and loudly contested response that Chamath predicted.