Bigger than COVID-19. Bigger than the economic crisis. Bigger than the latest moral panic the social conservatives and Christian busybodies are wringing their hands about. (Are they still up in arms about that wet pussy song, or have they moved onto something else already?) Bigger than whoever or whatever the Twitter leftists are trying to cancel for being problematic this week. And bigger than Trump, who's really just a flimsy and watered-down reflection of the ideology actually espoused by the actual right-populists and crypto-fascists. Trump himself looks like a moderate compared to some of his more devout followers, and the real problem isn't going away with him. Biden isn't fixing this. Sanders wasn't going to fix this either. This has gone beyond any person or group's ability to fix. The entire political culture of the US needs to change.
Stop looking for easy scapegoats. The need to scapegoat is itself a huge part of the problem, and often serves as the first step on the path to extremism, fanaticism, and violence. Blaming the mainstream media or the billionaires or the Jews or the Marxists in academia is conspiracy theory logic, no better than when the delusional crackpots blame demons or aliens or lizard people. (Actually, it's worse, because blaming imaginary monsters typically doesn't lead to mass murder, but blaming specific groups of humans often does.)
The day before yesterday, three protesters were gunned down by a 17 year old. Two died, one was badly injured. The elites didn't do this. George Soros didn't do this. The Koch brothers didn't do this. Barack Obama didn't do this. Mitt Romney didn't do this. Wall Street didn't do this, and neither did Hollywood. A seemingly-normal middle-class teenage boy did this. ("It's because guns are too easy to get!" says the typical moderate center-left establishment liberal. That's not the core problem and we all know it. If you think that's the biggest issue here, you're being even more willfully ignorant than the conspiracy theorist.)
Political extremism did this. This teenager bought into all the propaganda saying that America is currently at war with itself, that the current political crisis is a literal matter of life and death, and he reacted as people in life-or-death situations tend to react: with confused, panicked, indiscriminate violence. I'm not making excuses for him: he's responsible for his own actions and deserves to be punished to the fullest extent of the law. But I think it's also important that we recognize the cultural and ideological factors that inspired him to kill, because they can and will inspire other people to do the same.
10 years ago, I was a libertarian, because I was concerned about the threat posed by the government. 5 years ago, I was a pro-Bernie leftist, because I was concerned about the threat posed by the major corporations. And I still don't think either of those concerns was entirely off-base. But the Era of Trump has made me increasingly more of a centrist, because the Trump administration is the most sadistic, bigoted, draconian regime that this country's had, and its evils didn't come from the top down, they came from the bottom up. Not from Congress, not from the major financial conglomerates or tech companies or media outlets (which, for the most part, are actually more socially progressive than the average American), but from the people themselves. From all the nationalists and xenophobes and racists who think human rights don't apply to anyone who isn't a "real American" in their eyes. From all the traditionalists and social conservatives seeking to undo half a century's worth of progress on civil rights in the hopes of restoring a past that never actually existed. From all the terrified citizens who always side with police officers and right-wing vigilantes because they care more about preserving "law and order" (but not any actual consistent application of Rule of Law) than about the lives of scary minorities and protesters.
At this point, I find the American public to be a far greater danger than the government or the corporations.