A perceptive essay, please do take a look; this bears quoting:
According to polls (which, yes, have their uses, in moderation), something around half of likely voters would like to see as our next president a man who thinks of the law as an extension of his superior will, who talks about race like a Nazi, wants to put journalistic organizations whose coverage he doesn’t like in the dock for “treason,” and who promises that anyone violating standards of good order as he defines them—shoplifters, for instance—will be summarily shot dead by officers of the state who serve only at his pleasure. A fascist, in other words. We find ourselves on the brink of an astonishing watershed, in this 2024 presidential year: a live possibility that government of the people, by the people, and for the people could conceivably perish from these United States, and ordinary people—you, me—may have to make the kind of moral choices about resistance that mid-20th-century existentialist philosophers once wrote about. That’s the case if Trump wins. But it’s just as likely, or even more likely, if he loses, then claims he wins. That’s one prediction I feel comfortable with.
The problem is that the likely voters pay no attention, and those who are Republicans will vote for whomever is the Republican nominee, mostly unaware of the stuff Perlstein notes. Vide Achen & Bartels.
UPDATE: As if to drive my last point home, the NYT runs this story about Iowa Republicans and their "reasons" for supporting particular candidates: it is a litany of false beliefs, mistakes about cause and effect, and prejudices borne of religious zealotry.
Recent Comments