A few words on an "evenly divided country"

While your diligent scribbler was attending to things contact tracing yesterday, he had a thought explosion:

Here's the thing: the US is heavily partisan, but it really isn't evenly split. What the calamity of the past four years has done is to force the majority of people off the fence as to what kind of country they want. And it ain't turning out the way the fascists had hoped.

— Liberal Librarian (@Lib_Librarian) August 3, 2020

We see this in the polling. We see this in Donald Trump not being able to break 40% in approval ratings. We see this in swing states swinging to Joe Biden. We see this in goddamned TEXAS being in play this November.

The fact that 46.1% of voters—I should amend, 46.1% of those who bothered to vote—pulled the lever or punched the card for the Rat was a gut-punch. But, again: That was 46.1% out of a turnout of 55.7%, or 25.6% of registered voters. The 2016 electorate was closely divided, of those that bothered to show up. So there was already a break in the idea of a split-down-the-middle country, as almost half had no opinion one way or the other.

As I tweeted, what this calamity has done is to leave anyone squishy exposed. If you still think both parties are the same, then there really is no hope for you. If you still support this regime, you will be crushed. 

This country is highly partisan, with Trump still guaranteed to garner 40-43% of the vote. But it is far from evenly split. From conservative Never Trumpers to liberal Resistance voters, people in this country have shown that, when forced to make a choice, they won't choose fascism. Many may not understand just what fascism is, but to paraphrase Potter Stewart, they know it when they see it. And they don't like it.

Americans, in general, don't like bullshit. They can be famously cantankerous. This can be a very bad thing, in the large minority who are eschewing COVID-19 precautions. (Which also track with Trump support.) But, in our discussion, it's very good. Trump has finally exposed himself as nothing but a charlatan, a carnival barker, both evil and incompetent. All these populists, of both right and left, talk a good game. However, when the shit hits the fan, their promises are made out to be chimeras. They have no idea how to govern. They have no idea how to keep their citizens safe. And why should they? They have no interest in either of those things. They're in it just for power's sake alone, and to line their own pockets. The likes of Putin and Orban should look to escape routes. And, with the New York County DA stating in a court filing that he's not on a fishing expedition with Trump's taxes, but is looking at long-running fraud and corruption, Trump might want to get on AF1 and fly to a country with no extradition treaty with the US. 

Of course, we all live in our bubbles. But my bubble is built on empirical data. If we were a fascist hellscape, there'd be no Speaker of the House of Representatives Nancy Pelosi. My Brother from Another Mother, the Gaybrarian, shared with me a Facebook post from the one MAGAt he knows from his childhood, and she was crowing that all her friends followed Donald Trump's Facebook page, while she knew only five people who followed Joe Biden, and this was proof of the coming Trump landslide and the "silent majority" supporting him. As he said, she lives in the "Stupid Bubble". 

So, yes, we're highly partisan, but not split down the middle. Incipient fascism, like an imminent hanging, tends to concentrate the mind. Now we just need to bring it home on November 3rd. And, as I always say, we dare not fail.

PLEDGE DRIVE!!

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