Yes. It is.
That’s exactly what I mean.
Assuming it’s just the crazy people, assuming that people won’t vote for him because he’s all the most terrible things is to misunderstand what’s going on in the Republican heartlands.
Everyone over here on this side of the line can see how bonkers it all is, and how impossible it is to have Trump in the White House. But for them, it’s really not bonkers. Or at least, they overlook the bonkers because the stuff they do agree with is genuinely meaningful to them.
They don’t care that he doesn’t have any policy. They feel like they’re back against the wall, under attack from stuff that, to them, looks as unhinged and dangerous as theirs does to us.
I guess the reason it looked like I was arguing before was because I’m seeing a complacency (not only, or not necessarily on here), a sense of “this cant be happening, so it won’t happen”, which I think is foolish and potentially dangerous. So I’m pressing the point.
I’m really worried. As others have said, Harris needs to not just win but win huge. If it’s close this wound will continue to supperate. Even if it’s a huge win, the best we can expect is that the simmering resentment drops below the activity horizon. But the hate won’t go away.
I’ve been thinking about history books in the future teaching The Origins of the Second American Civil War. The line between the woman on Facebook saying that the friend of the daughter of her acquaintance said something about Haitians eating pets, and then Trump saying it on TV, and then her trying to retract that when it became a national story and then, and then, and then….