Trump was elected by two constituencies:
- the deplorables; and
- the people who have been left behind, have lost faith in government, and bought Trump’s long con about being an “outsider” who can “shake things up” and make their lives better.
The deplorables are not going to change. You can’t teach an old dog new tricks. Racists will be racists, xenophobes will be xenophobes, bigots will be bigots, misogynists will be misogynists. We are stuck with them.
Trump and the Republicans are not actually going to do anything to help the left-behind. Those of us who try to base our political beliefs on objective reality, rather than the fantasies that have made up the bulk of the Republican party platform for decades*, understand that in being convinced to vote for Trump, the left-behind have been conned into voting against their own self-interest. Things are going to get worse, not better, for those people under an all-Republican government.
And yet, the left-behind will not be convinced of that. No matter what happens, Trump and the Republicans will find some way of lying and conning and convincing the left-behind that everything that is wrong with their lives is still the fault of the left, and the only hope they have is to keep voting for Republicans.
I don’t see any evidence that that is going to change. These people’s beliefs are not based on objective reality. They have been brainwashed by the Republicans into questioning the very idea that there is an objective reality, that there are facts that can be verified or things that can be objectively said to be true or false.
This problem is getting worse. I don’t see how it’s going to get better. I think our democracy is well on its way down a path which can only end in conflagration, and I don’t see any way to turn it around.
Don’t tell me that the young people are our future. The people saying that are forgetting that the left-behind have just as many children as those of us who are living in cities living decent lives, and those left-behind children are feeling just as hopeless and trapped as their parents.
Don’t tell me that the demographics of our country are changing and minorities will side with the left and eventually help it take control. Even if that’s true, it’ll take too long to prevent the conflagration, and in the meantime, the Republicans will continue to do everything they can to rig the system — voter suppression, gerrymandering, pipeline to prison + disenfranchising felons, etc., etc., etc. — without regard or respect for the Constitution or civil rights.
I am without hope, and I am scared.
*I am not a political relativist. I don’t believe in the whole “the left and the right both have their delusions” thing. Yes, there are a few areas — most notably GMOs and vaccines — where there are some on he left who have separated from reality, but the sheer scope of delusion on the right dwarfs the worst that the left can come up with on its worst day.
the book “Dark Money” shows the problem, more specifically, is the oligarchy that has taken over the Republican Party. They now run it, not the members of the party.