Burnt Offerings
Bluelight Crew
We may be a two-party system, but a system in which 1/3rd of the voters feels completely separated from the political process (which would accelerate in the event of uncontested dominance by the Democratic party, assuming that there is a significant schism in the GOP regarding Trump) is something that is very dangerous to the political system IMO. That's exactly the kind of situation in which extremism flourishes.
The system could absorb that threat if they did some kind of outreach to those people, but I haven't really seen anything meaningful in that regard. From what I've seen, the Democrats, at least the "mainstream" ones, have pretty much written off the 70+ million Trump voters, especially after the events in January of this year. As far as the Republicans go, yeah, they can try to just copy and paste Trump's style without Trump himself, but so far their ability regarding this has been abysmal. Republicans (like Ted Cruz) have actually tried to do this, copying Trump's vulgar and reactionary demagogue-style rhethoric on social media, and it always just comes across as the pathetic, unconvincing imitation that it is. As I've said before here, Trump has natural political ability that these other tools don't have...maybe they will get someone in the future whose got that kinda mojo but so far they haven't found that person.
My own perspective is that the main division in the country today is "establishment vs. anti-establishment", not "left vs. right" (as that can even be considered in a country like the USA, where the so-called "left" Democrats are actually a center-right wing party). There's an anti-establishment element in both the Republican party, the MAGA folks, which Trump pretty much has a 100% lock on, and the Democratic party, with Sanders as the most well-known member of that contingent. It's actually a somewhat difficult thing to ascertain with Trump specifically, because while Trump often trafficks in anti-establishment rhetoric, I think that the people with real money and power in this country are totally fine with Trump, despite his rude tweets or whatever. As other politicians have done, he opportunistically presents himself as an anti-establishment force while his actual policies help the establishment & capital's rapacious desire for profits.
The same kind of antagonisms exist in the Democratic party, where almost 90 percent of Democrats support Medicare For All yet only about 50 percent of elected Democrats in Congress do. The progressives have been less successful in remaking the Democratic party than the MAGA people have in the Republican party, though, at least as far as outward appearances go.
They've done polling recently (the news report I heard on this said the polling was done in January 2021) that revealed that almost half of Republicans are ready to join some new kind of Freikorps to "liberate" the country from the corrupt and venal establishment they believe that they live under, to take violent means to solve political questions. Under the kind of conditions we live under now, with such extreme levels of inequality, corruption and ecological collapse, the period of stagnation will probably be followed by either a FDR or a Hitler...either way, I don't think anyone is going to be running back to the Liz Cheneys, Ted Cruzs and Jeb Bushs of the world. They've had a taste of a "new" style of political organizing and rhetoric and I don't think that there's any going back, at least not in the short term.
The system could absorb that threat if they did some kind of outreach to those people, but I haven't really seen anything meaningful in that regard. From what I've seen, the Democrats, at least the "mainstream" ones, have pretty much written off the 70+ million Trump voters, especially after the events in January of this year. As far as the Republicans go, yeah, they can try to just copy and paste Trump's style without Trump himself, but so far their ability regarding this has been abysmal. Republicans (like Ted Cruz) have actually tried to do this, copying Trump's vulgar and reactionary demagogue-style rhethoric on social media, and it always just comes across as the pathetic, unconvincing imitation that it is. As I've said before here, Trump has natural political ability that these other tools don't have...maybe they will get someone in the future whose got that kinda mojo but so far they haven't found that person.
My own perspective is that the main division in the country today is "establishment vs. anti-establishment", not "left vs. right" (as that can even be considered in a country like the USA, where the so-called "left" Democrats are actually a center-right wing party). There's an anti-establishment element in both the Republican party, the MAGA folks, which Trump pretty much has a 100% lock on, and the Democratic party, with Sanders as the most well-known member of that contingent. It's actually a somewhat difficult thing to ascertain with Trump specifically, because while Trump often trafficks in anti-establishment rhetoric, I think that the people with real money and power in this country are totally fine with Trump, despite his rude tweets or whatever. As other politicians have done, he opportunistically presents himself as an anti-establishment force while his actual policies help the establishment & capital's rapacious desire for profits.
The same kind of antagonisms exist in the Democratic party, where almost 90 percent of Democrats support Medicare For All yet only about 50 percent of elected Democrats in Congress do. The progressives have been less successful in remaking the Democratic party than the MAGA people have in the Republican party, though, at least as far as outward appearances go.
They've done polling recently (the news report I heard on this said the polling was done in January 2021) that revealed that almost half of Republicans are ready to join some new kind of Freikorps to "liberate" the country from the corrupt and venal establishment they believe that they live under, to take violent means to solve political questions. Under the kind of conditions we live under now, with such extreme levels of inequality, corruption and ecological collapse, the period of stagnation will probably be followed by either a FDR or a Hitler...either way, I don't think anyone is going to be running back to the Liz Cheneys, Ted Cruzs and Jeb Bushs of the world. They've had a taste of a "new" style of political organizing and rhetoric and I don't think that there's any going back, at least not in the short term.
![:\](https://bluelight.org/xf/BL_Images/Orig_Emoji/wrygrin.gif "wry grin :\")
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