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The single-most cynical political essay I've ever read . . . but I also think it's almost 100% accurate

torbee

HR King
Gold Member
Very depressing. Very accurate.

(P.S.: Don't come at me with any TL/DR bullshit -- if you don't care to read about our failing political system, that's your problem)

Andrew Tanner
Andrew Tanner

May 4
·



2025: The Year America Tears Itself Apart​

Buckle up and hang on, because America is locked into a terrible trajectory that likely ends in terminal division.
1*XNzP_bArX-CfdTrP7sBePA.png

America Balkanized. Base map from USA Today Election results maps 2020, black lines my addition. Circle size is proportional to the margin of victory for each candidate in that county.
Disclaimer: could things change over the next two and a half years? Sure!

Trump or Biden could die. Aliens could show up to save or destroy the world. There could even be a wave of global revolutions that finally achieves true communism in our time.
Anything can happen. But most things won’t.

The harsh future Americans face is one where the America rips itself to pieces after a Presidential election neither side is willing to accept the other could have won fair and square.
Watching the Supreme Court fall to partisan interests to the degree it clearly has, given the imminent death of Roe v. Wade, offers more proof of America’s grim future.
Understanding why the American system is self destructing requires setting aside partisan ideology and looking at the guts of how the machine actually functions. Not as we would like it to, but as it truly is, and how powerful social and economic forces made it this way.

Few Americans can even approach the necessary level objectivity anymore, which is a huge part of the problem. I only can because I’ve been part of both political tribes during my four decades of life and have studied power dynamics intensively from a systems perspective.

I grew up extremely rural, religious, and patriotic. I later earned my undergraduate degree in political science from UC Berkeley — yeah, that Berkeley. Days after I graduated from Cal I reported to Fort Knox to begin what turned out to be a single year on active duty as a cavalry scout in the United States Army. And enlisted side, not officer, though I wound up walking the first steps along that path up until a knee injury crushed that ambition.

Like Treebeard from Lord of the Rings, I have no fixed side — I care only for the forests, so to speak. If that means I organize an army to tear down an evil wizard’s city then screen the Riders of Rohan from Mordor Orcs while they charge to Gondor’s aid, so be it. And it it means walling off the woods I care for while a futile war passes them by — I’ll do that too.

A truth partisans on neither side in America will admit is that Democrat and Republican are now mirror images. Not morally equivalent, but morality doesn’t matter when each team’s members insist only their worldview can be moral.

The Founders never meant for this to happen when they wrote the Constitution. For all their manifold failings, they did their best to create a working political system. But they lacked the scientific understanding required to realize that political institutions are, in a very real way, a kind of eternal game.

One meant to take advantage of people’s natural tendency to act in their own self interest, driven by their particular worldview, to produce a reasonably fair game people don’t reject when they lose and — this is most important of all — where no one wins all the time.

Politics is basically society’s sewage system — inescapable because everyone is entitled to their own execrable political beliefs, yet the thing must be properly designed and maintained to avoid everyone smelling terrible and spreading disease.

Democracy’s power is that it induces people to participate in the making of laws that impact their life, making them more likely to tolerate them. It can be done directly, through representatives or a hybrid of both, but the iron law is that it must be seen to work. When people lose faith in the game they pursue their own agendas so intensively that the whole thing flies apart.

The two party doom loop that is driving America’s accelerating divorce is a function of the fact that America’s governing institutions are desperately, horribly outdated. The Constitution has not been Amended for fifty years after being regularly tweaked across two centuries to keep it in line with changing times.

The two major parties have completely gamed out the American political system, in effect seizing control of all levels of government in most states. They have both aggressively gerrymandered House districts to limit competition. The Senate remains a policy choke point either party can use to prevent any change they fear will harm their interests.

Small wonder that Americans disapprove of most federal institutions by wide margins year after year and perpetually express a desire for more political options that never emerge —the system is essentially rigged so that they can’t. And powerful media interests fight to prevent any change, because the two-party disaster is so brutally easy to profit from.

Both parties have become nothing more than profit-seeking political brands whose members wrap themselves up in sanctimonious rhetoric designed to reduce all political debates to a kind of team sport. Every single elected federal politician in America is fundamentally a fundraiser, a servant of donors instead of the people.

Under the hood of the nonsense partisans spew is a simple goal: get you to give them money.

The two false choices in America, Republican/Democrat, Conservative/Liberal, Right/Left, are eternally reified by a media establishment which knows us-against-them morality tales are much more eyeball grabbing than honest, impartial analysis.

The way American politics is covered is specifically intended to produce subscribers or content advertisers will pay for ads to appear next to. That’s it, that’s all — no other factors matter more in a world of for-profit news media than the size of the audience and how efficiently it can be induced to engage.

This business model relies on creating sticky positive feedback loops where people feel like their involvement and engagement matters. People naturally prefer to read news that is slanted to confirm their preexisting beliefs, and absent a countervailing force all profit-seeking media is doomed to fragment along ideological lines to more efficiently reach target audiences.

In a multi-party system the damage this causes is mitigated by complexity. In a two-party system where each side bases its actions on how it thinks its sole opponent will move you have a recipe for disaster.
The Supreme Court’s mad decision in Citizens United formalized this system, allowing a massive injection of cash to turn American politics into an enormous growth market. Instead of political participation mattering mostly at the ballot box, now it feeds a perpetual bloodletting that always escalates because that’s how American media narratives work: increasing tension culminates in a grand epic showdown where good confronts and defeats evil.

This is not democracy, folks, no matter how many times someone with a fancy Ivy League PhD insists otherwise. When rich people’s votes are effectively weighted by their ability to offer massive support to political candidates or parties you have a qualitatively different system than democracy.
 
America’s craven political masters don’t want the world to understand that the American federal government has degenerated into a simple protection racket individuals and businesses are forced to engage with. The alternative is having laws and regulations put in place that directly harm your interests, a game the wealthy and well-connected will always be far more capable of playing than the general public.

The bulk of all American federal income tax revenues are pumped into the military-industrial complex. The remainder of the discretionary federal budget is a pork trough feeding subsidies to well-connected big businesses and the few swing districts left.

Both parties play the game the exact same way, with Americans bullied into participating through choosing between two stale brands that rarely deliver what they promise to voters even when they hold all branches of the federal government — looking at you, Pelosi, Schumer, and Biden.

Frankly, why would they?

Why would the Democrats ever forgive all student loans, institute national healthcare, and reduce wealth inequality? Why would the Republicans ever build a complete border wall, drain the lobbyist swamp, or mandate fairness in media?

They have no compelling reason to!

Culture wars way more profitable than normal democratic politics, creating a lifelong customer base the other side can’t hope to cleave away because of negative partisanship.

In America, the endless fight between these two brands remains self-sustaining and profitable so long as there are things people need from the government that it can’t deliver because of constant gridlock. The more angry and afraid voters get, the more they feel forced to donate to the very people who benefit professionally.

The hell of American politics is that participation has become a giant Chinese finger trap. The more you fight the worse it gets. The partisan media sells Americans a sick myth that this is just the way things have to be until someone finally wins this uncivil war. But here’s the thing: No one is ever going to win.

Under the Constitution the USA is a federation of semi-sovereign states with substantial powers. And almost all of America’s fifty states now offer enduring support to one party or the other because of the close link between regional culture, political beliefs, and economic interests going back to the colonial days.

If the federal government dissolved tomorrow, Blue States on the West Coast and in the Atlantic Northeast would immediately adopt every progressive policy you can imagine. National healthcare, free education, climate action, taxing the rich — we’d have it all. Blue States are rich enough that our tax dollars subsidize the Red State voters who use the federal government to prevent us from having things we want.

Meanwhile Red States like Florida and Texas are set to ban abortions, curtail LGBTQ+ rights, limit what teachers can say about racism, and end a slew of social welfare programs. In their America immigration desperately needed to mitigate labor shortages will be limited, taxes slashed, guns carried visibly on the street, and public displays of Christianity mandated.

When people living in a country-sized geographic region start to feel they have more in common with their neighbors than they do folks living in distant areas, national unity is dead and done. Trying to force it will ultimately trigger a fission blast as surely as smashing together two sub-critical uranium cores in the heart of an atomic bomb.

Despite the claims of pundits and politicians who need people to believe their nonsense to keep making money, America has never been unified. Unity implies everyone agreeing on basic truths, but this simply isn’t possible in a country that has always been an agglomeration of wildly diverging interests, populated by diverse peoples coming from all over the world.

It is the inability of America’s federal government to perform under the strain of partisanship married to profit interests that has destroyed its credibility in the eyes most Americans. 40% already say they would consider secession if given the option, and in partisan-dominated states that number reaches a majority among the dominant political tribe. Approval ratings for Congress are in the 30% range at best— if this is democracy, small wonder so many people don’t care about it anymore!

This basic disunity cannot be papered over because most Americans now know, even if it is impolitic to speak the truth aloud, that we’d all be better off and happier without half of America’s states holding us back from whatever it is we’ve decided we want from our government.

Geography underwrites this simple truth: The Big Sort has been underway for a long time. Most Americans already live in places where people’s values match up with their own. Those who don’t are geographically clustered within Red or Blue states in ways that are now giving rise to state-level secession movements because the system disenfranchises everyone in the end.

Governing America today is like trying to run modern software on a Windows 95 PC. It simply wasn’t built for this level of complexity. Sooner or later this system will crash because the two party stalemate has rendered any meaningful change impossible at a time when everyone is demanding it.

Neither the Democrats nor the Republicans want to or at this point can change — each as a brand is bound by its own history and rhetoric. Then you have the fact that people who choose a side and invest their career in it can always be expected to double down on the game to protect their livelihood.

In 2020, just as I predicted they would, the Democrats tried to make the election all about Trump — and what happened? The highest turnout for a Republican in history, Democrats’ margins among the Black and Latino voters slipping almost enough that the shift of old white voters angry at Trump’s miserable response to Covid failed to carry the day.

Yet this is their plan going into 2022 and 2024: make everything about Trump. Giving him exactly what he wants, feeding his power.

Just 44,000 votes in Arizona, Georgia, and Wisconsin are all that prevented Trump from winning a second term. That’s all, in what should by all rights have been a landslide election. Since Obama’s election in 2008 swing state margins have only gotten narrower, most of the Rust Belt slowly slipping into the Red column as younger, more progressive people flee for places with jobs.

The trend lines for the Democrats are absolutely abysmal, but the leadership adamantly refuses to accept that it has utterly failed because the donor dollars keep rolling in and so everyone is able to keep their jobs. Fake it until you make it remains the white American suburbanite’s guiding star, and nowhere is this more true than in politics where as long as you denounce someone on the other side loudly enough people will act like you’re accomplishing something.
 
It won’t take much more pressure to shatter America now. As key experts on both sides of the political spectrum are warning, 2020 was a dry run for what Trump or a future Republican will attempt in the event of a close election in key swing states, driven by the demands of their voters.

It remains a minor miracle that even solid Republicans pushed back on Trump’s gambit. But over a year after the January 6th insurrection polls still consistently show that a strong majority of Republicans believe in Trump’s stolen election myth. Those Republicans who opposed his scheme are being run out of politics. All the vital signs are being sent to state-level officials that party expects things to go very differently the next time the opportunity arises.

Imagine if officials had gone along with Trump’s scam: early 2021 would have been a lot worse than the Capitol Riot— Blue states would have faced mass uprisings. This was an outcome clearly anticipated by a high-level wargame done by members of both parties before the election — a simulation that was terminated when the West Coast team seceded.

It is well within the realm of possibility — frankly, it is more likely than not now — that Trump will return to the White House in 2025 by hook or crook. Trump is viewed as favorably as Ronald Reagan among Republicans and remains far more popular than any other politician on the right— at the moment he’s as popular as any other American politician.

Polls today are nowhere near a perfect reflection of what they’ll look like in 2024. But none of the trends that have dominated American politics over the past ten years are abating and there is no precedent for an ex-President popular in his party running for election in the modern era. The mainstream media narratives about Trump have been consistently wrong, and I see no scenario where Trump takes less than a plurality of the Republican primary vote in 2024.

Might he be put on trial between now and then? Maybe, but I doubt it. First because he has a swarm of sycophants who take all the legal risks for their shady boss. Second, because it would probably trigger an explosion of protests and rebound to his advantage.

It is difficult to see how the Democrats can recover from Biden’s disastrous first two years. Having over-promised and under-delivered on the pandemic, economy, and foreign policy, there isn’t a shred of Biden’s alleged competence left to run on. He was supposed to make everything normal again, but for most people it feels worse than the Trump years no matter how much Biden travels around telling people they ought to be grateful for him not being the other guy.

1*PSL6ZTTuLXrII733WGvvgg.png

Biden approval compared to recent Presidents. Tied with Trump. From 538.
Democrats whose Twitter feeds aren’t blowing up from whatever dumb thing Trump said today may choose to pretend all is well, but to most Americans the pressures of inflation compare poorly to the boom times of the pre-pandemic Trump years. They care about inflation and the stock market a lot more than Trump’s irritating social media act.

Republicans are certain to take the House in the 2022 midterms which means 2023 will see a parade of partisan investigations into the Biden Administration. Trump can announce his candidacy early that year in order to claim credit for the midterm wins, leaving the Democrats likely trying to repeat the near-total disaster of 2020 by making the race all about Trump again.

This is bound to backfire. Democrats believe that any properly educated person will feel compelled to vote for the allegedly pro-science, pro-democracy party they forget that voter behavior is most strongly driven by identity. People vote with their in group — the fact most Democrats are college educated has blinded them to the reality that they do exactly the same thing.

Right or wrong millions of people who didn’t often vote before 2016 feel like Trump speaks for them — or at the least he fights for things they care about. Like it or not, in an alienated, fearful society like America’s this is all you need to generate the kind of passion that leads to fools attacking the Capitol.

Yet give them this much credit: you don’t see progressives fighting that hard for their beliefs, now do you? Kids were and probably still are separated from parents and locked in cages on the border, but nobody charges in to liberate them from ICE. Where are Occupy, Antifa, Extinction Rebellion and all the rest of the right-wing bugaboos when Biden is demanding the police get more funding while public lands are fracked for dirty oil?

2024 is set to be brutally close and both sides are fully primed to allege the other is playing dirty. It is more likely than not that all the swing states that matter will be run by Republicans from top to bottom after 2022. Wisconsin, Michigan, Arizona, Georgia, and Pennsylvania will all be vulnerable to state legislature shenanigans and likely Republican governors to boot, making this Trump’s easiest map for 2024:

1*XIvYmOLleoAfqqleWZkS7A.png

Trump’s Basic 2024 map. Made using 270towin.org
When (most of) the votes are counted (and re-counted) in 2024, multiple Republican-run state legislatures are set to get involved, meaning the Supreme Court gets pulled in too — with a 6–3 conservative majority. Even Roberts’ moderating influence isn’t enough to beat that, at least if Roe v. Wade’s imminent destruction is anything to go by, so the novel conservative argument that state legislatures have total power in Presidential elections is likely to be upheld.

That means the period between the election and inauguration will degenerate into escalating protests. Even a few incidents of violence will feed fears of more to come, creating the stage for self-fulfilling prophecies. State governors will be forced to activate National Guard units, generating even more tension and fear and conspiratorial thinking.

As inauguration day approaches, Trump will be on social media promising to crack down on protestors as soon as he’s back in the Oval Office. After his administration’s frankly criminal and now mostly forgotten attack on Portland during Black Lives Matter, governors in deep-blue regions like the West Coast and Northeast will face a terrible choice: accept what the majority of their voters sincerely believe is a stolen election or reject the result with all the dangers that choice entails.

If the Democrats do manage to win, the shoe will simply be on the other foot. Florida and Texas are set to lead the way in openly defying the federal government and advance the old cause of state’s rights. And there’s not much the Blue federal government will be able to do about it.

States will likely not secede in this scenario. Instead, they will claim to be safeguarding the Constitution against perversions by hostile partisans. Unlike 1860, no one will repudiate the United States of America and form a new country — each region will instead insist they’re the true America.
 
You might think this sets the stage for a second civil war, but the evidence from Ukraine shows that an inter-American conflict is simply not possible to sustain for long. If and when the Red-Blue divide turns into a total breach, both sides will have ample excuse to leave the other alone — neither can win a total war.

In the wake of a split at the Presidential level a steady unraveling of the federal government will commence. Backed by the majority of the voters in their states governors will start to act like independent nations — as many are already starting to. They’ll be forced to band together, smaller states attaching to larger and wealthier ones, the divisions between Red and Blue states creating regional blocs:

1*aafO7827QoQ5qDWzbA-tPw.png

America Splits into Eight Autonomous Constitutional Regions, states remain intact. Base image made using Mapchart.net
People too often forget that laws are only relevant when they can be enforced. So when Red and Blue state governors one day split into camps over the identity of the legitimate President, America will be functionally divided into Red and Blue Constitutional Zones. A failure of geographically distinct areas to agree on the function of major institutions is the most fundamental mortal danger in any federal system because more local jurisdictions can always set up parallel institutions then dare someone to come take them away.

Thing is, Republicans have become the dominant cultural force in rural areas because educated people in urban and suburban areas largely look down on rural folks, so state-level separatist movements could emerge that threaten to fragment a number of states along the urban-rural divide. This could easily produce a map of balkanized post-America that looks like the one at the top of this essay.

Now, there will always be conservative and liberal Americans living in the same jurisdiction. But once the federal government is shattered, we’ll at least be free to reform our democratic systems so they work better wherever we live. Once Red and Blue don’t fear domination at the federal level the benefits of negative partisanship will decline and political coalitions will shift within each region.

People can always find ways to work out their problems without violence or extreme partisanship. America’s political game is just that — a game, rigged by a group of players with too much power who pit the rest of us against each other, making it impossible to live together in peace.

If you’re reading this and wondering how you should respond to this grim assessment, here’s what I can say with confidence right now:

  • If you don’t want to have to deal with it, move to a state or at least an area within a state where most people vote the way you do.
  • If your aim is to stop it from happening, get on board with a radical solution like Biden retiring before the midterms or building a working Third Party.
  • If you’d just like to protect people from the impacts, focus on promoting social justice and sustainable development at the local level, doing what you can to present your work as apolitical to the degree it can be.
But by the gods, whatever you choose to do with your time on this Earth, don’t fall prey to the delusion that uncritical participation in American partisan politics achieves anything. In a real democracy engagement is vital, but in this oligarchic anocracy it becomes a deadly trap.

Engagement equals profit. And supply will always rise to meet demand sooner or later. Until the system changes, participation is just feeding the beast.
 
Thanks Torbs. There is going to a massive emigration from this country in the next 15 years.
Honestly, I'm becoming more and more in favor of some kind of breakup. After reading these two books:

Cover_of_American_Nations.jpg


and

53159043._SX318_.jpg


I am more and more convinced that trying to cobble together colonies with such vastly different cultures, societal values, political ideologies and approaches to governance was always a recipe for failure.

I'm ready for America to divide up into urban and rural enclaves.
 
Under the Constitution the USA is a federation of semi-sovereign states with substantial powers.
In the end this is the key issue. One side despises this fact and the other cannot tolerate anything less than a return to this.

He's completely correct about the uniparty fundraisers as well. There is no real motivation for politicians from either camp to follow thru with their rhetoric because then the money would stop flowing in.
 
Thanks Torbs. There is going to a massive emigration from this country in the next 15 years.
This is kind of what I mean about America dividing up into "city mice" and "country mice":

In the wake of a split at the Presidential level a steady unraveling of the federal government will commence. Backed by the majority of the voters in their states governors will start to act like independent nations — as many are already starting to. They’ll be forced to band together, smaller states attaching to larger and wealthier ones, the divisions between Red and Blue states creating regional blocs:

People too often forget that laws are only relevant when they can be enforced. So when Red and Blue state governors one day split into camps over the identity of the legitimate President, America will be functionally divided into Red and Blue Constitutional Zones. A failure of geographically distinct areas to agree on the function of major institutions is the most fundamental mortal danger in any federal system because more local jurisdictions can always set up parallel institutions then dare someone to come take them away.

Thing is, Republicans have become the dominant cultural force in rural areas because educated people in urban and suburban areas largely look down on rural folks, so state-level separatist movements could emerge that threaten to fragment a number of states along the urban-rural divide. This could easily produce a map of balkanized post-America that looks like the one at the top of this essay.
 
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Honestly, I'm becoming more and more in favor of some kind of breakup. After reading these two books:



I am more and more convinced that trying to cobble together colonies with such vastly different cultures, societal values, political ideologies and approaches to governance was always a recipe for failure.

I'm ready for America to divide up into urban and rural enclaves.
Welcome to the club.
 
Much of what he says is true. Americans have taken “sides.” They support their team no matter what, and refuse to compromise as it simply cannot be allowed to let the other team “win.” In anything.

Just look at many of the posters on this board. Complete partisan hacks. Hateful people. Disagree with them or have a different opinion? Then you are called stupid…idiot. Admit they are ever wrong on anything? Heavens no! Compromise? Definitely not! Respect the opinion of anyone with a different view? Good God no!!
 
Has anyone done a scientific survey to understand where the best PornHub content comes from? I want to stake a claim to the Constitutional Zone that embraces an individual’s God-given right to waste gametes.
 
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Thanks Torbs. There is going to a massive emigration from this country in the next 15 years.

A worthwhile point, and one that leads me to suggest that the whole of Canada be included in these 2-3 analyses ... since that will be the most logical destination for most folks.

Perhaps Mexico, but that would get us up to three languages and I do not see that working as part of any (formal) reorganization.
 
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Much of what he says is true. Americans have taken “sides.” They support their team no matter what, and refuse to compromise as it simply cannot be allowed to let the other team “win.” In anything.

Just look at many of the posters on this board. Complete partisan hacks. Hateful people. Disagree with them or have a different opinion? Then you are called stupid…idiot. Admit they are ever wrong on anything? Heavens no! Compromise? Definitely not! Respect the opinion of anyone with a different view? Good God no!!
This take seems stupid.
 
Canada took all kinds of draft dodgers back in the day. Norway has a pretty open policy. I'm not an expert on what countries do or don't have liberal policies. But I'm guessing most would want American money.
 
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... and a question:

How does the author propose that the federal debt be managed? Like any divorce, money is usually the biggest sticking point.
 
Post #3 the guy lets his true feelings show. Contradicting this statement from post one.

Few Americans can even approach the necessary level objectivity anymore, which is a huge part of the problem. I only can because I’ve been part of both political tribes during my four decades of life and have studied power dynamics intensively from a systems perspective.
 
... and a question:

How does the author propose that the federal debt be managed? Like any divorce, money is usually the biggest sticking point.
That’s the problem for whomever wants to keep the USA title, right?
We didn’t trouble ourselves with King George’s debt when we ditched him.
 
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Can you define ‘massive’?
Do you expect we’ll net negative population growth due to exodus?


Well people are already having fewer kids. I don't think overturn of Roe will change that. Now, the influx from central america might create a net even.
 
Canada took all kinds of draft dodgers back in the day. Norway has a pretty open policy. I'm not an expert on what countries do or don't have liberal policies. But I'm guessing most would want American money.
I still think it will be primarily an internal sort. Americans -- on both sides of the partisan divide -- do still stubbornly believe in "American Exceptionalism" and each side will think their way is the best way and will posit their enclave(s) as the "real" America.
 
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Well people are already having fewer kids. I don't think overturn of Roe will change that. Now, the influx from central america might create a net even.
Our net population growth currently is owed to immigration.
But I can’t see us ever ending up net negative population due to emigration.
Way more people looking to come here for opportunities than escape here from oppression.
 
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Edit: I wrote the below with it in my head that torbee wrote the essay...he didn't, so the rest of this post isn't exactly representative, but I'm leaving the post there. Have your way with me hrot...

@torbee you nailed this: "The harsh future Americans face is one where the America rips itself to pieces after a Presidential election neither side is willing to accept the other could have won fair and square."

So predictable. We'll probably even see this from whoever loses midterms.

I LOL'd when you said you possess the ability to be objective, injecting humor there was a nice touch.
 
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@torbee you nailed this: "The harsh future Americans face is one where the America rips itself to pieces after a Presidential election neither side is willing to accept the other could have won fair and square."

So predictable. We'll probably even see this from whoever loses midterms.

I LOL'd when you said you possess the ability to be objective, injecting humor there was a nice touch.
Uh, I didn't write this essay. Not sure what you're driving at here.
 
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Somewhat interesting, not compelling enough that I would bet on it. This was the most highlighted passage from his website and much of his essay seemingly contradicts it.

"A truth partisans on neither side in America will admit is that Democrat and Republican are now mirror images. Not morally equivalent, but morality doesn’t matter when each team’s members insist only their worldview can be moral."
 
Somewhat interesting, not compelling enough that I would bet on it. This was the most highlighted passage from his website and much of his essay seemingly contradicts it.

"A truth partisans on neither side in America will admit is that Democrat and Republican are now mirror images. Not morally equivalent, but morality doesn’t matter when each team’s members insist only their worldview can be moral."
One of the areas where I disagree with the author is about the two parties' overall aims.

I 100% agree that both are primarily in it purely for fundraising, money and power. However, I think more Democrats at least still have a passing interest in "governing" whereas it seems that ship has already sailed for the vast majority of Republicans. Now, the cynic in me concurs that for many Democratic lawmakers, the interest in "governing" itself is only a thin veneer to cover up their desire to remain in power. But it seems to me that the GOP has decided the time has come to strip off the veneer and forget about the middle man altogether and seek office for no other reason than to punish the other "side" and exert power.
 
One of the areas where I disagree with the author is about the two parties' overall aims.

I 100% agree that both are primarily in it purely for fundraising, money and power. However, I think more Democrats at least still have a passing interest in "governing" whereas it seems that ship has already sailed for the vast majority of Republicans. Now, the cynic in me concurs that for many Democratic lawmakers, the interest in "governing" itself is only a thin veneer to cover up their desire to remain in power. But it seems to me that the GOP has decided the time has come to strip off the veneer and forget about the middle man altogether and seek office for no other reason than to punish the other "side" and exert power.

Yeah, similar here. I'm ok with the similar aims angle you describe. But when he devoted several paragraphs to Trump, Trumpism and what Trumpism came with, it's hard to conclude the parties are mirror images when the Democrats don't have anything comparable.

But what do I know? Maybe I'm just a partisan and can't admit the truth. Especially since I haven't been a part of both political tribes like the author has, I mean only a few Americans can even approach the necessary level of objectivity anyhow.
 
Yeah, similar here. I'm ok with the similar aims angle you describe. But when he devoted several paragraphs to Trump, Trumpism and what Trumpism came with, it's hard to conclude the parties are mirror images when the Democrats don't have anything comparable.

But what do I know? Maybe I'm just a partisan and can't admit the truth. Especially since I haven't been a part of both political tribes like the author has, I mean only a few Americans can even approach the necessary level of objectivity anyhow.
I think the sad truth is is that given the partisan divide and the current trajectory, it would/will only be a matter of time before a radical leftist populist becomes a similar "cult of personality" leader a la Trump but on the liberal side. It's not like there isn't plenty of global historical examples of that happening as well. I think the GOP just got to the full shark-jumping a little faster. :)
 
This all sounds like an endorsement for smaller government living. Maybe that's not a bad experiment, at the moment.

Local government is the most powerful, followed by state and then federal.

Don't like your local government and law? Move to a location that's more accommodating.

Mississippi might fall off the map. Small town decay might accelerate. But maybe it'll work out for the best. Everybody gets their own way, no blaming big government anymore.
 
Yeah, similar here. I'm ok with the similar aims angle you describe. But when he devoted several paragraphs to Trump, Trumpism and what Trumpism came with, it's hard to conclude the parties are mirror images when the Democrats don't have anything comparable.

But what do I know? Maybe I'm just a partisan and can't admit the truth. Especially since I haven't been a part of both political tribes like the author has, I mean only a few Americans can even approach the necessary level of objectivity anyhow.
I would say the crazy woke crowd (moreso them) and Antifa types would be comparable to the hardcore MAGA types in terms of being somewhat comparable.

The problem with the right is that a lot are still MAGA types while the left these would be more of the fringe extreme types.
 
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I think we should just be a monarchy and call it good. Pick a family that seems nice and let them run with it.
 
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The problem with the right is that a lot are still MAGA types while the left these would be more of the fringe extreme types.

Exactly, one is significant and the other insignificant. To me, that is different enough to not be mirror opposites or "the same".
 
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I would say the crazy woke crowd (moreso them) and Antifa types would be comparable to the hardcore MAGA types in terms of being somewhat comparable.

The problem with the right is that a lot are still MAGA types while the left these would be more of the fringe extreme types.
That is exactly the issue -- the Antifa and Occupy radicals hold almost no power in the Democratic party, which is still run primarily by boring old moderates like Biden/Pelosi et al.

Meantime, MAGA types are calling the shots in the GOP.

It's a meaningful difference.
 
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