We know a family in the rust belt that lives comfortably and shouldn't have any economic issues. Except everything Trump says is gospel, COVID was a democratic hoax and democrats are evil. To me that's beyond economic and is also cultural. When everything you hear is lift yourself up from your bootstraps, it's all about the individual and if you don't make it it's your own fault then maybe the culture that's been cultivated for the last 40yrs is leading to these economic problems for individuals or various inputs/outputs are leading to a strong negative feedback cycle.
Sounds like you know a family of conservatives. Lots of people believe that stuff and always have, and I agree that when everyone's left to their bootstraps it gets increasingly hard for people to believe they can elect a government that can do anything else. But I think Midwestern conservative and their beliefs are separate from whatever the Kirk murder is or what it'll mean.
Afternoon update: Well, now we know. A garden-variety mass shooter, like the goofball who shot at Trump.
I'm grimly relieved that people who want to do violence like this are now copycatting assassins who target famous people and not mass shooter who rack up bodycounts in elementary schools. That might be what counts for progress in the US right now. This will still be used by Trump to crack down on the left, and among the vast majority of Americans with a hodgepodge of incoherent beliefs, there will be plenty who see Epstein, Mossad, Soros, and the rest.
There's lots of issues but beyond economic, there's just not enough checks and balances in many political instances (hello gerrymandering/thank god for Elections Canada) and the winner take all, us against them system, voting for the personality system. I would never call myself a "Liberal, Conservative, NDPer, Green" etc. That's not my identity, but it is for way too many voters in the States.
I feel there are more than enough checks and balances on democracy and the popular will (just as the framers's intended), and when our giant dynamic economy isn't throwing off opportunity because of "free real estate" or a rapidly growing population or Europe and Asia's decimation, things can get ugly because we can't do stuff most people want from the government. Republicans serve the material interests of the top 5% while gaining power by playing to the cultural beliefs (good and bad, but mostly and increasingly bad) of another 40-50%. Meanwhile, Democrats serve the material interests of the top 15-20% while playing to the cultural beliefs of those people plus another 20% or so of the country. When you remove the day-to-day interests of so much of the country from politics, you get a politics of culture, personality, celebrity, and the rest. Eventually you get to conspiracy, superstition, medieval peasant beliefs, and when guns are widely available...
I also think if you love the country it's a bizarre concept to me to want to burn it down and attack half of your fellow countrymen (although there's lots of examples that unfortunately) when the answer is to make it better for all, and especially the people who suffer, which hasn't really been the MO of the States except for maybe the New Deal era.
Yup. That era was the great exception. I hope, once this speculative bubble of web3.0 and metaverses and NFTs and crypto and AI crashes, we'll get lucky again. Another blue state governor from a rich family who knows the score and acts appropriately would be nice. Pritzker 2028.
