Gonna take issue with this.

There are rabid Trump fanatics. They exist, they fill Trump rallies, they wave the flags. They are very visible, very loud, and the camera always point at them when they make an appearance. But there aren't enough of them to elect a president.

I'd ask you how many Trump voters* you know but you aren't in a position to know very many. I can't remember if you are back in Kiwiland or still in Germany, but you aren't likely to run into many in either place—they don't get out of town much. And I'll wager that most of you reading this from inside your news bubbles don't know many either.

Supporters—the ones with the Trump flags at the rallies—are on board with his regime. They see him as the man who's going to save them from the hoards of brown people who are coming to rape their women, sell their children drugs, give them gang tattoos, and murder them in their sleep during a riot for free everything. They have been convinced that everyone darker than them is a threat by a media that panders to their prejudices. I run into them every day—they're hard to miss.

I also run into people—far more often—who are nothing like them but voted for the Orange Man. They are, in general, not very politically engaged, don't follow the news, don't listen to podcasts, and only pay attention to politics when it gets in their faces. And over the last decade Democratic politics got in their faces.

It closed down their doctor's office. It paid their wealthy neighbors to buy a very expensive electric car and put up solar panels. It made housing so expensive that owning a home they can put solar panels on moved forever out of reach. It inflated the currency, making them poorer despite a tight labor market. It shut down their business during the pandemic while keeping the big store down the road open, closed the schools so one of the parents had to stay home even if they had work. The UPS driver was working his ass off and putting his health at risk delivering goods to people living off stimulus checks playing video games in their pajamas. And all the while they were being transparently lied to about it all by a media that was mostly in the tank for the party responsible**.

There was a steady stream of teachers suspending their kids from school for pointing their fingers, celebrities scolding them for using the wrong pronouns and sneering at them for not going to college and driving a pickup and living in a trailer park. At some point they snapped and decided to do what would piss those folks off the most: vote for Trump.

Things didn't get better. They don't know why, but they won't change their behavior again until something reaches a crisis they can't ignore. Branding them all as fascists is not just inaccurate, not just condescending—it's self-defeating. I'm a fascist? Fine, I'll vote for fascists then, because "fascist" just means "people like me".

I need to emphasize that even these voters are outnumbered by those who have given up on voting as a civic institution. They don't trust anybody in power and no one you've heard of is trying to reach them. People rotate thru this population as the political winds shift; in there you'll find the traditional conservatives Trump exiled from the Republican party and Bill Clinton Democrats pushed out by the woke takeover of their old home.  A lot of Trump voters rotated out of this pool as the traditional Republicans rotated in.

Expecting these folks to be constitutional scholars is ironic, considering Trump's opposition has, for decades, ridiculed constitutional arguments as disingenuous defenses of economic privilege or just racist. I'm talking about voters here; the Ted Cruzes of the world should indeed know better and are simply cowards following the political winds. Someday they will have to answer for this, and I want to be there for the reckoning.

*I'm trying to make a distinction between supporters and voters. They are absolutely not the same, but a lot of you are doing your best to turn that latter into the former.

**Yes, a lot of the bad policy during the pandemic—especially bad economic policy leading up to the pandemic—was Trump's. The effects lagged the cause, and Biden left a lot of that policy (especially regarding trade) in place anyway because his views on trade were just as economically illiterate as Trump's. And the Democrats doubled down on stimulus.

Glass raised to the Kris K. reference .. but, tbh, I wouldn't go that far either. If you want to get a job done, it's kind of good to have tools lying around. 
Freedom is actually having the resources around to do what you want, even it is just swimming in the ocean. 
For that you need an ocean. Sure, it doesn't have to be yours, but it should be unpolluted and at least accessible.

Í guess that's kind of why the latest trend is to push people away from personal wealth accumulation towards proper stewardship of what we have left.

PS. and let's be honest.. poverty is the biggest unfreedom there is.
(if that is not a word it should be)

Gonna take issue with this.

There are rabid Trump fanatics. They exist, they fill Trump rallies, they wave the flags. They are very visible, very loud, and the camera always point at them when they make an appearance. But there aren't enough of them to elect a president.

I'd ask you how many Trump voters* you know but you aren't in a position to know very many. I can't remember if you are back in Kiwiland or still in Germany, but you aren't likely to run into many in either place—they don't get out of town much. And I'll wager that most of you reading this from inside your news bubbles don't know many either.

Supporters—the ones with the Trump flags at the rallies—are on board with his regime. They see him as the man who's going to save them from the hoards of brown people who are coming to rape their women, sell their children drugs, give them gang tattoos, and murder them in their sleep during a riot for free everything. They have been convinced that everyone darker than them is a threat by a media that panders to their prejudices. I run into them every day—they're hard to miss.

I also run into people—far more often—who are nothing like them but voted for the Orange Man. They are, in general, not very politically engaged, don't follow the news, don't listen to podcasts, and only pay attention to politics when it gets in their faces. And over the last decade Democratic politics got in their faces.

It closed down their doctor's office. It paid their wealthy neighbors to buy a very expensive electric car and put up solar panels. It made housing so expensive that owning a home they can put solar panels on moved forever out of reach. It inflated the currency, making them poorer despite a tight labor market. It shut down their business during the pandemic while keeping the big store down the road open, closed the schools so one of the parents had to stay home even if they had work. The UPS driver was working his ass off and putting his health at risk delivering goods to people living off stimulus checks playing video games in their pajamas. And all the while they were being transparently lied to about it all by a media that was mostly in the tank for the party responsible**.

There was a steady stream of teachers suspending their kids from school for pointing their fingers, celebrities scolding them for using the wrong pronouns and sneering at them for not going to college and driving a pickup and living in a trailer park. At some point they snapped and decided to do what would piss those folks off the most: vote for Trump.

Things didn't get better. They don't know why, but they won't change their behavior again until something reaches a crisis they can't ignore. Branding them all as fascists is not just inaccurate, not just condescending—it's self-defeating. I'm a fascist? Fine, I'll vote for fascists then, because "fascist" just means "people like me".

I need to emphasize that even these voters are outnumbered by those who have given up on voting as a civic institution. They don't trust anybody in power and no one you've heard of is trying to reach them. People rotate thru this population as the political winds shift; in there you'll find the traditional conservatives Trump exiled from the Republican party and Bill Clinton Democrats pushed out by the woke takeover of their old home.  A lot of Trump voters rotated out of this pool as the traditional Republicans rotated in.

Expecting these folks to be constitutional scholars is ironic, considering Trump's opposition has, for decades, ridiculed constitutional arguments as disingenuous defenses of economic privilege or just racist. I'm talking about voters here; the Ted Cruzes of the world should indeed know better and are simply cowards following the political winds. Someday they will have to answer for this, and I want to be there for the reckoning.

*I'm trying to make a distinction between supporters and voters. They are absolutely not the same, but a lot of you are doing your best to turn that latter into the former.

**Yes, a lot of the bad policy during the pandemic—especially bad economic policy leading up to the pandemic—was Trump's. The effects lagged the cause, and Biden left a lot of that policy (especially regarding trade) in place anyway because his views on trade were just as economically illiterate as Trump's. And the Democrats doubled down on stimulus.

yep, spot on.  What shocked me most was how quickly a whole load of people who should know better, allowed the spirit of the constitution to be so quickly trashed and how easy it was for MAGA to shift American identity away from the constitution to Hulk Hogan and a parade of two-dimensional parodies of the American dream wearing faux-gold sneakers.

yep, spot on.  What shocked me most was how quickly a whole load of people who should know better, allowed the spirit of the constitution to be so quickly trashed and how easy it was for MAGA to shift American identity away from the constitution to Hulk Hogan and a parade of two-dimensional parodies of the American dream wearing faux-gold sneakers.

Well (and here is where I feel the odd need to again declare that I'm not a supporter of the Democratic party, just an opposer of the GOP*), this is one of the areas that I have a major issue with republicans. They are all for anyone born here to white xtian parents of good standing. But they don't ascribe 'Americanism' to any immigrant or children of immigrants, or anyone seeking to join this nation. In my book, the guy fleeing violence in El Salvador who is applying for asylum is as much an American as Joe Nextdoor from Cleveland. As far as I'm concerned most of the 'illegal' people that simply lack documentation, but have been working here and paying taxes with limited benefits for decades are every bit as American as Chad with the Tiki Torch at the Nazi white supremacist parade in Schaumburg (legally, in spirit and morally I'd say the former is a superior American). 

We have an administration who is violating centuries of precedent and norms, and going after people based on race/ethnicity. And a solid portion of the people who are cheering these actions. The left didn't push them to these positions, they ran to them enthusiastically.  If that makes people on the middle right uncomfortable enough to scapegoat the left, that's fine. But the left shouldn't accept it and I'm not willing to add any weight to that pile. 

*for the record, I'm all about ranked choice voting, multiple parties and a good parliament full of vigorous deliberations.  In our two party system, I'll support for those who are not immoral assholes, and for now that's not anywhere near the republican party. Liz freaking Cheney is too reasonable for these nutjobs.

You get to enjoy the invisible boot of Capital.

Historian Howard Zinn argues that during the Gilded Age in the United States, the U.S. government was acting exactly as Karl Marx described capitalist states: "pretending neutrality to maintain order, but serving the interests of the rich".^<13>

But ultimately the root causes of this alienation need to be redressed so that people come back to some common agreement on what it means to be American and what the basic procedures are for getting along with each other.

Here I still see a lot of unresolved, if not irreconcilable differences between those who see America first and foremost as the land of the free individual unfettered by social constraints and those who see American as a joint project, a social undertaking that maximises the wealth, health and happiness of all its people.

Before that gets sorted, I can't see things improving much.

I'm weary.

Tired of the country lurching from ditch to ditch instead of getting down the road. Tired of partisans hunkered down in their ditches sniping at anyone who isn't in their ditch, and excusing any atrocity as long as it's directed at those outside the ditch.

Tired of the sanctimony. Tired of the hypocrisy. Of the dishonesty and the tolerance for it so long as it serves the interests of the ditch. Tired of being called a Left Ditcher when I criticize the tactics of the Right Ditch and a Right Ditcher when I criticize the tactics of the Left Ditch. Tired of being told to pick a ditch when my destination is not the mud but the horizon, and even the road between the ditches goes the wrong way.

So very tired of trying to point out that horizon to people who won't lift their gaze out of their ditch.

ah, you are an incurable romantic. Which, incidentally, is what I like about you. 
But I fear this there is simply no place for the land of the free in a world plagued by existential crises and a need to find global solutions to global threats. 

It's not cowardice to seek mutually agreeable solutions or make compromises for the sake of peace and harmony. I actually think it is the harder road to follow.

Freedom's just another word for nothin left to lose - nothing to risk or hold you back...letting go, not grabbing more. 

agreed. 
Secondly, this idea of the land of the free is largely built on subsequent myth-building and Hollywood movies. One should never confuse lawlessness with freedom. 

Personal note...  my Dad lived in the mountains whenever he could, frequently alone. It was the only place he "felt free" (his words) and he felt claustrophobic when he came back to town. So I do get the yearning. But being alone in nature is one thing. Being alone when faced by gangs is something else. 

Not sure I truly understand your full meaning, but it does make me ask, is it not cowardice to ignore the problems of society? To find a central solution, rather than rely on individualism? 
Post WWII, the U.S. and the world embraced programs to rebuild cities, societies, economies, eg Marshall Plan, Bretton Woods, GATT...where would we be if governments didnt do this?

Despite the fringes dominating the discussion, I do believe most of us dont want to embrace brutal order,  or a rigid, static society. But we do want order and leadership to address the problems of modern life. 
Truth is, most of us aren't "smart enough" to really understand these problems, left to deal with what they see...whether that be economic hardship, lost job, changing weather, pollution, crime...without really having the capacity to put any of this in historical perspective. 
So, we rely primarily upon political, legal and economic systems to maintain order and keep society organized. 
The faith in these systems has eroded. While too much of this is manufactured, some is warranted, and things need to be addressed - eg, excessive wealth accumulation whether it business or people, big getting bigger, wage gaps; political corruption, lack of accountability, polarization and dysfunction. At its core, people want the system to work for the common good. Relying on self interest wont fix it. We need a paradigm shift towards cooperation. 

Those two goals are not incompatible. 

Free people built the mightiest, most prosperous country on earth. Even with its light dimmed it's still a beacon to the world, attracting motivated people who want to take part in this project. It's worth saving, but I see it being degraded by people who admire brutal order over chaotic progress. 

We need to re-embrace an uncomfortable dynamism and treat the yearning for a rigid, static society as what it is: cowardice.

Those two goals are not incompatible. 

Free people built the mightiest, most prosperous country on earth. Even with its light dimmed it's still a beacon to the world, attracting motivated people who want to take part in this project. It's worth saving, but I see it being degraded by people who admire brutal order over chaotic progress. 

We need to re-embrace an uncomfortable dynamism and treat the yearning for a rigid, static society as what it is: cowardice.

But ultimately the root causes of this alienation need to be redressed so that people come back to some common agreement on what it means to be American and what the basic procedures are for getting along with each other.

Here I still see a lot of unresolved, if not irreconcilable differences between those who see America first and foremost as the land of the free individual unfettered by social constraints and those who see American as a joint project, a social undertaking that maximises the wealth, health and happiness of all its people.

Before that gets sorted, I can't see things improving much.

I'm weary.

Tired of the country lurching from ditch to ditch instead of getting down the road. Tired of partisans hunkered down in their ditches sniping at anyone who isn't in their ditch, and excusing any atrocity as long as it's directed at those outside the ditch.

Tired of the sanctimony. Tired of the hypocrisy. Of the dishonesty and the tolerance for it so long as it serves the interests of the ditch. Tired of being called a Left Ditcher when I criticize the tactics of the Right Ditch and a Right Ditcher when I criticize the tactics of the Left Ditch. Tired of being told to pick a ditch when my destination is not the mud but the horizon, and even the road between the ditches goes the wrong way.

So very tired of trying to point out that horizon to people who won't lift their gaze out of their ditch.

I'm weary.

Tired of the country lurching from ditch to ditch instead of getting down the road. Tired of partisans hunkered down in their ditches sniping at anyone who isn't in their ditch, and excusing any atrocity as long as it's directed at those outside the ditch.

Tired of the sanctimony. Tired of the hypocrisy. Of the dishonesty and the tolerance for it so long as it serves the interests of the ditch. Tired of being called a Left Ditcher when I criticize the tactics of the Right Ditch and a Right Ditcher when I criticize the tactics of the Left Ditch. Tired of being told to pick a ditch when my destination is not the mud but the horizon, and even the road between the ditches goes the wrong way.

So very tired of trying to point out that horizon to people who won't lift their gaze out of their ditch.