A House Divided

 

There have been a number of American pundits predicting that the Republicans will retake control of the Senate next year and add the House and the presidency in 2024 in a clash of rural versus urban voters. Four years of Trump madness does not seem to have dampened his support among his "base" - a term that, for the GOP, has more than one meaning.

It's a pretty grim picture. The Punisher-in-Chief back on the throne, taking his revenge on all he deems to have been disloyal during the Biden years. Trump pulling America back out of the global campaign to avert climate catastrophe.  Animalistic American governance, bloody fang and claw.

This week the White House released a report by critical government agencies on the challenges the US will face in the next decade or two.

Less food. More traffic accidents. Extreme weather hitting nuclear waste sites. Migrants rushing toward the United States, fleeing even worse calamity in their own countries.

Those scenarios, once the stuff of dystopian fiction, are now driving American policymaking. 

Even the most wishful thinkers among us are beginning to face reality.  What a time for America to be saddled with a president and a Congress that eschew reality.  Trump is no Canute.

How will the GOP cope with a climate crisis that is expected to hit Red State America first and worst? When it comes to climate change they've already made their bed and it will take the dexterity of a contortionist to get out of it.  Pitting the rural right against the urban left might trigger blowback in a nation whose people are as divided as any time since the Civil War.

The world is nearing a point where ideological prescriptions lose their utility and, worse, can cause deep and irreparable damage.  Can America even survive a second bout of the Trump virus?



Comments

  1. TrailblazerOctober 8, 2021 at 5:12 PM

    Can America even survive a second bout of the Trump virus?

    Americas problems are much more than Trump.
    Americas problems are the unattainable/ unrealistic American dream.

    TB

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. The Disaffected LibOctober 9, 2021 at 9:36 AM

      America's problems are "much more than Trump" as you state, TB. Trump's toxic strain of Republicanism is exacerbating America's divisions. The Civil War wasn't only a squabble about slavery.

      Delete
  2. Ben BurdOctober 9, 2021 at 7:09 AM

    For the last couple of years I have been saying that the Dems are fucked, they refuse to play dirty like the Repugs, the last couple of months have reinforced this with Manchin and Synema truly screwing the agenda up. I look forward to the day when the subpoena defying Trumpers are hauled into court in chains and made to tell the truth. Midterms be damned. However right now the do- nothing Biden people are just repeating the failed Obama agenda, he dithered too.

    I guess the Dems have no hope, at least in my opinion - hope they prove me wrong, but come 2022 they will have squandered all of the political capital they had and gerrymandering will finish them off!

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. The Disaffected LibOctober 9, 2021 at 9:39 AM

      If the Republicans do finish off the Dems, Ben, they'll be free to sack the country which, oddly enough, might be liberal America's last best chance to rise from the ashes.

      Delete
    2. Ben BurdOctober 9, 2021 at 9:57 AM

      As others do I often why voters will always vote against their own interests. I also wonder that if you are correct, where the will to rise like the Phoenix will come from.

      Delete
    3. The Disaffected LibOctober 12, 2021 at 10:14 AM

      The idea that a reborn America might not rise from the ashes fills me with dread, Ben.

      Delete
  3. TrailblazerOctober 11, 2021 at 5:11 PM

    As others do I often why voters will always vote against their own interests......

    Lets start with Facebook who have just admitted ,albeit in a round about way, that they can influence the young!
    That , to me was tantamount to saying their influence could go as far as politics and our elections.

    @ If the Republicans do finish off the Dems, Ben, they'll be free to sack the country which, oddly enough, might be liberal America's last best chance to rise from the ashes.

    Problem there is who will they take down with them?
    Half the figgen world is my opinion

    The US is currently worried that a triumphant Trump will go on a vendetta.
    That this is a possibility puts a damper upon current reasoning and places people in high places, government , business , civil rights, you name it on tenterhooks..

    What no one has discussed is putting up a firewall between the US and the world.

    Th almighty dollar has spoken..

    TB

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. The Disaffected LibOctober 12, 2021 at 10:18 AM

      These are the sort of perils we don't approach proactively, TB. Today we consider prudence a fetter on production and consumption, GDP.

      Delete

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