Ice cream castles in the air

Among the people I check on over the electronical internet is someone named Sexton. He's smart, he's knowledgeable, he's been "yelling at the right buildings" for a while now...but I think he gets this one very, very wrong:

"There is no both-sidesing a political landscape where a vast majority of Americans believe in reality and science and democracy and a violent minority is gnashing its teeth and demanding everyone join their sycophantic death cult."

It's the "vast majority" thing where he trips and falls.

Nope. Nopenopenope.

No.

Just no.

Assume that there are about 239 million Americans of voting age. Discount as a rounding error the disenfranchised (felons, the legally incompetent) and a total of about 152 million voted in the presidential race, about 79 million and change for Biden, 73 million and change for Trump. That's about 64 percent of the total eligible voters.

So, right off, more than a third, 87 million people, don't "believe in reality and science and democracy", at least not enough to be arsed to get off their duffs to vote in perhaps the most consequential election in more than eighty years. 

You can make all the excuses you want about voter suppression and the difficulty the US puts into voting and the pandemic and the lack of a truly inspirational choice. This was "MOAR PLAGUE!" versus "Less Plague, thanks..."; that's not exactly a tough call there. If you have to go down to the Safeway to pick up a six-pack of "vote" to keep a complete whacko from burning you alive inside your house, that's a must-make grocery run. Simple as that.

Now throw in the 73 million who actively voted for MOAR PLAGUE!

These people sure as fuck don't believe in science and reality, and given their meeching enthusiasm for the ridiculous "vote fraud!" lies they don't actually believe in "democracy", either.

So, not just no but fuck no. The vast majority of Americans aren't rational actors who love and cling to the ideals of the Constitution and equal justice under law. 

The "vast majority" - about 67 percent - of the American public is either crazier than a shithouse rat and somewhere to the right of Reinhard Heydrich on the subject of "democracy", or just could give two shits so long as they get their supersized bag of Cool Ranch Doritos over to the couch before "The Masked Singer" comes on.

The bulk of We the People are somewhere between "utterly worthless" and "shoot on sight, like a rabid weasel".

Makes you wonder where the hell we're going to go from here.

And it makes you wonder even more if you really want to find out.

But most of all it reminds me of this little Twitter vignette:

"Quote by a forest ranger at Yosemite National Park on why it is hard to design the perfect garbage bin to keep bears from breaking into it: “There is considerable overlap between the intelligence of the smartest bears and that of the dumbest tourists.”

 

Damn.