Post by CASALAOThe American Democracy in the year 2021 is at a crossroads. More on this later. In the meantime, here's a video worth watching http://youtu.be/YVDJqipoohc
Casalao.... I think the "crossroads" you mentioned is more of a GOP crossroads than an American Democracy crossroads. After almost 250 years of more or less smooth, civil, peaceful transition of power --- from one president to another --- PROBABILITY says there will be a little hiccup. It actually is extraordinarily odd that America's "peaceful transition of power" has gone this long without any major coup.
And, for that, I think we should credit George Washington. That dude could have been set up as King George, like the one in England at the time, if he had wanted the title, because citizens back then were still totally into these Stone, Iron, and Bronze age Strong Man BS; they knew nothing else. And Washington was more popular than any other figure at the time.... due to playing of the most iconic role in the Revolutionary War...
Anyway, right now, cliche notwithstanding, on the GOP side you have more or less just three major groups, almost entirely Whites:
#1 the very rich and very well educated (the Kochs, the Walton, the Adleson [who just died], the Home Depot CEO [who'd just turned against Trump, if we're to believe, after all these years], the Hedge Fund billionaires whose well have shot up during Trump's years... a very small group..) .....
#2 the West Virginian-Louisiana-Tennessee-Kentuckian-Arkansa-Carolinian-Mississippi single and double wide stereotypes (who've lived in America since the 1700s and 1800s without ever going to college (the largest group).... and
#3 the gun toting, bible thumping, religious nuts.
#2 and #3 overlap well; but both are backward, stupid, and uneducated, they think they and the Trumps and Kochs are neighbors and associates... so they'd risk their lives, literally, for those super rich, super well connected Trump-Hawley-Ted Cruz nuts... as seen in the January 6, 2020 insurrection/riot, the first time the US Capitol was literally over-run and trashed (could have been burned, too) since the British did it in the early 1800s... 1812, I think...
BTW, these crazy Republicans and Cons ---- again, largely Whites who've heard glowing stories of heroic exploits from their grand parents, who had heard them from their own grand parents, who in turn had heard them from their own grand parents etc, when Whites were in ABSOLUTE charge and Asians, Blacks, Natives, and non-White "Latinos" could only bow their heads really low and NOT argue, if a White boy told them to move or go to the other side of the street or not enter a certain building ---- also are the ones yearning to RETURN AMERICA to the early 1900s, the 1800s, the 1700s... (MAKE AMERICA GREAT AGAIN, MAGA)..... with a small minority of Blacks like Clarence Thomas, Ben Carson and a crazy, uneducated Lao, Hmong, Vietnamese refugees WANTING to tag along, all saying, like these crazy, racist White Cons.... that those times were MORE tolerant, better, more fair, more meritocratic, etc.
Anyway, the GOP has lost the POPULAR VOTE 7 out of the last 8 CONSECUTIVE PRESIDENTIAL ELECTIONS.... so DEMOGRAPHICALLY time is not on their side.
Extreme Gerrymandering, voting suppression tactics, misinformation, and other such strategies and tactics have helped them win, BARELY at times, in the few Congressional Districts, in the perennial yet shifting 3-5 "swing states" the GOP needs to win the ELECTORAL VOTE, designed by 100% White males, MOST slave owners... to ensure a MINORITY could still rule over the majority....
But, again, historically and demographically, the GOP is maxing out every such tactic and strategy.
Here's my prediction: within just 3 PRESIDENTIAL ELECTIONS (2024, 2028, & 2032)... Texas is going to become very much like California. Today, Texas is almost like California was in the 1990s. You and I... we all remember this: When we arrived in California, in the late 1970s, the GOP was very competitive in California, winning more than half of all gubernatorial races; from San Diego to northern California, to Central California, to the districts bordering the Pacific, the GOP was still as competitive as the Democrats. Today, only 7 or 8 out of the 53 or so Congressional Districts in California are Republicans; almost all of them are in the in-land, rural, less educated parts. Orange County, close to the ocean, took one of their "Reagan County" districts back; but it's only a matter of time, again, the that Democrats will take that.
Texas, again, is almost irreversibly moving that way, too. The "Latino" population in Texas, like the one in California, also is the largest, I believe. They're just not as organized, living among a very well organized White Conservative state. Texas also doesn't have as many Asians; but it is for sure Whites WILL be very CLEAR minority by 2028 (with so many high tech jobs and crazy Libs moving from California to Texas)!