The dystopian myths of red America

Desensitization is an amazing thing.

At this point, most political observers simply accept it as a fact that the vast majority of Republicans accept the big lie that the 2020 elections took place stolena statement with nothing to support it, not even plausible anecdotes.

However, what I don’t think is fully appreciated is that the Big Lie is wrapped up in an even bigger lie:

the claim that the Democratic Party is controlled by radical left trying to destroy America as we know it.

And this lie, in turn, draws much of its persuasion from a vision grotesquely distorted of what life is like in blue America.

Urban elites are constantly accused of not understanding the real America.

And, to be fair, most big city residents probably don’t have a good idea of ​​what life is like in rural areas and small towns, although it is doubtful that this gap justifies the huge amount of news interviewing Trump voters sitting in the dining rooms.

But I would argue that right-wing misperceptions about blue America are much deeper and much more dangerous.

Let’s start with politics.

The other day, Dave Weigel of Washington Post, reporting from the election campaign, noted that many Republican candidates claim that Democrats are deliberately undermining the nation and promoting violence against their opponents; some even claim that we are already in a civil war.

Some (many?) Of these candidates have won the primary, suggesting that the Republican base agrees with them.

In fact, I’d like to see some polls similar to those showing that most Republicans accept the big lie.

How many Republicans believe the president Joe Biden and other democratic leaders are radical left, in fact Marxist?

In relation to this, I would like to know how many Republicans believe the protesters of Black lives matter looted and burned most of the major cities of the United States.

Now, the reality is that the modern Democratic Party is a slightly center-left coalition made up of what Europeans would call social democrats and relatively conservative.

To act, I can’t think of any prominent Democrat, really any Democratic member of Congress, who has expressed admiration for any authoritarian foreign regime.

This contrasts with the widespread conservative admiration for Hungarian Victor Orbanwho recently denounced other Europeans for “mingle with non-Europeans“and declared that he does not want Hungary to become a country”half-Blood“.

On the domestic violence front, this was revealed by a study by the Anti-Defamation League 75% of domestic homicides linked to extremists between 2012 and 2021 were perpetrated by the right and only 4% by the left.

Finally, on BLM:

The protests, in fact, were mostly peaceful.

Yes, there has been some arson and looting, with total property damage generally estimated to be between $ 1 billion and $ 2 billion.

It may seem like a lot, but the United States is a big country, so it needs to be put into perspective.

Here is a point of comparison.

In April, Texas Governor Greg Abbott took a political stunt at the Mexican border, temporarily enforcing controls of additional security which caused a huge traffic slowdown, disrupting business and causing many products to fail.

Total economic losses have been estimated around 4 billion dollars; that is, a few days security theater border they seem to have caused more economic damage than a hundred days of mass protests.

However, pointing out these facts probably won’t change many people’s minds.

It also seems that there is no way to change the perception, also alluded to in that Post article, that a lax attitude towards law enforcement has turned big American cities into dangerous hell.

It is true that violent crime increased during the pandemic, but it increased in both rural America and urban areas.

And despite the recent spike, violence in many cities is much lower than it was not so long ago.

In New York City, the homicides since the beginning of the year are slightly lower below the 2021 leveland in 2021 they were 78% lower than in 1990 and a quarter lower than in 2001.

As Bloomberg’s Justin Fox documented, New York is a lot Safer compared to small American cities.

Los Angeles also saw a sharp long-term decline in homicides, as did California as a whole.

Some cities, in particular Philadelphia and Chicagohomicide rates from the early 1990s have returned or exceeded, but they are not representative of the bigger picture.

But who among the Republican base will recognize this reality?

Whenever I mention the relative safety of New York, I get a wave of mail that says, in effect, “You really can’t believe it.”

The fact is that a large segment of the US electorate has accepted an apocalyptic view of America that has no bearing on the reality of how the other half thinks, behaves or lives.

We must not speculate whether this dystopian fantasy could lead to political violence and attempts to overthrow democracy. He already has.

And it will probably get worse.

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