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Originally Posted by TheBig3
I'm fairly hopeful. Media literacy is really bad in my parents generation (the Boomers) and not that I wish it on anyone, but their monopoly on the voting booth is slowly waning. By 2024 enough will have shuffled off the mortal coil that we might return to some stability.
As Lindsey Graham said ahead of 2016, "we're running out of angry white guys."
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That's a funny quotation, but I suspect Batlord is right, if he's suggesting that there is a whole new generation of angry white guys. Also as Neapolitan says, Boomers were voting Biden too.
Another also: "media literacy" has mixed effects, I suspect. There are probably some Republican Boomers who can't find their way into those QAnon websites, or Trump's version of a blog by "somebody sitting on their bed that weighs 400 pounds." The Boomers can't get themselves radicalised as efficiently as the media-literate can.
Bottom line: I'd like you to be right, Big3, the same way I'd like Biden to establish some bipartisan rapport, but I'm worried you're both underestimating the unscrupulous venom of Republicans. I remember someone saying that the Dems were like someone taking a spoon to a knife fight. And that is how democracy is, right now, getting stabbed in the back. One knife thrust is the picking apart of a fair election result to muddy the waters and plant doubts about election integrity. The other knife thrust is:-
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A new report last week from the Brennan Center for Justice found that at least 14 states have already enacted more than 20 laws making it harder for Americans to vote. At least 61 bills with restrictive provisions are moving through 18 state legislatures, according to the Brennan Center report, and at least 389 restrictive bills have been introduced in 48 of the 50 states during the 2021 legislative sessions.
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Of course, election integrity doubts only apply to Biden's victory. I have yet to hear any elected Republican say "Maybe I shouldn't be here myself", even though the vote that put them in office was often on the self-same ballot paper that they are disputing. [Anybody is welcome to fact check me on that last point, btw - I may be wrong about how those ballot papers work.]