My Sprinter van forum has about a half dozen "Alans". Just like Alan, they all spout the same unsupportable rightist crap...
The concern I have is that there may be just enough blind ideologues, who are willing to place their ideology above any moral or civic commitment to democracy and country, to rot the whole 230+ year experiment in self-government from the inside to the point of collapse. They've already come quite close, to the shock and dismay of many and to the delight of the antigovernment zealots; who have been working steadily toward that goal for decades by systematically chipping away at any sense of connection people feel to their own government. All that's then required is a demagogue to come along and lean on it enough to make it crumble.
Their goal has been to create an image of government as some singular entity ("the" government) and establish a narrative surrounding it as some distinctly separate
other thing to be feared — some "other" thing separate and apart from
real Americans. It's the same time tested method which has been used forever to fracture any connection or bond that one group of people might feel for another and create a vision of some "other" to be feared and destroyed. Just target the current anxieties, worries, and fears people have in their lives and then accuse the "other" of causing them — repeatedly and relentlessly over a long period of time. In this case, "the" government (meaning
our government) has been the "other" blamed for any number of problems by a determined group of antigovernment ideologues for decades.
When faith in elected government and its institutions at the top have been sufficiently eroded by decades of sustained effort, all that's needed is to attack the foundation on which it rests which is faith in democracy and its exercise by the people thru elections. Then watch it collapse into anarchy as it did on January 6th in the central symbol and seat of self-government, the nation's Capitol. That's where we are today and it's a dangerous time —
if you haven't turned a blind eye and are deliberately ignoring it or are complicit in attempting to conceal it.
