It's America. What do we expect?

Anger and fear are powerful emotions and they are clearly driving a large number of voters, particularly among the Angry White People Party, formerly known as Republicans.

Republicans used to think of themselves as the freedom party. Don't tell me what to do! Now the AWPP wants to combine not being told what to do with telling everyone else exactly what to do. 

The midterm elections in November may place enough election deniers and anti-democracy types to affect elections for years to come. Of course, we may find there are enough Americans who are not overwhelmed by fear and anger to reject authoritarian nut cases, but that is a risky bet. 

As H.L. Mencken said over a century ago, "Nobody ever went broke underestimating the ignorance of the American people."

In a related development, Afghanistan is starving -- well, the poor and powerless are starving, which is true everywhere -- and the usual suspects (bleeding heart liberals) are up in arms and demanding that we do almost anything to feed those starving kids. The government is reluctant to provide large amounts of money due to lack of trust in the Taliban to use the aid effectively. 

In a second related development, there was so much fraud committed by so many people during the pandemic and the trillions in government aid that prosecutors can't catch up. My takeaway is that being skeptical about people's honesty is a reasonable choice. Most people need some sort of gentle or not-so-gentle nudge to do the right thing. 

Historians are pointing out that the levels of distrust and anger and fear are similar to conditions just prior to the Civil War, among other chaotic events in history. 

The Angry White People Party is willing to embrace this and are quite willing to hand over authority to the most macho, uneducated, boastful politicians available. I assume this was the attitude of all those "Good Germans" who somehow allowed Hitler and the Nazi's to reign over their country.

Maybe the U.S. is too segmented and mixed in views, too scattered and too ill-informed, to recreate Nazi Germany. Or is that just my typical progressive opinion, assuming that people are just not that bad and that common sense eventually prevails?

Liz Cheney got tossed yesterday by a few thousand Trump-worshiping Wyoming voters, but her concession speech captured the correct theme: she will do what it takes to make sure Trump never holds office again.

I support that goal and am a single-issue voter: I will vote against anyone supporting Trump, period. And I will, perhaps naively, keep hoping that millions of Americans will do likewise.

Time for the diverse interest groups who are so hard to herd if you are a Democrat to band together to thump the Angry White People Party at the polls. 

I realize that my recent blog posts have been quite political, and I don't apologize for that. But it's a new school year, and our two granddaughters are enjoying their first day of the new year today.

Time for me to do more thinking about what can be done to support our youth.