Americans are exceptionally anxious about their political system, according to new international polling from Gallup, a situation that sets the country apart from other rich and powerful nations.
About one-third of Americans rated politics and government as the top issue facing their nation, behind only Taiwan — which faces the prospect of an invasion from China — and on par with Slovenia, Spain and South Korea.
The United States also stands out for the anxiety its younger residents have over economic issues, with younger Americans more likely than young adults in many of the other 107 surveyed countries to say affordability and other pocketbook issues are worrying them
The time to be concerned about the direction of the political system was November for 2024.
It’s quite literally too late to do anything about it now. If Trump wants to cancel elections, there will be much hand-wringing and finger-waggling while congress debates about the legality of such a thing in a committee to no avail and the courts slow-walk any kind of injunction that would preemptively prevent them from doing it before it actually mattered.
Why should any of us be surprised that the guy who tried to subvert democracy once before is brazenly and openly stating his desire to do so again? This result was so utterly predictable that I feel secondhand embarrassment for anybody just now getting anxious about the political system.
It’s not just “the guy,” it’s the party. This has been thinly veiled since at least they stole the 2000 election. Right after they took that despite voter suppression, removing valid voters from rolls, understaffing democratic districts with defective machinery they may have sabotagaed on purpose,( ie not emptying the “hanging chads” from the container, the machine punched holes, didn’t work when bin full.) They also physically threw away ballots from Broward and Miami-Dade. Then they shipped a violent mob in to Miami to shut down the vote count.
Other stuff too, but all while the democrats did nothing outside of court. In court they hired the most high powered respected lawyers they could, that’s what they did in it’s entirity. No speeches about Voters Decide Elections Not Courts! Thundering from a pulpit. No denunciations of the underhanded tactics, dangers to our way of life, the arrogance of the steal. The didn’t ship in their own partisans to protect election workers, didn’t organize any protests to speak of.
They just let their valid concerns be fillibustered by the republicans, that ran out the clock, and threatened violence, and the latter is what won over Ruth Bader Ginsburg that crossed over and sided with the conservatives allowing them to run out the clock with bush up 500 votes or whatever it was, despite valid votes many times greater than that not counted because of the hanging chads, the hole punches not removed completely because the trays were not emptied and whatever else. They didn’t find the thrown out votes even as it was rumoured dumpsters were full of votes in some districts. There were a lot of votes that no reasonable person could argue shouldn’t be counted, that were lawfully cast with no fault of voters, that weren’t counted.
Ginsburg apparently crossed over after having been afraid of political violence, in general. So anwering the brooks brothers riots, even after the fact, could have changed everything. Organizing your own partisans to camp out with election officials, to protest, to call out anyone involved in the brooks brothers riots, could have prevented everything.
But they stole it, and right after started their Voter Integrity, Voter Fraud campaigns, accusing regular people of fake voting, and made laws demanding ID, demanding proofs of ID and citizenship and tools to remove voters from rolls before elections.
The president just commandeered the system, and made it so obvious in your face the democrats couldn’t well ignore it during election season at least. But none of this ends with him. They will be stealing elections unless they are stopped. We had stopped them in 2021 but decided not to, so everyone gave up fighting because we were doomed.
It’s not too late to do anything, but it’s too late to do it through political channels.
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