Wondering who or what's to blame here, imagine it this way: invert all the dynamics roiling the political landscape in America right now and then ask yourself, what would be the result of such a shift? What I mean is, imagine that the media and press are overtly biased towards the right and on top of that imagine that changing demographics tended to increasingly favor a conservative point of view. Then put in the White House a staunch conservative ideologue that the right wing adores as some sort of savior from the evil doings of the left but who also possess a quality that makes him or her an especially sympathetic figure to a broad spectrum of voters, even those who don't particularly see themselves as leaning right - maybe he or she is a war hero - hell, make them an amputee while you're at it. Then give this imaginary president an extreme agenda that he or she pushes forward under the protective guises and auspices of biased media, gullible voters and the beguiling effects of identity politics shamelessly exploited. Now, ask yourself, given the above, what would happen to the Democrats? Would they not fracture in the exact same way the GOP is fracturing now, as outraged leftist radicals decrying the end of abortion and the demise of the promotion of social welfarism and wealth redistribution leveraged on the back of a perpetual racial demagoguery etc etc battle with pragmatic moderates over the best way to combat and turn back this existential threat from the right? Would we not see, verging on the horizon, the rising menace of one party rule and the gutting of the very essence of democracy? And, just as importantly, would we not also see in our imagined other world this growing right wing oligarchy faced with the very same vexing question any liberal still possessing some vestige of perspective and objectivity should be asking themselves right now, that being: how the hell, short of the instituting of autocratic measures, do we expect to govern this bitterly divided mess we're busily with blind enthusiasm creating?
