American cartoonist Dave Whamond knows how to fit a lot of concepts into one drawing. It’s an art. A mother and her daughter walk outdoors. They both wear the costume made famous by the film and the series. The Scarlet Maid, from the caustic imagination of Canadian novelist Margaret Atwood. In his world, part of America is ruled by misogynist fundamentalist Christians.
“But why didn’t you vote against them, mum?” asks the girl. Why didn’t you try to stop them from taking away all our rights? Mother’s response: “Well, honey, the price of gas was very high back then. The time is next Tuesday, November 8.
Unfortunately, there is only a step between caricature and reality. Respondents in a poll NYT/Sienna, 71% of Americans said that “American democracy is in danger”. They are therefore fully aware of it. However, this danger will guide the vote of only 7% of them. Everyone else will be driven by issues they deem more pressing. The impact of inflation and the rise in urban crime conditions the will of the electorate to sanction the Democratic Party, in power. If the trend continues, a narrow majority of Americans will give a now radicalized Republican Party control of the Senate and House of Representatives.
It is therefore probable that, in the coming year, these Republican majorities:
1. make impossible a federal law restoring the right to abortion recently abolished by the Supreme Court and on the contrary make possible the passage of a law banning abortion everywhere in the United States, at least after the 15e week of pregnancy;
2. Abolish the GHG reduction plan voted on earlier this year, which for the first time aligned the United States with global goals; this reversal in the first polluter per capita contribute to the planet’s transition from already inevitable warming to catastrophic warming;
3. question the American financing of the war in Ukraine, to the great joy of Vladimir Putin;
4. rule out any possibility of controlling the sale and circulation of firearms, including assault weapons (killings have increased from 5 per week in 2014 to 13 this year).
All this while inflation will continue to race, up or down, just as it would if the Democrats had won the election.
Urban crime will also continue its course, as its rise is recorded in cities run by Republicans as well as those run by Democrats.
Disgusted? This is nothing compared to the real significance of the announced victory of the Republicans. Put simply: after November 8, democracy will be in palliative care.
For two years, Donald Trump and his movement have carried out a complete grooming of the Republican political personnel, expelling almost everywhere those who do not display their faith in the “big lie”, according to which the real president elected in 2020 was Trump, not Joe. Biden. The fact that some 40 justices, including those appointed by Trump and the Republican majority on the Supreme Court, rejected appeals claiming to show that the election had been fraudulent does nothing to alter the Trumpist fury.
A review by the Brookings Institution counts 345 Big Lie candidates at all electoral levels and rates the probability of victory for 270 of them as “high” or “medium”. These candidates are targeting key positions in the certification of electoral results, from where they can impose their views. As proof, this promise of the Republican candidate for the position of Secretary of State – equivalent to the Chief Electoral Officer – of Nevada, Jim Marchant: “When my coalition of candidates for Secretary of State in the country is elected, we will fix all the country and President Trump will be President again in 2024.” It’s convenient, he is already certain of the outcome of a future election.
Chaos could not wait until 2024, but set in on November 8. Proponents of the big lie have been elected in large numbers among the scrutineers, and the local election officers intend to multiply the objections in order, they say, to accumulate evidence of fraud, which could halt the processes of voting, counting and certification. To get an idea of the scale of the disaster to come, you have to see the explanatory video recently produced by the New York Times.
It is now possible to say that American political polarization has reached a point of no return and that the conditions for the eruption of political violence have been met. As proof, this astonishing result of an NBC poll of the last few days: 80% of Democratic voters believe that “the Republican Party’s program poses a threat which, if not stopped, will destroy America as we know it. “. Conversely, 80% of Republican voters say exactly the same thing about the Democratic Party!
A summary for those who haven’t been following: The prevailing position among Republicans is that the Democratic Party, tied to tech companies, the media, Hollywood and Wall Street, stole the last election and wants to steal the next one. impose everywhere the program wokeespecially deliberately opening the southern border to Latino immigrants to accelerate the (demographically inevitable) minorityization of whites.
It is therefore not a political dispute, but an existential danger for which, according to a significant number of Americans – up to one in three – it may be worth taking up arms, as the did the January 6 insurgents. For two years, it has become common to evoke in the political debate the risks of civil war, of secession from Republican or Democratic states. American democracy is truly in danger today. And this is true regardless of the outcome of the November 8 election.