The American political and social divide is deepening

It looks like what we are experiencing socially and politically is a new normal that will persist for a long time, maybe many decades. What is happening is deep mindset drift in two apparently opposite directions. Two different realities, identities and, in view of the deceit and false beliefs that accompany the radical right mindset, alleged moralities are emerging and crystallizing.

The New York Times writes on more evidence of what appears to be a growing, probably irreparable mindset split:

After the governor of Texas ordered state agencies to investigate parents for child abuse if they provide certain medical treatments to their transgender children, California lawmakers proposed a law making the state a refuge for transgender youths and their families.

When Idaho proposed a ban on abortions that empowers relatives to sue anyone who helps terminate a pregnancy after six weeks, nearby Oregon approved $15 million to help cover the abortion expenses of patients from out-of-state.

As Republican activists aggressively pursue conservative social policies in state legislatures across the country, liberal states are taking defensive actions. Spurred by a U.S. Supreme Court that is expected to soon upend an array of longstanding rights, including the constitutional right to abortion, left-leaning lawmakers from Washington to Vermont have begun to expand access to abortion, bolster voting rights and denounce laws in conservative states targeting L.G.B.T.Q. minors.

The flurry of action, particularly in the West, is intensifying already marked differences between life in liberal- and conservative-led parts of the country. And it’s a sign of the consequences when state governments are controlled increasingly by single parties. Control of legislative chambers is split between parties now in two states — Minnesota and Virginia — compared with 15 states 30 years ago.

“We’re further and further polarizing and fragmenting, so that blue states and red states are becoming not only a little different but radically different,” said Jon Michaels, a law professor who studies government at the University of California, Los Angeles.

Americans have been sorting into opposing partisan camps for at least a generation, choosing more and more to live among like-minded neighbors, while legislatures, through gerrymandering, are reinforcing their states’ political identities by solidifying one-party rule.

“As states become more red or blue, it’s politically easier for them to pass legislation,” said Ryan D. Enos, a Harvard political scientist who studies partisan segregation. “Does that create a feedback loop where more sorting happens? That’s the part we don’t know yet.”

With some 30 legislatures in Republican hands, conservative lawmakers, working in many cases with shared legislative language, have begun to enact a tsunami of restrictions that for years were blocked by Democrats and moderate Republicans at the federal level. A recent wave of anti-abortion bills, for instance, has been the largest since the landmark 1973 decision in Roe v. Wade.   

Similar moves have recently been aimed at L.G.B.T.Q. protections and voting rights. In Florida and Texas, teams of “election police” have been created to crack down on the rare crime of voter fraud, fallout from former President Donald J. Trump’s specious claims after he lost the 2020 presidential election.  

Carrying concealed guns without a permit is now legal in nearly half of the country. “Bounty” laws — enforced not by governments, which can be sued in federal court, but by rewards to private citizens for filing lawsuits — have proliferated on issues from classroom speech to vaccination since the U.S. Supreme Court declined to strike down the legal tactic in Texas.

From what I can tell, as long as the radical right rank and file remain in the thrall of the propaganda, lies and slanders the elites have trapped them in, nothing is going to change for the better. Loss of liberty, respect for truth and democracy will all be cynically painted as victories for liberty, respect for truth and democracy. All of it is dark free speech, so there is nothing that can or will be done to stop the neo-fascist poison from continuing to flow and gain strength.

Most of the business community has slipped quietly back into line with the Republican Party and is now on the side of American fascism. That is the case despite big corporation propaganda asserting otherwise. The press looks to be too weak, inept and subverted by the profit motive to make much difference any more. Voters are the last line of defense, and as polling seems to indicate, they are more on the side to the neo-fascists than the democrats. Inflation is too Biden's fault, Biden is too sleepy and demented, etc., is what just might dismantle what's left of democracy, the rule of law and the civil liberties we enjoy now.

My personal assessment: ~80% of the blame goes to the Republican Party, laissez-faire capitalism, Christian nationalism and their endless cataclysm of lies, deceit, irrational emotional manipulation and vicious motivated reasoning. The other ~20% goes to everything and everyone else.

Question: Is it irrational or otherwise unreasonable to assign a ~80:20 responsibility split, e.g., because the Republican Party and conservatives are patriots and truth tellers who stand for democracy, truth, the rule of law and civil liberties, not the lying, thieving, tyrannical, socialist, communist, fascist, deep state, red flag, White people and free speech canceling, Christianity-outlawing Democrats and liberals?