Thoughts on the current state of the USA?

[Imp-Chan]

So... things after the election are going more or less exactly as I predicted, only slower. Sometimes it'd be nice to be wrong.

Anyone have any big or small thoughts on what the US is in for in coming months?

[Forrest]

My neck of the country has been blissfully quiet (besides overhearing one guy with a "This Is Trump Country" sign on his lawn shouting the N-word a bunch from inside his house while I was on a walk the day after the election).

My girlfriend's parents actually lost internet access for about a week and when we spoke to them a few days ago they had no idea what had been going on at the Capitol etc. So if it weren't for national news, nobody around here would have noticed a thing.

I was laughing through tears at the absurdity on the 6th, whereas I usually only have calm opinions about political news. It was a tragic farce that perfectly epitomized the entire Trump presidency.

I'm expecting more violence to come in the next week or so, but I'm also expecting a positive outcome on the whole in the long run.

First of all I have hope that some actual decent relief for the tanking economy might come about now that fucking Mitch is on his way out.

Longer term this Trumpist/Qanon insanity seems poised to tear apart the Republican party. If that happens, and the Democrats have no real competition, I foresee an eventual split in that party into a corporatist side and a progressive side. I expect the corporatist side to absorb many of whatever remains of the semi-sane half of the Republicans, and quite possible the progressive side to absorb some of the less-crazy parts of the Trumpist mob, the parts who are rightfully pissed about "business as usual" and hungry for a revolution, but not completely sold on the racist/sexist/etc aspects (though obviously they're okay enough with them to tolerate the others who are all about those things). The sorts of people who wanted to vote Bernie in 2016 and then switched to Trump when Hillary got the Democratic nomination.

And the cooperation of off-duty police and ex-military in the Capitol raid seems to have finally driven home even to the centrist white people that those institutions have been infiltrated by the worst parts of America and are in need of serious reform. So I have some hope on that front, too.

[Graybeard]

"State of the USA" is kind of a weird concept at the moment (obligatory ES reference: Sarine, of course) because there are such enormous local, state and regional variations in the way things are playing out, not always in the ways one might expect. It's hard enough in normal times for someone living in a small town in the mountains of New Mexico, as we do, to get a sense of what things are really like in Washington or Los Angeles or even a similarly small town in Alabama or Nebraska or Maine, or vice versa. With the Covid-caused difficulties in traveling, it's even more so now. Neither news networks nor social media really resolve that; how can either give a sense of the way neighbors look at each other, or of altered sleep patterns (not just one's own) because of anxiety, or the lack of it, among people in those physically or socially distant places?

I was mentioning to my wife the other day that I thought there was about a 5% chance that Biden is going to get assassinated, or at least face a serious attempt on his life, in the near future. That may sound high, but keep in mind that we've had 45 presidents to date, of whom 4 have been assassinated and several more came close, and do the math. The difference now is the "near future" part -- that, and the real possibility that the attempt would be concurrent with one against Harris. That really is in unprecedented territory, and may it ever remain so.

It'll be very interesting to revisit your inquiry after 12:01 p.m. EST next Wednesday, Impy.