nonequals wrote:
I think that it largely, or perhaps completely, depends on how successful their cowardly, unprincipled behavior succeeds in perpetuating Trumpism? Much easier not to feel guilty if you're living - 10-30 years from now - in a new Trumpmerica, where the R party and roughly half of this country never fixed it's thinking. The more Trumpist we are, the less guilt. The less Trumpy America is, the more guilt (in the subset of those folks actually capable of feeling guilt.....which may not be terribly high).
I'm of the pessimistic opinion that the damage that Trump and his supporters have done will never - in the foreseeable future - be fully/largely reversed. Too many people have gotten too comfortable with being blatantly dishonest and unprincipled and fully tribal. How does that get turned off?
Now, on the optimistic side, there certainly are countries that appear to have done large and quick about-faces (post-WWII Germany and Japan?). But are those examples - or others one might cite - sufficiently similar to our situation to give us much optimism that it can be done....and done in less than many decades? Don't know.
I'd recommend this book, if you haven't already reat it.
Basically, it all depends on what each side sees as their bigger threats. Ideological foes who still uphold the democratic principles, or ideological allies who ignore democratic principles?
