I finally met one last night

[markodochartaigh]

17. I'm happy for you

that this is not the America you grew up in. I grew up a half century ago in the reddest part of Texas. It is absolutely the "America that I grew up in". Much of the terminology has changed, when the people are not interested in introspection, much less in understanding the world, then terms are fungible or meaningless. People in those conditions organize their lives around gut feelings and beliefs. The underlying principle in Texas then, in Putin's Russia now, and in more and more of the US is authoritarianism. One characteristic of authoritarianism is its desire to metastasize, like many other cancers. If the US is very fortunate we may get a period like The Compromise of 1850 to prepare for the inevitable attempt to expand by the Authoritarian party, née Republican, and there may be enough US voters to overcome the gerrymandering, disenfranchisement, and suppression of the Authoritarian party.