From the Washington Post opinion columns:
Opinion
MAGA Republicans are out of touch with the real America
By Max Boot
Columnist
A more diverse, better-educated country is more liberal, particularly on cultural issues. In other words, more like Provincetown and Martha’s Vineyard, less like the MAGA redoubts where pickup trucks have “Let’s Go Brandon” bumper stickers. https://t.co/mMvYohGN4Q
— Max Boot 🇺🇦🇺🇸 (@MaxBoot) September 1, 2022August 31, 2022
Provincetown was the site of the Bear Week superspreader event that, more than anything else, launched the covid Delta variant onto America in the summer of 2021. What’s more American than gay orgies spreading diseases?
It is easy in such environs to imagine that you’re not in the “real America.” In fact, a friend who lives, as I do, in New York City — yet another Democratic bastion — made precisely that observation in a half-joking manner. “I’m happy not to be in America,” he told me, meaning, presumably, he was happy to be in a place where drag queens are considered normal and Trumpkins are not.
But you know what? Provincetown is the real America. So is Martha’s Vineyard. These communities are undoubtedly on the left and prone to excesses of political correctness that make for easy punch lines. But, in many ways, they might be more representative of 2022 America than the Rust Belt diners where reporters love to take the pulse of Trumplandia.
There is an implicit assumption, shared by many Republicans and Democrats, that “real” Americans are White, rural, conservative, Christian and poorly educated. (“I love the poorly educated,” Donald Trump said in 2016.) Ultra-MAGA Republicans assume that their policy preferences — anti-immigration, anti-gun control, anti-abortion, anti-“woke” — are the only legitimate views that can be held by “real” Americans, and that anyone who disagrees is a pointy-headed elitist or “globalist” who is out of touch with reality.
Yet it is White, Christian, rural, conservative voters who are now in the minority. Indeed, much of the reason that MAGA Republicans sound so hysterical so much of the time is that they know that the tides of economic and demographic change are leaving them behind. The White share of the population has declined from 80 percent in 1980 to just 60.1 percent in 2019. By the 2040s, America is projected to become “majority minority.”
Wait a minute, I that the Great Replacement was a conspiracy theory?
… Our political system has a sharp minoritarian bias, but there is little doubt that Democratic positions are way more popular than Republican ones. …
There is a good reason so many MAGA Republicans are embracing “semi-fascism”:: Their views are too unpopular to command majority support anymore. They certainly don’t speak for the “real” America — to the extent that such a thing even exists.
