Salon
•61% Informative
The rot in American society is much deeper than "polarization" and "hyper-partisanship," says Julian Zelizer.
Zelizer: Americans are lost in the Trumpocene, unable to grasp the scale of the crisis and how to escape it.
He says they have incorrectly convinced themselves that their values and beliefs are shared by most people including Trumpists and other Republican fascists.
At this point, eight years into the Trump era, the sexism is internalized by his supporters.
"Does he respect women? No. But can he run the country? Better than Biden," said a Michigan retiree who voted for Trump in 2016 and 2020.
"I'm sure he's not an innocent person by any means," Sandy, a mother of three from North Dakota, said about the indictment.
Moreover, I would suggest in many ways that the crisis has gotten worse as Trumpism and American neofascism have become even more normalized across huge swaths of American society including its political class, news media, and other elites. Wish-casting, denial, the false consensus effect and other errors in reasoning and thinking keep the American people trapped in the Trumpocene and fascist fever dream. To escape that horrible place and to save themselves and their democracy, the American people are going to have to let go of such childish ways of thinking and behaving..
VR Score
59
Informative language
54
Neutral language
36
Article tone
informal
Language
English
Language complexity
54
Offensive language
offensive
Hate speech
possibly hateful
Attention-grabbing headline
not detected
Known propaganda techniques
detected
Time-value
short-lived
External references
4
Source diversity
3
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