America has vibrant cities such as New York, Chicago, San Francisco, Boston, Seattle, etc. and stunning and diverse scenery including the Grand Canyon, Yosemite and the Sierra Nevadas, The Adirondacks, Glacier National Park, Zion National Park, Yellowstone, and Death Valley.
For years, people from other countries aspired to live in America, or at a minimum, to visit as often as they could. This seems to no longer be the case, so what went wrong?
Oh sure, we all knew about the weird sub-cultures such as the survivalists, the creationists, the televangelists, the KKK, Westboro Baptist Church, and the NRA. We know about the daily pledges of allegiance in schools. We knew that several states allow the teaching of Intelligent Design as a scientific alternative to evolution. We knew that racism and white supremacy isn’t far below the surface in many areas. We knew there has always been a strong anti-intellectual thread running through American culture. We knew that they feared universal healthcare because it smacked of socialism. We knew that things like religion, patriotism, and nationalism dominate American identity.
I saw this article on Quora, which sums up American culture quite nicely…
Q: Why do many Europeans think Americans are “dumb,” even when the U.S. has the highest GDP in the world?
Marc A. Donis
Glad you asked. I grew up in the States, and I have lived here in Europe for the past 14 years, so I think I might be able to answer your question.
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Now, here are some reasons:
- In the US, more than half the population (depending on the poll) rejects evolutionary theory in favor of the explanation offered by whatever religious group they happen to belong to. This number is higher by far than in any other industrialized nation. Likewise, climate change is still discussed as if the reality of it is an open question.
- Most high school students can barely be called that, as they expend most of their energies socializing, attending pep rallies and sporting events, selecting the most qualified candidates for student government, and hanging out on their phones. Every college-bound European student, by contrast, must necessarily complete a BAC, a rigorous program that is equivalent to about two years of college in the US. School has no other function than to educate.
- In Europe, it is acceptable to have a conversation about some aspect of philosophy, art, or history at a keg party. In the US, raising such a topic is more likely to elicit blank stares and derision.
- Americans seem obsessed with making money. This might go some way to explaining the “highest GDP” claim, and it also explains the general lack of sophistication among Americans regarding non-lucrative subjects such as math, history, arts, culture… etc. In the US, the question of how this or that education will lead to more money is raised constantly. I suspect it won’t be long before the subjects above are simply cut from high school curricula.
- Every European nation (save a few such as Luxembourg) is embarrassed to consider itself to be the worst at languages. By this they mean that they have difficulty expressing complex ideas in a foreign language. In the US, speaking only English (and just barely even that) is considered a point of pride.
- The US seems like a cultural wasteland to Europeans, who are used to thousand-year-old cities, museums of art and history, and cultural events in the streets. When Europeans visit the US, they tend to ignore the cities (save New York) in favor of that natural splendor of Yosemite or the Grand Canyon.
- The images projected by Americans brands overseas are generally devoid of any intellectual aspiration. Disney, Coke, McDonald’s, Marlboro, most Hollywood movies, much of pop music… all of them seem to cater to the lowest common denominator.
- Europeans value careful deliberation and subtlety in thinking. Americans are perceived as being slow to think and quick to act.
- Americans are seen as loud and proud. They can be obnoxious, and have a bizarre tendency to claim to be “the best country in the world” (viz. this question). The flagrant nationalism and frequent assertions of being “the best” strikes Europeans as conceited and undignified.
- A vast majority of Americans (about 80%) have never traveled beyond their borders, and many don’t seem to care to.
- The virulent religiosity that is pervasive in society. Europeans think it’s weird the way we write “In God we Trust” on our money… and now, on police vehicles.
- The food, which is perceived as utterly unsophisticated, if not total junk. This may largely be due to the fact that international brands like McDonald’s and Pizza Hut are the only exposure many Europeans have to American dining habits, but I think there is some truth to it.
- Guns. While I will reserve my opinion on this topic, I can say that that most Europeans unequivocally see no purpose in allowing citizens to carry guns. They see the US as a gun-crazed, violent place where gangs and deranged high-schoolers shoot at random people for fun. Huh, blame Hollywood, I suppose.
- Individualism is central to the prototypical American value system. In many parts of Europe, this word is conflated with egocentrism and antisocial behavior. (This observation isn’t so much about perceptions of American stupidity, but it bears mentioning just because it is such a fundamental difference in culture.)
Yes, I’ve been tremendously unfair, and I know it. Stupidity is about evenly distributed in the world, and to be sure, we have our share here, too. To be fair, one could easily make an equally long list of American perceptions of European stupidity.
But Americans have their own special brand of it.
A popular topic on YouTube is contestants on American TV shows, especially quiz shows, where they display an embarrassing level of ignorance. And yet these people are often witty and entertaining. They certainly don’t all come across as dumb…. but there’s no escaping the fact that most of them are poorly educated, and seem strikingly unaware of what goes on outside their own lifestyle niche!
Bill Bryson, an American author writes in his book “The Lost Continent: Travels in Small Town America” about a study by the National Endowment for the Humanities…
“It had recently tested 8,000 high school seniors and found that they were as stupid as pig dribble. More than two-thirds of them did not know when the US Civil War took place, couldn’t identify Stalin or Churchill, and didn’t know who wrote the Canterbury Tales. Almost half thought that World War I started before 1900. A third thought that Roosevelt was president during the Vietnam War and that Columbus sailed to America after 1750. Forty-two percent – this is my favorite – couldn’t name a single country in Asia”.
Some salient quotes.
“I have a foreboding of an America in my children’s or grandchildren’s time – when the United States is a service and information economy; when nearly all the key manufacturing industries have slipped away to other countries, when awesome technological powers are in the hands of a very few, and no-one representing public interest can even grasp the issues; when the people have lost the ability to set their own agenda or knowledgeably question those in authority; when, clutching our crystal and nervously consulting horoscopes, our critical faculties in decline, unable to distinguish between what feels good and what’s true; we slide, almost without noticing, back into the darkness.
“The dumbing down of America is most evident in the slow decay of substantive content in the enormously influential media, the 30-second soundbite (now down to 10-seconds or less), lowest common denominator programming, credulous presentations on Pseudoscience and superstition, but especially a kind of celebration of ignorance.” – Carl Sagan
“There is a cult of ignorance in the United States, and there has always been. The strain of anti-intellectualism has been a constant thread winding its way through our political and cultural life, nurtured by the false notion that democracy means that “my ignorance is just as good as your knowledge.” – Isaac Asimov
“The greatest enemy of knowledge is not ignorance, it is the illusion of knowledge.” – Daniel J. Boorstin
“You are not entitled to your opinion. You are entitled to your informed opinion. No one is entitled to be ignorant.” – Harlan Ellison
“The problem with the world is that the intelligent people are full of doubts, while the stupid ones are full of confidence.” – Charles Bukowski
“Nothing in all the world is more dangerous than sincere ignorance and conscientious stupidity.” – Martin Luther King, Jr.
“I know of no time in human history where ignorance was better than knowledge.” – Neil deGrasse Tyson
“There are in fact two things, science, and opinion; the former begets knowledge, the latter ignorance.” – Hippocrates
“The ignorance of one voter in a democracy impairs the security of all.” – John F. Kennedy
“Real knowledge is to know the extent of one’s ignorance.” – Confucius
“To surrender to ignorance and call it God has always been premature, and it remains premature today.” – Isaac Asimov
Dumbed-down politics.
Towards the end of Jimmy Carter’s presidency, he initiated a move from imperial measurement, to metric, to bring the US in line with pretty well everywhere else on the planet. He also warned the American public that their lifestyles were unsustainable… they were using up all their resources, and producing more pollution per capita, than other industrialized nations.
Along comes Ronald Reagan with his own brand of low-budget politics, saying we don’t need these tricky foreign metric systems; and as far as the environmental issues were concerned, there was nothing wrong that can’t be fixed with a little American ingenuity. Of course the electorate liked what they heard, and he won by a landslide. And of course, America still hasn’t gone metric, and he did nothing about the major environmental issues.
A popular sentiment is:-
“Republicans think the public is stupid, and therefore to be taken advantage of, while Democrats think the public is stupid, and therefore need to be protected.”
But then just when we thought U.S. politics had reached rock bottom, along came Trump’s presidency which has caused the rest of the world to re-evaluate how we feel about American society today.
For us, Donald Trump was a brash, vulgar, self-agrandising, spoilt rich kid and ex-game show host. He bragged about his achievements, his pussy-grabbing exploits, his affairs, how he reneged on business deals, how he stiffed his sub-contractors. We knew about his multiple bankruptcies, his failed university scheme, and his various legal battles. To us he was a joke, and even parodied on The Simpsons.
So when we heard he was running for president in 2016, we were mostly puzzled, thinking “is this the best candidate the Republicans can come up with?” And then suddenly he was polling at 46%, 48% and we thought “that means that approaching half of the US electorate think he’s the best person to run the world’s most powerful country”, and then most of us would have added “WTF?”. And of course he won the 2016 election.
We understand that a lot of people in America are tired of career politicians… I think that goes for the rest of us! On the other hand, we don’t particularly like lawyers either, but we wouldn’t choose (say) a used-car salesman to represent us with our legal issues.
It’s quite well established that Americans don’t like overt intellectualism, and have several times demonstrated a preference for the candidate with homey charm, rather than their clever opponent with a university background.
This is very puzzling to Europeans (and I imagine just about every other industrialized nation), where intelligence is considered to be a useful attribute in its leaders!
Anyway, it turns out that our concerns were well founded. One of Trump’s first acts was to pull the USA out of the Paris Accord on climate change. Then he gave tax breaks to the already rich. We’ve seen him give high-ranking jobs to family and cronies. His clumsy diplomacy alienated many of America’s traditional allies. We watched as he created a culture where hate groups thrive. We’ve seen people drive their cars into crowds of peaceful protesters. We’ve heard him sanction racism and misogynism. We’ve heard his 20,000 odd lies. We watched as he politicised the handling of the Covid-19 pandemic and frequently tried to undermine the credibility of his own science advisers. Ultimately, we’ve watched as he created a damaged and divided America.
Now we’ve just has the spectacle of the 2020 election which he (Trump) lost, claiming that the election was ‘rigged’ against him. In fact he even increased his vote count from 63 million in 2016 to 74 million. The Democrat victory was achieved only because they were able to motivate their voters; they upped their vote count from 66 million in 2016 to 80 million in 2020.
As of November 20th, Trump still refuses to concede, and in an unprecedented departure from protocol, the transition to the next administration has been stalled.
It’s a measure of the importance of this election that an extra 20 million people chose to vote at a time of pandemic. But it’s also an indicator of how polarised America has become that 74 million voted for Trump even after the 4 year debacle that has been his presidency.
It’s also a measure of the gullibility of Trump’s supporters, that despite Biden winning the electoral college vote by 306 to 232, the popular vote by 6 million, and every respectable news outlet saying that his claims of vote rigging are ludicrous, Trump continues to say “I won”, and something approaching half of his supporters believe him.
So what’s going on? Well we know at least in broad-brush terms that the educated, mostly city-dwelling voters sided with the Democrats, and the lesser-educated, and poorer rural communities tend to vote Republican.
For a lot of people, me included, this election was the point that the suspicion – harboured for some time, possibly even back to the Reagan era – that large sections of the US public were kept dumb, and essentially nurtured for the purposes of supporting the Republican cause was confirmed. They continue to target the poor and disenfranchised voters by playing on their lack of sophistication, their ignorance and gullibility with well-aimed rhetoric, ultimately causing them vote for the party that traditionally will do the least for them. It’s probably not an understatement to say that they are brainwashed into voting against their own best interests.
The Republicans
Part of the Texas GOP manifesto, 2012…
We oppose the teaching of Higher Order Thinking Skills, critical thinking skills and similar programs that are simply a relabeling of Outcome-Based Education (mastery learning) which focus on behavior modification and have the purpose of challenging the student’s fixed beliefs and undermining parental authority.
Some other observations…
- They tend to be anti-science, anti-intellectual, and oppose welfare support and universal healthcare. They promote racial intolerance, religious intolerance, gun ownership and the acquisition of wealth.
- The Republicans are pro-business… yes, to the point where they deny scientifically accepted things like Climate Change, and seek to erode the consumer and environmental protections and safeguards, when these issues threaten profits.
- The Republicans support ’family values’. In reality, it’s all posturing… statistics seem to show that they are more corrupt and amoral than the Democrats. Their variety of ‘do as I say, not as I do’ morality is complete hypocrisy.
- The Republicans support ’Christian values’. This is also ‘check box’ politics… a lot of them don’t act like good Christians. And I often wonder what would happen if there was a second-coming, and Jesus returned without any razzmatazz, and went to live in America.
Jesus is generally represented as long-haired and bearded, almost certainly dark-skinned. And he’d be preaching peace, love and tolerance, and other ‘socialist’ values; and be quite outspoken on things like greed and acquisitiveness, racial intolerance, and willful neglect of the poor, the sick and the homeless.
I can’t help but wonder what the average GOP supporter would think if (heaven forbid), he moved in next to them. Similarly, it would be interesting to get his thoughts on the things that are said and done by these people in his name.
- The Republicans support ‘The American Way’. They say that providing universal healthcare, and welfare payments undermines people’s motivation to ‘help themselves’. The reality is they have painted themselves into a corner by saying that these measures smack of socialism or communism, and their main strategy now it seems is to denigrate those countries that have these things.
- The Republicans are dedicated to increasing the distance between the rich and the poor.
These are the sort of things their politicians say about rape:
- “Rape is kinda like the weather. If it’s inevitable, relax and enjoy it” – Clayton Williams (R-Tx)
- “If it’s a legitimate rape, the female body has ways to shut that thing down” – Todd Akin (R-Mo)
- “Rape victims should make the best of a bad situation” – Rick Santorum (R-Pa)
- “Even when life begins in that horrible situation of rape, that is something God intended to happen” – Richard Mourdock (R-In)
- “If a woman has a right to an abortion, why shouldn’t a man be free to use his superior strength to force himself on a woman? At least the rapist’s pursuit of sexual freedom doesn’t (in most cases) result in death” – Lawrence Lockman (R-Me)
Some opinions from Quora. Republicans are…
“Gerrymandering and voter deselection are very publicly practiced and followed as a goal by Republicans, trying to weasel around Supreme Court decisions.”
“rabidly racist, intensely anti-intellectual, violently regressive (let alone merely conservative), highly theocratic, unrepentantly corporatist, profoundly misogynistic, rabidly militarist shit-show of a political party.”
“opposition to gun control, opposition to abortion, opposition to LGBT rights, lack of belief in climate change, open espousal of religion and tolerance of Creationism”
“usually religious, believe in a strong military, America first, extremely socially conservative, if not reactionary, almost exclusively white, anti-feminist, if not downright misogynist.”
“open racism, open contempt for women, open authoritarianism, much talk about family, religion, how to “make the nation great again”, near worship of military might, obsession over citizenship, much talk about the “lying media””
That the Republican party, with its anti-intellectualism, its hypocrisies, and its anachronistic and threadbare policies hasn’t disappeared without a trace, is clearly testament to their powers of propaganda.
Make America Great Again?
This is how far America has slid from greatness:
- USA is 49th in the world adult literacy tables.
- USA is 41st in the PISA world rankings for Mathematics**
- America has 5% of the world’s population, but it generates 20% of the worlds CO2
- Its infant mortality statistics are truly appalling: in a table of infant deaths per 10,000 births, the USA (with 6.1) is one of the worst of the industrialized nations. A baby born in the USA is 3 times more like to die in infancy than say, Finland or Japan. The state of Alabama for example is so bad, that if it were a country, its infant mortality rate would be worse than that of Lebanon.
- 35.9% of USA’s population is ‘clinically obese’ (compared with, say France’s 12.9%)
- Homicide rates are the worst of the industrialized nations at 5.9 per 100,000 (compared with France’s 1.6, Britain’s 1.6 and Germany’s 1.0). It’s so bad that annually in Los Angeles, there are more violent deaths in playgrounds than there are in the whole of London.
- People are still serving sentences of life imprisonment without parole for non-violent offenses under the ‘three strikes rule’. Jeff Mizanskey’s story is not uncommon.
- In terms of foreign aid, America is placed bottom of the top 20 industrialized nations, with 0.17% of its gross national income… Sweden tops the list with 1.40% and Britain is 6th with 0.71%.
- In a recent study of the health of children and young adults in 50 industrialized countries, America was down in 47th place.
- According to an OECD (Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development) report of member nations, health care costs in the USA are around double the per capita costs of most European countries, and a significant fraction of the population can only get rudimentary health care.
- Almost every industrialised nation has a high-speed rail network, but most passenger trains in America cannot exceed the speeds that they could do in the 1920s. The exception being the Acela Express which runs down the highly populated east coast.
I love the fact that marketing men at Amtrak claim that it’s “the fastest train in the Western Hemisphere” because it can do 135 mph for 33 miles of it’s journey between New York and Washington! - The American Dream is central to the aspirations of most Americans. Economists refer to it as Intergenerational Income Elasticity… the relationship between a person’s possibly humble origins, and what they can achieve in later life. Only it turns out that America isn’t very good at ‘The American Dream’… checkout… This Chart Makes A Joke Out Of The American Dream, where the USA is down in 15th place!
**One of the most vivid arithmetic failings displayed by Americans occurred in the early 1980s, when the A&W restaurant chain released a new hamburger to rival the McDonald’s Quarter Pounder. With a third-pound of beef, the A&W burger had more meat than the Quarter Pounder; in taste tests, customers preferred A&W’s burger. And it was less expensive. A lavish A&W television and radio marketing campaign cited these benefits. Yet instead of leaping at the great value, customers snubbed it.
Only when the company held customer focus groups did it become clear why. The Third Pounder presented the American public with a test in fractions. And they failed. Misunderstanding the value of one-third, customers believed they were being overcharged. Why, they asked the researchers, should they pay the same amount for a third of a pound of meat as they did for a quarter-pound of meat at McDonald’s. The “4” in “¼,” larger than the “3” in “⅓,” led them astray.
Where America still leads the world…
- Incarceration rates per capita: America has the highest prison populations in the world at just over 2 million (ie. 0.5% of the population). Significantly worse than the second place country China, with 1.6 million in prison (just over 0.1% of the population). Furthermore, penalties for drug use are skewed in favour of white drug users, so not surprisingly, there are 5 times as many blacks in prison than whites.
- Military budget, where America spends more than the next twenty-six countries combined, twenty-five of whom are allies.
- Medical bankruptcies: there are more than half a million medical bankruptcies every year in America, impacting more than 2 million family members.
- Gullibility: according to some surveys, more than half the population of America reject the theory of evolution, and around 10% believe that the Moon landings were a hoax.
Based on these figures, it wouldn’t be unfair to describe America as a third world country with money!
These are shameful statistics for a country where chest-thumping, flag waving patriotism is rife, and likes to consider itself the most powerful on the planet. I suspect that America will continue to slip down the rankings of every significant measure of what it means to be civilized, until they change their ‘dumbed-down’ culture.
And despite Trump’s MAGA rhetoric, things have only gotten worse during his presidency, but this was hardly surprising when he was offending his traditional allies, at the same time as he was cosying up to the likes of Putin and Kim Jong-un.
The rise of Creationism
People seem to forget that many of the world’s greatest scientists were religious including Galileo, Newton, Faraday, Maxwell, J J Thompson, Heisenberg and of course, Charles Darwin himself. Furthermore, there are many people in high office within organised religion who believe in science and the scientific method. They would all advocate not taking the Bible too literally, but they would see the hand of God in what are generally seen as scientific explanations.
Let’s face it, the Bible was compiled from many different sources. Then at various times by various councils and synods, the content was discussed, edited and redacted, so that the narrative was consistent with contemporary ‘Christian Doctrine’. Sadly, there are now contradictions and ambiguities, as well as various sections that may have had relevance 2,000 years ago but now seem questionable advice, such as selling your daughter into slavery (Exodus 21:7) and not eating shellfish (Leviticus 11:10). It’s obvious to most impartial observers that readers should take the biblical account of things with a grain of salt.
As Mark Twain noted, “The Bible… is full of interest. It has noble poetry in it; and some clever fables; and some blood-drenched history; and some good morals; and a wealth of obscenity; and upwards of a thousand lies.”
Science and religious belief are not mutually exclusive, but sadly, the 20th century saw the rise of religious intolerance to America, starting with things like the Scopes Monkey Trial of 1925. Since then, we’ve seen a frightening growth of people who think the Bible is the literal word of God, and religion and rational thinking are incompatible. This is religious fundamentalism, and just like the Taliban, ISIS and others, it’s a toxic, divisive, and narrow-minded influence wherever it’s encountered.
For a start Intelligent Design (ID) is predicated on a lie; it purports to be an alternative to the Theory of Evolution and as such, some US states allow it to be taught as a science. Except it isn’t a science; science is a search for truth involving strict protocols of hypothesis, research, experiment, peer review, etc. ID is a belief system and believers are actively discouraged from seeking the truth for themselves, or questioning Christian doctrine. To promote ID as a science is disingenuous, and I think lying to children is not a good way to maintain the moral high ground.
Furthermore, ID believers have got themselves onto many school boards, and a lot of states that don’t actually advocate teaching ID as a science have been persuaded to put stickers like this one in science books, so that not only is conventional science undermined, but I imagine students are now confused about the value of the scientific theory.
Healthcare
The US healthcare system is one of the greatest scams of our time, and it’s largely perpetrated by the fat-cat corporations against the entire population. It seem to be part of the unstated but patently obvious Republican strategy of maintaining, or even increasing the distance between the rich and the poor.
Most Americans are somehow convinced that their system results in a more streamlined and more efficient health system, but this is also part of the scam. Adjusted for taxes paid, direct contributions, co-payments, deductibles, etc, the average US citizen pays around double what we pay in Europe for healthcare. Checkout healthsystemtracker: USA $10,348 per annum, UK $4,192, France $4,600, Japan $4,519, and Canada $4,752. In addition, we know that our governments won’t suddenly modify or withdraw cover, or put up the premiums after a run of bad luck. So we know we won’t be bankrupted if we get a long-term illness or serious injury.
A common sentiment (when they’re not actually claiming that universal healthcare is tantamount to communism) is “why should my contributions go towards someone else’s healthcare?” totally failing to acknowledge that universal healthcare and private health insurance are both based the young and healthy subsidising the poor and elderly. Except private health insurance is a ‘for profit’ enterprise, with shareholders taking a cut.
That they can’t see that part of what it means to be a civilised country is to look after your injured, your sick, your unemployed, and the just plain ‘down on their luck’, is just another form of brainwashing.
It’s not particularly well publicised over there, but two million Americans are bankrupted every year when a family member becomes sick or injured, and health insurance is withdrawn or becomes too expensive.
Conclusions
I will always have an affinity with the States; we lived there for six years, our son was born there and is technically a US citizen, the countryside is wonderful and I love holidaying there, especially long road trips. So although I’m pretty disgusted with recent events, it’s possible that I will forget my current distaste, and that I will visit again.
What I will not do is visit the red states, especially the bible-belt states, as long as the peoples’ values in these states are so skewed that whilst professing to being (mostly) God-fearing Christians, they support a party that is openly racist, and promotes gun ownership, the exploitation of natural resources, a strong military, and believes that the sick and the poor should fend for themselves. When it came to choosing a president, they voted for a crooked, lying, amoral braggart who would only go near a church for a photo-op; whilst simultaneously considering the Democrat candidate and an unassuming church-going man, to be the Anti-Christ.
On the continuing saga of Trump’s claims of a rigged election, the actor Jon Voight, a Republican supporter and campaign contributor who thinks Trump is the greatest president since Lincoln, said recently “This is now our greatest fight since the Civil War, the battle of righteousness versus Satan. Yes, Satan,” he continued, “because these leftists are evil, corrupt and they want to tear down this nation.”
Skewed values? I’m being too kind to Jon Voight and his ilk… batshit crazy is probably more appropriate.
STOP PRESS
Saturday December 12th: Trump has so far failed to concede that he lost the election, claiming, without a scrap of evidence, that the election ‘was rigged’ against him. He has started numerous lawsuits to challenge the result, all of which have been thrown out as ‘unsubstantiated’ or ‘frivolous’. The latest one, thrown out earlier today by the SCOTUS, the US Supreme Court (with it’s 6 Republican appointees and 3 Democrat appointees), was actually nothing less than an attempt to get the governors in the four ‘crossover’ states of Wisconsin, Michigan, Pennsylvania and Georgia to ignore the peoples’ votes and hand the electoral college votes to Trump.
It’s a credit to the governors of those states (who all happen to be Republicans) that before the case went to the Supreme Court, they filed a motion that the lawsuit should be rejected. The Supreme Court agreed.
Not so credit worthy is the fact that lawsuit was supported by the attorneys general of 18 other states, and 106 Republican Congressmen.
This is close to sedition, and I suspect the ramifications of this will remain in the minds of Democrats and their supporters, and in fact most fair-minded Americans for some considerable time.
The lawsuit was started by Republicans in Texas, and when they heard the result, the chairman of the Republican Party in Texas, Allen West, said “Perhaps law-abiding states should bond together and form a Union of states that will abide by the constitution,”
Even in it’s ‘lame duck’ phase, Trump’s presidency continues to be toxic and divisive.
