They may find themselves increasingly marginalized—the virus by the vaccines, and Trumpism by demographics, but where they find fertile ground they are becoming more vicious.
The virus is evolving more contagious and lethal mutations that pose a threat greater than the original virus to the non inoculated.
About the Trumpist base, David Brooks writes in the New York Times, “What’s happening can only be called a venomous panic attack.”
Brooks cites the statistics showing the shrinkage of the two groups that constitute the Trumpist base:
Non-college educated whites dropped from 53.8% of the electorate in 2016 to 49.2% in 2020. Amongst white evangelical Christians, the percentage of those attending any religious institution has dropped below 50 percent, the first time in 80 years.
He notes, at the same time, the radicalization occurring in that world: “The decent know that they must become ruthless. They must become the stuff of nightmares,” Jack Kerwick writes in the Trumpian magazine American Greatness “The good man must spare not a moment to train, in both body and mind, to become the monster that he may need to become in order to slay the monsters that prey upon the vulnerable.”
Biden’s presidency enjoys wide support. Its three main policies so far, regarding the pandemic, poverty and the environment seem to be generally well received. Not just by Democrats, but by a small but important number of Republican voters as well. A rising economy in the USA seems to be fanning some optimism there. The young are feeling increasingly hopeful.
Ultimately, the hesitant may avoid the vaccine at their own peril, and the radical white supremacists may go back to live mostly in their fringe echo chamber.
And even great polluting nations may not be able to thwart the environmentalist fervor that is rising to stem the tide of climate change.
But victories in these battles, between progressive quantity and potent negative quality, are far from over—or certain—yet.
Dr. Benjamin Feldman 