We should see it as it is: the power of the small, rural, conservative states in the US political system is quite strong. They have a lot of weight in the U.S. Senate and can prevent and enforce many things there. For example, the Senate elects the judges of the US Supreme Court. The Senate is dominated by rural, relatively small and medium-sized states, which are relatively backward in terms of social development, economic development and living standards.   A conservative electorate often dominates, especially since the beginning of neoliberalism and neo-conservatism. The conservative, rural states with their conservative electorate spend little on education, schooling and health care and are therefore largely to blame for their own social backwardness and weak economic situation

Since neoliberalism, voters’ political preferences have changed and become more conservative. The political influence of liberal forces and regions, the big cities, the growth regions within and among the states has decreased and the conservatives find stronger allies in our social alters than was the case at the time when the jurisdiction of the Supreme Court could lead to a de facto right to abortion on a national level.

Historically, it has been difficult to form the state. This is probably evidenced by the strong position that had to be given to small rural states.

It is okay if young people cannot see these important aspects in the phase of their first politicization.

But the government has no choice; it has to deal with the Senate. It should not, if the urban cancel-culture condemns something which is behind their own belief-systems,  blame the national government and withdraw political support, if the Administration would not side with them.  For the latter only does what it can to find majorities in the Senate for reasonable policies.

And we should not forget that not only democracy but ultimately also the statehood of the USA is principally endangered. It is a crisis of the USA as a federal state, the conservatives and the liberals are not getting together. Social growth and liberalism are an increasing nightmare for the conservatives.

It is not only the ideological right, but also the left that can endanger the statehood of democratic states. Let’s take European examples. So Corbyn, the former leader of the British Labor Party, was a highly respected politician among the radical left, although he hardly lifted a finger to prevent Brexit. Even the notorious Black Bloc, from which many left-wing liberals cannot distance themselves and which so clearly manifested its will to destroy and its contempt for democracy at the G20 summit in Hamburg in 2017, is diametrically opposed to our democratic system and tries to harm it wherever it can.

When I say that we have become wise by harm, I understand it to mean that the rational personality has been purified by the harm caused by the Trump government and that therefore, without us realizing it, less pressure from social age is weighing on our rational personality. This then makes it easier for us to take reasonable positions.

In my approach I focus on the individual voter and the political opinion leaders. They should admit to themselves that their involuntary political preferences should be questioned if they have proven to be unwise in retrospect.

We should be better able to relativize our spontaneous apocalyptic, anti-democratic preferences.

The Trump administration’s vicious corona policy produced 3 times more deaths than Americans were killed in Vietnam.

Not everyone needs 200,000 deaths before they become reasonable. If we, as enlightened citizens, admit in principle that our political involuntary preferences can cause harm, it makes us more inclined to take a reasonable political position and distance us form ideological ones.

Florian Galler