What has gone terribly wrong is that democracy was never intended to be totalitarian. Democracy was never intended to dictate how much salt anyone puts on their food, or how much sugar in their drinks. It was never intended to coerce uniformity in most areas of life. It was only intended to make those decisions that free people necessarily make for a practical order. It had always been understood that within those few and wide bounds people could and should make their own choices.
The overreach of government was always a concern and often a problem, but the internet seemed to give legitimacy to government overreach and totalitarian attitudes.
Instead of giving power to "the people," the internet gave power to the "stupid people." People who typically lost arguments in science and religion began to take "votes" and notice that they had many votes, "likes." and "friends" on the internet and therefore must have a good argument. That is called argumentum ad populum. However, except a few entirely political decisions, argumentum ad populum is considered fallacious reasoning. Most things in life are not decided by voting. Nothing in science is decided by voting. The pre-eminence of the will of whatever god in religion is a topic of debate in some denominations, so within certain limits there might be some voting in certain denominations. For varying reasons though, most issues in religion, science, and everything else except politics are not decided by voting.
Where other people used such information as they could gather from objective reality to construct valid arguments, stupid people used the sheer number, for example on the internet, of people they might claim agree with them. Fallacious reasoning went rampant.
So both political parties are now dominated by people whose understanding of objective reality has ever been superficial and even seriously flawed. They are trying to define (or redefine) objective reality by their votes as if that were possible. Of course it is not. Truth can be inflexible in many cases. It is truth that has power, not always the majority. The majority can exercise power and democracy can flourish, but only as long as the majority acquaints itself thoroughly with objective reality and the underlying, inflexible truths there.
Most of the people who think Donald Trump should be president are mentally retarded. Perhaps instead of saying "retarded" I should say "they have tragically simplistic world views." The term "retarded" is no longer used clinically anyway. However it means the same thing and you might as well face the fact it means the same thing. Most people with clinically recognized learning disabilities are better behaved than Republicans. The Republican Party has seen such success as it has because the Democrats are also mentally retarded, perhaps even worse. As fond as they might be of "science," most Democrats are not capable of any.
Argument based on popularity is a serious problem throughout the political arena.
When I noted that certain categories of voters are "mentally retarded" one of my readers said, "I stopped reading at that point." I have always been fully aware that there is little money to be made as a journalist by telling people how stupid they are. However given the choice of lying about it to make money or telling the truth I have decided to stand on the truth. The generous people of Richmond have other fine jobs I can do to keep food on my table. Now that I am "retired" (past age 66 and two months) and collecting a small social security payment, I have more free time. They can ignore me without dire consequences, but not ignore the truth.
So I hope to remain an advocate for the power of truth in words. Clear communication requires putting clear thinking into unambiguous words. Too many people in both political parties are not thinking clearly and thus bad science is fighting bad religion to no avail for either side. No, those two will never "balance out" as some still believe. Without good religion and good science on the watch democracy will utterly fail. I have seen people who failed to distinguish "capital punishment" from the "self defense." Those are quite different things if clear thinking is employed.
One way to clear the confusion about gender identity is to call a "fantasy" gender what it is, a fantasy. Some fantasies are good and some are a serious social problem. When children pretend to be policemen or firemen it might lead to their success as adults being policemen or firemen. An adult who has failed to qualify is however a serious social problem if he remains mired in such fantasy. Of course no overt sexual play can be recommended for any children. When people believe government should recognize their fantasy gender there might be scenarios where a space on a government document can be provided to note "fantasy gender." without confusion with real gender. That is the power of words properly used to uphold the truth. In most educational settings objective reality is the primary focus and inexpedient fantasy should not be allowed. Many Democrats are mentally retarded and think that denying people their fantasies in some scenarios would be "falling backward" to less civilized times. Actually though homosexuality was totally accepted in ancient Roman society. That of course was the same ancient Roman society that killed people for entertainment in the Colosseum. Killing people for entertainment is a definition of a backward society.
At one time marriage ensured the couple would meet their responsibilities to each other and their children without government intervention. That failed so often, people deferred to government so often, that marriage now means deferring to government in the first place. By that new definition there is no difference between same sex marriage, heterosexual marriage, or no marriage since the government decides payments, visitation and much else anyway whether the couple agrees or not. While most Republicans appear to have given up trying to restore marriage to its original meaning, many of them are thinking they can control abortion better than it already is. They hope that they can reduce the number of abortions through government force without changing hearts and minds about the nature and sanctity of life. That failed before and will likely fail again. Marriage and abortion are two things government does not manage well.
A problem likely to be found with fantasy genders is that marriage will ever be mired in its new meaningless definition.
Part of the reason so many people remain oblivious of so much objective reality is that they do not get out much. Thus it is they have tragically simplistic world views. This is especially noticeable with daylight savings. It has been explained on this website why daylight saving is so beneficial. Yet there still remain people who think adjusting their clocks one hour two days a year is the big problem. They obviously haven't worked outdoors. "New" legislation is being considered to make daylight saving permanent. That would reduce the amount of work done in excess heat, but in the winter it would be dark when children catch the school bus. It is not really new. It was tried before and canceled because children had to catch the school bus in the dark in winter. Yet some poll found that over 60 percent of people believed a permanent clock (no adding or skipping hours) was a good idea. By now more people should be recognizing how wrong the majority can be.
Notice the similarity to the case recently where a male identifying as a female committed a rape in a restroom. I suspect many Republicans believe this makes a good case against gender confusion. The rape occurred, if it did, for the same reason rapes generally occur, there were no witnesses nearby. I do not mention this because I believe gender confusion is okay. I already explained why gender confusion is not okay. I only note that particular incident is not a good argument against gender confusion. To better prevent rape consider having a hall monitor. My argument against gender confusion is based on sound reasoning, regardless of your voting.
Since permanent daylight saving requires that children will have to catch the school bus in the dark in the winter, that creates a problem with the paucity of witnesses similar to the one in the restroom incident. A good question then is whether "Republicans" who believe gender confusion was the cause of the problem in that particular rape also expect their children to catch the school bus in the dark?
For now then it does appear stupid people still run the world. Since they "stopped reading" anyone who tries to explain to them how they are the problem there is nothing anyone can do but wait for them to start choking on their own stink and finally realize they are the cause of it and finally heed people who are not stupid. How soon will that be?
Depth of understanding can take time and dedication, even for the best observers. At last though more people understand how the severity of the pandemic was very dramatically overstated. The math is well within the reach of average citizens. I provided detailed charts myself. I explained why the raw death rate (regardless of cause) is more meaningful and "factual" than rates of the cause of death, which especially with rather extensive comorbidity can be opinionated. A good question then is whose idea was it to overstate the problem? What did they hope to accomplish? What if anything was accomplished?
What probably was accomplished is that blind faith in "science" was found to be as problematic as blind faith in anything else. I was making similar arguments leading in. There were likely other motives though, for example trying to prove blind faith in religion is never the problem.
Without a well developed and necessarily somewhat complex world view, blind faith in anything can go tragically astray, whether it is the Democrats' silly notions of science or the Republicans' silly notions of religion.
A particularly egregious notion of "religion" that appeared later in the game was that I must be mistaken in my finding that a "fear" of a god could benefit in a wiser society. See Psalms 111:10 and Proverbs 9:10. My critics instead cited II Timothy 1:7, where Paul says, "For God hath not given us a spirit of fear, but of power, and of love, and of a sound mind." Their terrible oversight of course was in failing to notice that Paul was addressing only Timothy and a few of his relatives who had a longstanding association with, and appreciation of, God's rules, without which other people should be afraid. Notice this analysis resolves any apparent conflict in the scriptures. The Trump base has no fear of anything whatsoever because they are stupid. They are right in noticing that the fear of the pandemic is inordinate, but they have the attention span of goldfish, and do not see their own mistakes. They are right about the pandemic the same way a broken clock is right twice a day.
Trump is trying to benefit from the resentment of the inordinate fear of the pandemic. Had he managed to do so earlier he might still be president. It is some wonder how that failed in 2020. Some people believe the election was "stolen." It is sad watching them because they seem like a dog chasing its tail. When and how will we know who "really" won? Who needs to bolster their arguments with an argumentum ad populum anyway?
The reason Trump never accomplished anything as president is that he is not a thinker. The people in his base are not thinkers. They just wait for the "thinkers" (or people posing as thinkers) to make mistakes and then celebrate.
How upset I am about all this is less important than how upset others will generally be as long as the truth is ignored. At least twice now some mentally retarded people who can't see the real problem have tried to blame me as the "loose cannon" in it all. I only state the truth. I have never advocated violence. What grieves me most as an individual is having to explain to young people the extent of their parents' failures. I hope they will forgive their parents and continue to appreciate all their parents have done for them, and the many ways their parents were correct.
It is nearly impossible in these conditions to predict election outcomes. Biden can and perhaps should be limited to one term, but the Republicans might not do well in the midterms, are still far from ready. If Republicans do not do well in the midterms that can better their chances in 2024.
This does not mean that counting votes is the problem that many people suspect. The count of votes is a number as close to a "fact" as any large number can be. What that count means can be open to opinion. It is similar to how the death count is very "factual" while the cause of death can be mired in opinion. Distinguishing facts from opinions is an essential skill that recently has not been well exercised.