America is broken? Well, people of all sort feel powerless, but...

I have never had much hate directed towards me in any situation. I may disagree with many people, but as an immigrant and an atheist, I have learned, for decades, to keep quiet for my own safety. I actually believe in government, so I prefer to act through voting, anonymously. I would be reluctant to runs for an office.

But there are millions of angry, disgruntled people out there.

I can't say I am patriotic. I left a country a long time ago, and adjusted to the new one. I've been an upstanding citizen and paid my taxes etc. I was never disgruntled. But, still, I never felt completely at home in a country whose politics have always been to the right of me. And the silly patriotism of supporting the military, that I have never supported. Yes, there have been wars we had to engage in, but the spreading of democracy around the world by force, that rarely works. I am not into forcing our culture or politics on other countries. Sure, free press and all that, and I don't support authoritarians, but that is the extent of it. I do not think this mission is worth dying for. Defend what you have, but stay there.

There are many people who supported Trump, because none of the other culture and tradition appealed to them. Many were racists. There was a sense of powerlessness. They had given up trying to affect things through normal politics. Trump gave them the sense that they could actually punish foreign countries and bring jobs back. That is not going to happen. Globalism has gone too far, manufacture is world wide.

The point I am trying to get to is that the recent events, storming of the Capitol mainly, has weakened our trust in the US government. It buckled a bit. And it did not protect politicians from a lynch mob. We liberals felt weak for the first time. Through the four years of Trump we had a firm belief in normalcy returning. We believed in our country prior to Trump, despite all the problems we have. We were able to keep order. The world was not perfect. Too many blacks were in jail, too many low income people had no healthcare. But the day to day workings of the country were still working. There were even people like Fauci in power, able to function for the common good despite Trump.

I look at a few extremist web sites once in a while, and I see a good number of people "down the rabbit hole" on Reddit. There are a large number of people who no longer are able to weed through information on the Internet to get any facts. They have organized life around the belief in a conspiracy. Life is easier that way,  no more seeking. All the people you chat with agree with you on most things. They have a mission. Most missions are to "put things back to the way they were." So the change they want is a conservative change. Not a progressive one.

Looking at all this, I still have one choice only. I believe we can deal with it. I believe in the system. If the state that I live in completely breaks down and goes full Trump for decades to come, I may need to pack up and move. But I am so far in the middle of the land, that a short move would not change much. I would need to sell a house and move into a tiny condo somewhere where the state is able to maintain the country as I have known it since 1976. That is when I decided to accept it as my own, once we were done with Nixon.

Jumping to 2021, the US dealing with COVID in a responsible way (vaccinating those willing to believe in science) and our return to normalcy by the end of summer will go a long way in convincing the majority of us that we need government. But we now know the number of people fallen off the main stream and stuck in the disgruntled world of conspiracies and libertarianism is significant.