Trumping DeTocqueville

US voter leanings defy logical explanation. But logic is not the point.

“Just this morning, a guy told me that the funeral homes see a lot of dead bodies from people who took a COVID vaccine. He said that their blood thickens and becomes a string in their veins. And they are told by the Biden government to keep it quiet.” He went on, “The same guy asked me a few months ago if I had noticed that many ‘illegals’ are very young. He said, ‘I wonder what the Democrats do with all these children.’ He believes that the Democratic Party is involved in organized pedophilia.” Pourquoi continued, “Even more widespread is the ‘news’ that Democrats want to make a law that can force parents to subject their children to surgery to change their genitalia.” He sighed. “There is no end to the uninformed nonsense.” I asked where to find such folks, and he said that they were everywhere: “Just go to the Walmart parking lot. You’ll see.”

— Charles Bethea, Letter from the South: Among America’s “Low Information Voters,” The New Yorker August 22, 2024

Lately I have been re-reading a book called Deer Hunting with Jesus. I visited the author, Joe Bageant, toward the end of his life and stayed in the guest bedroom upstairs in the old Winchester, Virginia home he liked to mention in his books. I didn’t know then that he was dying…