A third of America wants its destruction

Apparently?

Trump’s approval rating—after his barking-mad performance at the United Nations—sits at 41%. The polls are everywhere.

The professional optimists on MSNBC pop champagne: “He’s underwater! We’re winning!”

But are we?

The Arithmetic of Entrenchment

Forty-one percent is not weakness. It is not erosion.

It is entrenchment.

That number translates into ~114 million voting-age Americans. And of those, about 80 million—nearly 29% of the entire adult population—aren’t dabblers. They are fanatics. A structural bloc, the size of Germany, larger than France, and more numerous than the voters who put him in office in 2020.

This is not a poll quirk.

This is not a protest vote.

This is a permanent cult, tens of millions strong, eternally convinced their orange idol was sent to save them from modernity. And if not him, then the next “golden calf” will replace him. Ironic, isn’t it, that the self-professed White Christian Nationalists of MAGA cling not to the New Testament’s gospel of love and acceptance, but to the Old Testament’s wrath?

Gimme that old time religion… It’s good enough for me. (Eye roll.)

I hypothesize we are now living a national Scopes Trial, except this time the jury is 80 million strong, the media is complicit rather than critical of it, and the “American Taliban” radical fundamentalists don’t just want biology textbooks censored.

They want the rules of the Constitution rewritten in their image.

What “Approval” Really Means

Approval in this context is not a shrug. It is not a “lesser of two evils.” When the subject is a carnival barker who has:

• tried to overthrow an election,

• whipped up an insurrection like a football coach riling the junior varsity,

• collected indictments the way Boy Scouts collect merit badges,

• and publicly wished harm upon his enemies,

…approval is not passive.

It is an oath of fealty.

It is a cheer from the bleachers as the Republic burns.

These 80 million are not ashamed. They are gleeful.

• Kimmel yanked off the air? They howl with joy.

• Journalists and judges prosecuted? They shout, “About time!”

• Women and children hauled away without due process? They pour another Busch Light.

• Tariffs that sink the economy? They slap their knees and grin, “That’ll show ’em!”

• Rural hospitals shuttered, Medicare gutted, alliances broken? They beam, “Freedom!”

• A president cursing his enemies at a funeral? They stand and applaud like parishioners at a tent revival. TESTIFY! Elmer Gantry had nothing on Donald Trump.

This is not ambivalence.

It is allegiance—the loyalty of a mob that demands cruelty as proof of strength.

The Mirage of “Common Ground”

Polite society clings to fairy tales about “common ground.” Jimmy Kimmel weeps about keeping friends across the divide. Editorial boards preach dialogue, reconciliation, and healing.

And those words and sentiments, it’s hard to actually care, be empathetic, be charatiable, as a person, and not want to embrace that.

I get it. I felt it too.

But not all are deserving of our forgiveness nor our charity.

A “common ground” requires two sides living in the same universe.

What ground is there to share with the Nazi?

The Khmer Rouge?

Pol Pot or Gaddafi or Idi Amin?

With the gulag-keeper or the apparatchik?

There is none.

This isn’t about tax brackets. This isn’t about tone.

It is about a will to dominate, humiliate, and destroy.

That is where I believe we find ourselves with MAGA, Trump, and this third of America hell bent on its destruction.

Why 80 Million Matters

Most democracies can endure a 10–15% fringe. That is the natural tax of freedom. Even H.W. Bush, who was universally admired after the successes of Desert Storm, only hit about 90%.

But when the fringe swells to nearly a third of the body politic, it is no longer a fringe.

It is a counter-nation: hostile, permanent, entrenched.

• Political parties warp themselves to serve it.

• Institutions compromise to appease it.

• Violence becomes normalized because it has a constituency the size of a continent.

• And children raised in its shadow become acolytes, ensuring the bloc survives long after Trump himself is embalmed in spray tan and formaldehyde.

Eighty million isn’t a blip.

It isn’t passing fancy.

It is the structural reality of American politics.

The Cold Warning

Yes, Trump is technically “underwater.”

But mistaking that for political (power) weakness is the smug liberal’s favorite hallucination. It’s in part why I am disgusted with the Democrats. No ideas. No hope. Too afraid to try and possibly lose. Ambivalent in standing by their convictions.

So they cackle at polling and go, “Well, maybe he’ll destroy himself.”

I suppose anything is possible. It’s possible that all of the oxygen in the room I’m presently sitting in could move to one part, and I could find myself suddenly suffocating to death.

It’s just not particularly likely.

So while anything’s possible, it’s more probable that we have a structural problem. One that has emerged from the many economic, political, and educational dynamics I’ve discussed at some length in multiple articles here at The Long Memo.

Forty-one percent is the floor, not the ceiling.

Eighty million Americans have pledged allegiance to a fraud, a mountebank, a cheap vaudeville Caesar—and in doing so have made themselves the greatest structural threat to the Republic since Fort Sumter.

Now, I don’t believe civil war comes in the way we might think this time around. I don’t see us returning to 1861. I don’t see shooting in the streets between factions. I think if that happens, analysis will be irrelevant, as the entire world will descend into nuclear anihilation. No country with the power, size, and scope of international affairs of the United States can go into civil war without the rest of the powers of the world getting “twitchy.” After 20 bombs go off, civilization’s epitaph is written.

But there is a “civil war” in this country between those who want to see its founding, its values, and its heritage destroyed and replaced by some patrimonialist system they hope they’ll benefit under. They want to see a meaner, darker, America. One that punishes the people they think wronged them. They’re ready to trade their liberty and their freedom for a bowl of pottage under a delusion of hope.

This is not a wave to be waited out. It is a sea-change. This isn’t something we’re used to dealing with in our history; this is a unique moment.

In 1925, the fundamentalists lost ground after the Scopes trial. They won the trial, but were ridiculed nationally, reduced in their political power, and ultimately, Darwin, not Bryant, won the day.

I’m not as optimistic about that outcome this time.

With a third of America committed to seeing people denied due process, thrown into cages, and deported to foreign countries to be tortured.

… believing, “they’re eating the cats, they’re eating the dogs.”

… shrugging as the government is unlawfully dismantled. Programs that serve millions destroyed. Support for schools, hospitals, the elderly, and the poor, eliminated.

… applauding as their own farms, businesses, and livelihoods are destroyed as the free trade system we spent four generations building unravels.

… cheering our President giving an unhinged speech before the entire world, making leaders like Pol Pot and Amin seem like statesmen.

… committed to their ideology, enclave of stupidity, and arrogance in the perceived righteousness of their God, their cause, and their actions.

The Scopes Trial may not be the right analogy here. Instead, Gone with the Wind, might be the correct model. To paraphrase Rhett Butler:

MAGA has nothing but grievance, blind allegiance, and arrogance.

Unlike the Confederacy, there will be no Appomattox to end this. The grievance is permanent, and the ignorance is willful.

The question is not whether “we” are winning—but whether “we” can survive sharing a country with them.