 I think that most reasonable people acknowledge that things right now in the United States are really, really bad. Things are bad because everyone knows that we have a government that is corrupt to its core and is fundamentally incapable of delivering even the bare minimum for its citizens. So things are bad and as a result people are losing faith in the American system. They're losing faith in democracy because they feel as if democracy itself is no longer an effective way to affect political change. So sentiment towards democracy logically is going to shift. Support for democracy will break down as people feel as if it's not working for them because at the end of the day people care about putting food on the table. They care about themselves more so than the political system that has failed them. Now I knew that this was the case but I didn't know how bad it was until I saw it quantify. So a new poll that just came out, it really does a temperature check of where Americans are at with regard to their support for democracy. And wow is this a wake up call or should this be a wake up call? Because we know that when things are bad, when times are tough, people are going to be desperate and that desperation leads them to be susceptible to radicalization and to be prone to think in conspiratorial ways. But to see how bad it's gotten, which this poll conveys, it's honestly just, it's shocking and it really spells doom for American democracy and if this holds and things don't change soon, American democracy is not long for this world and that's not hyperbole. So as Reid Wilson of The Hill explains, the poll found about 3 in 10 Americans, 31% believe the 2020 election was stolen from Trump, including two thirds of Republicans and a whopping 82% of those who trust Fox News more than any other media outlet. Among those who trust far-right outlets like One America News Network and Newsmax, 97% say they believe the election, which even Trump's own cybersecurity and election security officials agreed was the safest and most secure ever conducted in the United States was stolen. One in five Americans believe in the core tenant of the QAnon conspiracy that there was a storm coming soon, while one in six believe the United States government is controlled by a group of Satan worshipping pedophiles who run a global child sex trafficking ring. The same share 18% say they agree with the statement that America has gotten so far off track that true American patriots may have to resort to violence in order to save our country. The poll found 30% of Republicans agree that violence might be warranted compared with 17% of independents and 11% of Democrats. Those who buy into the farthest right media outlets are even more likely to contemplate violence. Among those people, 40% agree, quote, I'm not an alarmist by nature but I'm deeply disturbed by these numbers. I think that we really have to take them seriously as a threat to democracy. Sid Robert Jones, the founder and chief executive of the Public Religion Research Institute. Now the PRRI, the Public Religion Research Institute, they're the company that conducted this poll. And like I suspected the numbers to be pretty startling. But to see how many people are contemplating violence, how many people believe absurd conspiracy theories, how many people believe that the last election was stolen. It's just, we're getting really close to the point of no return where faith in democracy can't be restored. And you have an entire group of people in America, a substantial portion of the population saying we don't support democracy, we support a military coup. We want regime change, literally. Not just a turnover between administrations. We want regime change. And that's incredibly, incredibly horrifying. So this is depressing but I do want to give you a little bit of hope because we were here before where Americans were very desperate and they started to become fascistic, literally. They supported Nazis and things were turned around and the way that that happened was the government restored trust in American democracy and American institutions by delivering to these people. If you deliver and improve the lives of these people materially, that's not going to solve all of the problems. They're not just going to suddenly stop thinking conspiratorily like that. But it is the bare minimum that we can do to address the situation. But really, we have evidence that if we deliver, it works. The problem is that Democrats aren't using this limited window that they have to deliver and actually turn things around. Now in an article for The Daily Poster, David Zurota explains how the last time things actually were turned around for the better when American democracy was experiencing a legitimacy crisis. So this is what he writes. The first democratic parabola began almost 90 years ago when America's economy was ravaged by rampant speculation and then a stock market crash throwing tens of millions of people into abject poverty. As fascism rose in America through the growth of local Nazi groups, Father Coughlin and other conservative media voices, Franklin Roosevelt cast his progressive economic initiatives as both a weapon to fight the economic crisis and a shield against right wing authoritarianism. The year before a fulminating Nazi rally in a packed Madison Square Garden in New York, FDR warned that the global rise of fascism was the result of democratic governments doing the opposite of the new deal and protecting an economic status quo, enriching a tiny handful at the expense of everyone else. Democracy has disappeared in several other great nations, not because the people of those nations disliked democracy, but because they had grown tired of unemployment and insecurity of seeing their children hungry while they sat helpless in the face of government confusion and government weakness through lack of leadership, he said in a 1938 radio address. Finally, in desperation, they chose to sacrifice liberty in the hope of getting something to eat. Now, to be honest, the reforms that FDR implemented were not perfect, in fact, far from it. They excluded black and brown people. They didn't go nearly far enough, but they were enough to save democracy, to literally restore faith back in democracy. And on top of that, it saved capitalism from collapsing in on itself. Now, I think that Joe Biden understands the gravity of the situation. He knows we're in a similar situation, which is why we got these weird puff pieces talking about how Joe Biden wants to be the next FDR. But the problem is that he's not and he's very clearly not even trying to deliver to the extent that FDR delivered. The answer is to go further than FDR, complete his vision and include everyone in these new deal reforms. But that's not happening. And the result will be catastrophic. In fact, if things aren't turned around, this is likely going to be the outcome of the Democratic Party's failures. If Americans keep using Democratic institutions to try to fix the country and those institutions keep ignoring them and prioritizing big donors, many voters may simply stop believing in democracy. At minimum protecting democracy might not be much of a motivating force compelling people to turn out at the polls. So what we're seeing right now is a breakdown of American democracy and Democrats aren't doing what they need to do to address that threat. And the scary part is that they're not gonna likely have another opportunity to fix the failures and the deficiencies in our democracy for a really long time. They haven't passed voting rights reform. They haven't done electoral reform. And at a minimum, stop gerrymandering, allow nonpartisan groups to draw district lines. They haven't done that. And so the result is possibly catastrophic. We're heading off of a cliff and we desperately need intervention and Democrats aren't doing that. And yes, it's Republicans who are working their voters into a frenzy and they're the ones that have disproportionately lost faith in American democracy because they've been led astray by a charlatans like Donald Trump and right wing media. But young people, they're also going to start losing faith in democracy if they don't think their government is going to address the needs that will give them a future. Climate change is not being addressed in a meaningful way. Young people, I mean, it's hard enough to get them to pay attention to politics and get them to vote. So they may be another group that checks out. And here's the thing. You hear me talk about this and it sounds like I'm catastrophizing and I am catastrophizing. I think this is important, but some people might think, you know what? I actually think this is a good thing. I believe in this accelerationist theory that out of the rubble of the American empire, something new and possibly better can emerge. And sure, maybe that's possible. But given the population in America, knowing how manipulated we are as a society, what do you think is more likely to happen if American democracy collapses and we actually have regime change in the United States? Do you think we're going to have this compassionate social society where we finally take care of people? Or do you think that we're going to become a reactionary fascistic authoritarian society? I think the latter is much more probable than the former, unfortunately. So what we have to do is save democracy. And it seems like Democrats aren't up for the challenge. Things might just be too bad to fix. And we see the result of that. So I don't really have a rosy takeaway here, but things have got to change. And if they don't, people will continue to lose faith in American democracy and the situation will get even worse than it is right now. The humanist report is fake news. Mike only cares about crazy Bernie and his wacky socialist ideas. Sad, very sad. I'm unsubscribing.