America Is Backsliding Toward Its Most Polluted Era

Republicans have gone full doublethink. Remember when egg prices was the single most important issue of the election? Now when you ask those same people about rising inflation and the catastrophic economy they'll tell you to "get over it" or "stop being so materialist".

The same people that described themselves as "hard-core free speech absolutists" are perfectly fine with innocent men getting deported to El Salvador with no due process, or foreign scientists getting detained at the border for having criticized the president on social media.

This country is fucked, half of its inhabitants now live with Fox News induced cognitive dissonance and are literally "ride or die" with the GOP. There's nothing Trump or his administration could do that would make them reconsider their support.

> half of its inhabitants now live with Fox News induced cognitive dissonance and are literally "ride or die" with the GOP.

This is a bit of an overstatement. In 2024, Trump received 49.8% of the vote on 64.1% turnout, which is only 31.9% of eligible voters and of course doesn't include millions of people who are ineligible to vote, mostly due to age. And some of Trump's total, relatively small yet crucial, consisted of nonpartisan "swing" voters who are not loyal to Trump or the GOP. The way our electoral system works, small differences are greatly magnified.

> This is a non-sensical argument

Please do not engage with me at all unless you're willing to respect the HN guidelines: https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

> For example, here you seem to be assuming that registered voters who didn't vote don't support Trump.

No, I'm simply assuming that if someone can't be bothered to vote at all, then they shouldn't be characterized as "ride or die" with the GOP. No voting, no riding. If you do not vote for Trump, or give money to Trump, what does "support" actually mean, in a practical sense? Moreover, your link focuses on registered voters, whereas I was talking about all eligible voters, registered or not. Most importantly, your link discusses how the ideology of the electorate has changed, e.g, "Politically disengaged voters have become much more Republican", implying that these people are not necessarily ride or die and could swing back to Democrats if they were offered a better narrative. Indeed, this is precisely the overarching point of your link! The commenter I replied to claimed, "The country is fucked", but the message of your link is the opposite of that.

All of the survey data that I've seen, including the data in your linked article, shows that voters in 2024 cared most about the cost of living and inflation. Thus, if Trump's tariffs end up making things worse rather than better in this respect, support for Trump is likely to plummet among people who are not "ride or die". Congressional Republicans are clearly nervous about this, though typically hesitant to openly contradict or defy Trump.