Meet Republican Dick and Democrat Jane...

Say hello to Dick and Jane. Dick is a Republican. He is a WASP, 58, and has a high school education. He attends the Church of Mammon every Sunday and worships at the altar of the gospel of wealth though he is not wealthy himself. His Granddaddy was a follower of Gerald K Smith and his Daddy was union man who once worked in the steel mills of Birmingham and adored Strom Thurmond, George Wallace and Richard J. Daley. He loves the Donald with a religious like fervour believing Donnie to be the vessel of god.

Dick believes, as his church teaches, that the Democrats are the spawn of Satan. He is certain that Satan is a card carrying red, that god gave men guns on the second day of creation, that god made women the helpmeets of men, and that courts should be made up only of "true Americans" like himself. Dick listens to Fox News all day dittoing their message about how America is not what it used to be.

See Dick run up that hill. He knows that if his party doesn't do something they will have a difficult time winning elections given America's demographic realities. He approves of gerrymandering. He approves of the electoral college. He approves of making it difficult for "fake Americans" to vote . He believes that he and his Trumpublicans (aka Dixiecrats) are numbered among the saved and that Democrats are not.

Say hello to Jane. She is Democrat. She is 25 and is from New York City. She majored in history during her undergraduate years and knows that as the Democrats pursued civil rights and less WASPish immigration policies, that the Southern Democrats and their White evangelicals increasingly fled to the Republican Party transforming or dixiefying that party in the process.

Jane realises that Democrats are running up a very high hill mostly of their own making. She understands that her party really doesn't play well in more than 30 American states making it difficult for Democrats to gerrymander. She also knows that Republican control of almost two-thirds of America's states enables poor poor rich peoples movements to pass legislation favourable to their ideological agenda. She realises that electoral college math makes it more difficult for Democrats than Republicans to win elections on the federal level. Jane realises that as Republicans moved from conservatism to Birchism, Democrats too moved right becoming true believing neoliberals or cynics who believe you have to be neoliberal in order to win elections in the process.

See Jane running up that steep and high hill. She is beginning to wonder whether the Republicans will ever play ball with the Democrats again. She wonders whether Democrats will ever be able to stop the right wing lowest common denominator manipulative "magic" of Republicans. How can, she asks herself, they stop Republican attacks on unions, education, and minority voters, all important segments of the Democratic Party? She often hopes, like many in her party, that changing demographics will take care of all of the Democrats' problems allowing Democrats to make America great again.

Dick and Jane's cultural "marriage" is a bad "marriage" though they neither one seems to want to recognise that it is. Wouldn't it be nice if Dick and Jane recognised that their cultural "marriage" is a bad one and divorce as equitably as is possible before America experiences yet another battle in its continuing cold cultural civil war, a cultural civil war that has been around even before there was an America?