Strangers in a strange land
By 
A new poll that appears to be pretty high quality methodologically speaking (the MOE is 2.1%) has some data that aren’t really surprising, but are still sobering:
(1) Two-thirds of Republicans, and 82% of respondents who trust Fox News more than any other news outlet, say they believe the 2020 election was stolen from Trump. (BTW over time the distinction between people who say they believe this and people who actually believe this gets less important, as we become who we pretend to be as somebody once or twice said).
(2) That figure climbs to 97% for those who trust OAN and Newsmax.
(3) One in five Americans believe in the core QAnon tenet that “a storm is coming,” and one in six claim to believe the government is controlled by Satan-worshiping pedophiles who run a global sex-trafficking ring.
(4) One in six say America is so far off track that resorting to violence may be necessary to save the nation. This includes 30% of Republicans and 11% of Democrats.
(5) 29% of Republicans say life has changed mostly for the better since the 1950s.
“There’s a kind of wistfulness and nostalgia, the power of the mythical past,” Jones said. “It is an ethno-religious identity, it is a white Christian America and specifically a white Protestant America that people are harkening back to.”
Um yeah. Of course at this point we’re far enough away from the 1980s that they can become the new 1950s for the Reagan tankies:
John Pitney, a political scientist at Claremont McKenna College and a former top official at the Republican National Committee during George H.W. Bush’s presidency, said the data reflected a wholesale reinvention of a Republican Party that once aspired to Ronald Reagan’s shining city on a hill.
“Back in the 1980s, Republicans aspired to be the party of hope and opportunity. Now it is the party of blood and soil. The culture war is front and center, and for many Republicans, it is close to being a literal war, not just a metaphorical one,” Pitney said. “Republicans have a nostalgia for an America that never really existed.”
Ironic isn’t it?
(6) 80% of Republicans said America is in danger of losing its culture and identity. 98% of far-right television viewers agreed with this sentiment.
(7) 56% of Republicans said things have changed so much in America that they often feel like a stranger in their own country. 61% of Fox News viewers and 78% of Newsmax types agreed with this statement.
I actually agree with that last sentiment.