Re: The States: Doing Their Own Thing...
Yes, and also don't forget that 33% are un-redeemable.
This is the thing we have to start with. Because liberals come from an academic / intellectual tradition we always believe that given enough information people will reach logical conclusions. But that is only true of the people who are competent in the academic / intellectual tradition. The real world is divided roughly into thirds:
One third are the humans. We won the mental lottery. Most of us went to college although there are also plenty of undiscovered humans who were f-cked over by being born poor and/or to sub-human parents. Humans think and reason. They draw conclusions from information. Stephen Colbert is a human.
The remaining two-thirds are sub-humans, split down the middle: half of them (hence one third of the total population) are chimpanzees. They're not humans but we can live with them; they aren't particularly aggressive or savage unless they are backed into a corner. While they can't be reasoned with, they can be cajoled and controlled. Chris Matthews is a chimpanzee.
The other half of the sub-humans (and the final third of the population) are the gorillas. Violent, aggressive, and spectacularly stupid, they are the source of 90% of the hardship in the world. They clutch their borders and their bibles and their bigotries. They are the kids we last saw in high school beating somebody up behind metal shop. The good news is the day you enter college you leave them behind in your personal life. The bad news is, they vote. Bill O'Reilly is a gorilla.
Political life is humans allying with chimpanzees to protect themselves from the gorillas. Right now the gorillas control our political system, with obviously predictable results. They are the face of our public culture, which is a travesty of violence and hatred. Our job right now is to hunker down, protect each other, and use every legal means to drive the gorillas back into the trees where they belong. They're actually much happier back there anyway, because there they are competent at their gorilla tasks, which mostly consist of banging on things and other gorillas. When they try to do chimpanzee tasks, let alone human, they aren't up to it, they fail, and they lash out to blame and hurt others.