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Notes -
Obviously, which is why the most liberal times in American history come when either Blue is busy destroying Red institutions, or vice versa (or there's an economic boom which distracts everyone; you can't deploy cancel culture lists when people [and in particular cities] are so desperate for workers it doesn't matter at all what their political persuasion is).
Once one side starts consolidating things get bad, which is why 2014-2024 in particular were especially fucked.
This is why independents are the way they are: it's more about Noticing when one side is starting to accumulate enough power to pull this off, and [trying their best] to deal with them. And whether that best is good enough or not generally depends more on economic factors than anything else.
I think this is an interesting thought. Like a trace that economic need/prosperity requires cooperation among a larger subsection of the populace, but once a threshold is achieved, the luxury beliefs of intra-tribal warfare resurges until at which point all the economic surplus is consumed starting the cycle over again.
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