Whatever Happened To “Economic Anxiety”?

Majority of Republicans support use of 'force' to save 'the traditional American way of life': pollhttps://t.co/HsZoNkNk97

— Raw Story (@RawStory) July 30, 2021

Nearly half of all Republicans in the U.S. believe that "a time will come when patriotic Americans have to take the law into their own hands." 

Economic anxiety?  Fear of social collapse?  Or just good old American racism, brought to the fore by Donald Trump and George Floyd?

Where did I read that a state wants schools to stop teaching that the Constitution is a racist document, that racism had anything to do with the government created in 1798?  Despite the Missouri Compromise and the 3/5ths compromise and the continuation of slavery until that issue alone nearly broke the Union four score and seven years later?

Economic anxiety, right?

People in Missouri are donning disguises to receive a coronavirus vaccine, according to a doctor there. Patients are worried about how their family members and friends will treat them if they reveal they have been vaccinated. https://t.co/7XFGprbavP

— The Daily Beast (@thedailybeast) July 29, 2021

Nobody's blaming that on economic anxiety. I don't think you can blame it on racism, either.  But crises tend to reveal the character of individuals, and of nations.  And apparently some portion of our nation is seriously unhinged and fruity as a nutcake.  It would be a mistake to think it was all of us, though; or even a large portion of us:

Vaccinated Americans living in Los Angeles County, California told CNN this week that they've lost patience with their fellow Americans who are refusing to get vaccinated against the novel coronavirus.

LA County-based educational show host Michael Burns explained to CNN that he's grown particularly angry with people who openly boast about their refusal to get vaccinated.

"There are people who have been flaunting not being vaccinated or not wanting to be vaccinated in both Los Angeles and Southern California more generally," he said. "It's extremely frustrating."

LA County resident Ann Rodarte, meanwhile, said she felt "disappointment" by vaccine resisters because they had spoiled what had been the start of a return to normalcy earlier this summer.

LA County resident Paula Stewart similarly said she was "angry, disappointed and scared" that, because of vax resisters, "this is not going away."

Despite the fact political Twitter thinks majority rule means the minority is always squashed into silence and impotence, this is the sound of the majority pushing back.  Greg Abbott may hide behind bromides about how Texans have learned to take care of themselves in this pandemic, but I've been in stores and restaurants where almost no one was wearing a mask or practicing anything like social distancing, and the hospitalization rates and positivity rates in Texas equal what they were 5 months ago, and they are only rising.  Eventually the majority is going to demand the minority stop endangering all of us; and demand our officeholders do their jobs to protect the public.

And when that happens, the anxiety is not gonna be economic.  But before we get there, Gov. Faubus wants his chance to stand in the school house door one more time, and declare "race mixing" something up with which he will not put!  That part is gonna get real ugly, real fast.

I kind of expect the DOJ lawsuit to bring that to the fore, in a way even the media can't prance around.