Honestly I think the fact that people find this so hard to grasp is a symptom of Americentrism, where we treat politics as an extension of policy debate.
https://twitter.com/ryangrim/status/1479295327731695620
Mass politics is about group or caste affinity. Here in America that's incredibly racialized, although obviously it goes a long way past that. Mass radicalization happens when one of those groups or castes gets whipped up into a frenzy.
Mass radicalization can take many forms, the exact set of topics that get swept up into it is historically contingent, but at its heart is often a cultlike dynamic: people are encouraged to indulge in various lizard-brain whims in exchange for loyalty.
https://twitter.com/whstancil/status/1398431249644064771
So what's happening here in America is that some of our affinity groups - white, male, rural, conservative, and particularly people in all these groups at once - is in the grasp of this kind of cultlike fervor, and everyone else is dealing with it.
https://twitter.com/whstancil/status/1398431253699993601
Thinking of US politics as a "civil war" is a little misleading. A civil war has two sides. What's happening here has one side: the people caught in a reactionary spiral. One of the big questions is whether everyone else can organize into an opposing side before it's too late.
It's not the slightest bit unusual for radicalized, demagogic factions to have incoherent policy views, though. I challenge anyone to give a coherent summary of fascist politics, Nazi politics, or even something like Peronism. It's just a mishmash, because it's not about that.
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