Regardless of what the political pundits may think many Americans are on the sidelines in the Trump indictment saga. It's not like Watergate where people argued and lamented while watching TV at home or in bars during the hearings, where college classrooms discussions rose in temperate as to whether the system was working, where Vietnam War vets cliched their fist in approval while hoping that Henry Kissinger would be next. No, not happening.
Now it's the right-wing organizing Nazi-fueled demonstrations in front of Disneyland or "Stepford" Republicans committing logorrhea on the airwaves. The left trots out their habitual commentators, along with unvexed conservative discoursers, to even out the repeated opinions while delivering handwringing in unison. Few, if any, half-interested minds change while viewership numbers stay basically static, and people with other things to do condemn the whole lot of them when asked. It's not so much one party or the other, all politicians are corrupt. The paladins of both parties constantly forget that in gauging their stupport. Polls aren't really any determinate and having shown to be unreliable and chiefly benefit consultants.
We've had so much of sociopath Trump and the way this fabulist has napalmed the idealism out of American politics whatever "caring" left to the lucid going about their business isn't about the number of charges in his indictment or if someone will leak his mug shot after arraignment. This is about expensive lawyers, opaque public officials, and hyperventilating personalities. The deep-rooted distance between the well-cushioned "them" and "us" has let tedium fall upon the masses. The shine remains only upon unbending stalwarts and gilt-eyed mavens of electronic presentations.
Trump becoming a cambion onto the public conscience erupted because of the media's flaunting attraction to good looks, a vociferous embrace of sexual matters, wealth, and purposeful displays of capitalistic superfluities. Why wouldn't Trump carry over such defining elements into political life? The jump from celebrity to political gamesman patently worked because of the stodginess of his opponents and his knowing that celebrity never dies.
Trump's escalator descent to announce his candidacy was ingenious in its symbolism. Where the typical political narrative is the candidate espousing an ascent from a common, struggling, boot-strap background to climbing up and seeking representative acquiescence, Trump started on high. He was already there, ready to come down to the people to lead them away from the stale demoralization of the current system.
The political stage is now so overwrought with societal turbulence people run from it. It's all white noise of what happened, did or did not happen, and could happen. The public befuddlement leads to the retreat of buying a gun, either of left or right persuasion, and helping jack up the MLB attendance figures while waiting for the NFL season to start. People attune to public attitudes are not the ones who dominate social media platforms or stare into a TV camera on a regular basis. Ernest Hemingway reputedly said: "If you want to know about a culture, spend a night in its bars." American culture is about sticking to what you know and watching your back if someone asks for help.
While celebration, grief, and worry can be recurrent nationwide sentiments depending upon a war, widespread tragedy or rescue, politics has become more of a fear generator rather than a stabilizing tradition. For many, as Hemingway noted, the neighborhood bar has become that stabilizing influence. Talk may be rough and threatening but most times it doesn't last. No one want's to be barred from the bar because it can be where the human handrails hold firm.
Whether Trump gets convicted or not, or DeSantis keeps using the Joseph Goebbels template to stamp his nomination, I don't think many Americans care. The spouting of support for Trump and pledges to fight for democracy reinforce for many that politics is a self-interest motivator. The public, especially the young, see violence and a possible civil war, as the big worry. It will force sides much more than it does now, and many Americans are tired of choosing sides.
If we were more educated, paid more attention to our history, we would know we have been here before. Yet now we have social media, 24/7 newscasts and do-or-die attitudes about elections being stolen, that criminals attacking Congress are patriots, jurisprudence is sacrosanct and precedents malleable. The old aphorism "Two steps forward, one step back" doesn't ring true.
America's truth is slipping away from its citizens. The glue is drying out because it never delivered on its truths. Obama was right. Exceptionalism does not identify America. Slaveholders founded the country; slaves built the White House. Idealism seeded the country; realism was doctored, and cruelty justified.
Politicians may think they will rally the troops but if a serious clash comes, the force of ideals will determine the outcome.