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This reaches the point of civil war and potential serious domestic terrorism events. I don't believe you're thinking seriously about the consequences of this if you think that the elites could simply crush them - US domestic infrastructure is utterly impossible to secure in this kind of threat environment and the red tribe at the very least has the ability to reduce the US to a blasted wasteland with no functioning economy at all. Even assuming the elites are as perfidious, powerful, competent and undivided as you claim, their choices are going to be between giving the hated enemy tribe a say in society, or just not having a society at all.
That section was essentially an attack on AshLael's position - you don't believe that and neither do I, so there's no point discussing it given that I believe we actually agree here.
Your idea of a functioning democracy is Ukraine? You are not exactly making a good argument against the claim that functioning democracies don't do this, especially seeing as how Ukraine has actually suspended elections and isn't democratic in the slightest.
This is going to happen to them anyway if they do nothing, and in fact has been happening for a while. They have a choice between severe punishment, or severe punishment with a chance at victory. Sure, it sucks, but it beats the alternative.
I can't actually argue against your own impression of your friends and family, but I think that the base in general will absolutely get more serious and violent if what is being described comes to pass. Maybe we just see different portions of the republican base?
I agreed with those criticisms, though the bigger issue to me was that Q-Anon was obviously faked.
Who?
While it isn't particularly pleasant to talk about, Breivik's assault actually achieved all the aims he was going for. He confessed later on that his manifesto was actually a fake - the reason it was full of plagiarised writing was because he specifically wanted to give the impression that he was inspired by a particular group of writers in order to get the media to attack them. He succeeded, and at the same time wiped out the most promising left wing politicians of the next generation. Breivik unironically achieved the goals he had for the attacks, so you'd probably want to pick a different example.
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