So is America insane?

The question needs to be asked.  I'm not sure what the answer is.  Two things are clear, that frame the discussion:

1. The Media are gas-lighting the public, spinning a narrative that may have a grain of truth to it, but only if you squint hard.  All of the news we get about both the virus and the riots protests is slanted in a particular way - to convince you that Orange Man Bad and that the riots protests are perfectly fine, nothing to see here.

2. The riots protests are clearly organized by persons unknown.  They are as spontaneous as astroturf.  Sure, there are a couple of actual spontaneous protests, but these are a vanishingly small percentage of the total.  Motivations of the rioters protesters run the gamut from justifiable outrage to Free Stuff Army.  The motivations of the organizers are unknown.  Of course, the media only talk about the justifiable outrage.

So where does this go?  What will be the outcome?  There is an election this fall, and there is still a widely acknowledged belief that legitimacy comes from the result of elections.  Yes, the Democratic Party (and their partisans in the Civil Service) have so far refused to accept the outcome of the last election.  I can't see anything changing this time around although it looks plain that Trump will comfortably increase his victory margin.

My sense is that America still has a fairly deep well of sensibleness, despite two generations of agitation to drain that.  My sense is also that the increasingly desperate attempts to divide this Republic along class, race, and gender lines is a reflection not of the divider's perceived strength, but that they see themselves as increasingly weak.

It's also beginning to be clear that there is a real divide in this country, but this divide is between Blue State public policy and Red State public policy.  The Governors of many Blue States are actively destroying their State's economies, and actively immiserating their populations.  You don't see this in Red States.  You also see a stark hypocrisy on display in the Blue States, where you are not allowed to go to church or to your grandma's funeral, but you are free to riot protest.  The fact that grandma died from the Kung Flu because the Governor made her nursing home accept infectious Kung Flu patients only adds to the whole ambiance.

But I'm not sure how this plays out.  I expect we will see more self-separation, where people who are sick of Blue State insanity move to more sane locales.  Heck, The Queen Of The World and I just did that, and we haven't had an ounce of regret about it.  Sure, we miss our friends, but they need to decide if they want to continue living in that mess.  They can move, vote the idiots out, or keep their status quo.

I guess we'll see in November.  Remember, Adam Smith famously said that there's a lot of ruin in a country.