[tastyface]

The US has two political parties of roughly equal size.

One of those parties has gone completely off the rails into authoritarianism and science denial. Oligarchy is at the root of it: the barons can't sell "clean coal" and "drill, baby, drill" if climate change is seen to be tearing the world apart. Money über alles.

You'd think most people would be repulsed by such a party, but turns out that humans have a neat little exploit! Due to the fact that the parties are completely entrenched and about equally as popular, people intrinsically assume that their policies also have equal merit.

Hence our descent into shit.