I live in a deeply conservative corner of the US. I am, well, surrounded: all of my neighbors in my conservative neighborhood in my conservative town in my very conservative state are conservative.
It’s not quite that dire, of course; the truth is, my neighborhood, town, and state are all purple (as in most parts of the country) - the red/blue ratio is roughly 55/45. So I’m in a minority, but not a big one.
Even so, my conservative neighbors are Midwestern conservatives to the core: hard-liners opposed to immigrants, women in power, and gay people. And they are not shy about it.
They will tirelessly vote for anyone willing to echo their opposition to these groups. They will be indifferent to the positions held by those they vote for, apart from these, as long as people they see as “other” are opposed. They must be stopped, in their quest for equality, rights, recognition, and protection.
My thing is – the numbers are insurmountable.
Immigrants in the US number just over 45 million, as of Sept 2021 – an increase of a little over a million and a half since the previous November. The only meaningful decline in immigration in the past 20 years, in fact, occurred during the restrictions imposed by the COVID-19 pandemic.
In other words, the US is steadily growing browner.
Women already make up almost half the US workforce overall, but within that percentage, have made disproportionate gains in middle and upper management. Over the past five years, women in management positions have jumped from 37% to 40%; from 29% of corporate vice presidents to 32%; and from 20% of the executive suite to 26%.
The US business sector is steadily growing more female.
Conservatives are generally very religious – Fundamentalist/Evangelical, in both my state and family history – and there, too, the numbers are telling. Fifty years ago, in 1972, 90% of the US identified as Christian, and 5% identified as atheist; today, the population is 63% Christian, and 30% godless. (Pew Research projects that within two generations, the number of Christians in the US will fall below 50% of the population.)
Moreover, surveys by Trinity College numbered practicing Wiccans in the US at around 8,000 in 1990, jumping to an astounding 340,000 almost two decades later. Pew Research has since taken up the count, currently numbering Wiccans in the US at over a million.
In other words, the US is steadily growing less religious - and getting witchier.
As for the LGBTQ community, it stands at 7.1% of the US population as of February 2022 – more than double Gallup’s tally in 2012. (Of course, in this case, it doesn’t mean that twice as many people “turned gay” - it means twice as many people were willing to openly identify as gay as before.)
Put another way, the US is steadily growing more queer.
Think about all of these measures, and consider them as one: the US is changing faster than it ever has before, in insurmountable waves. The people that make my neighbors uncomfortable will inevitably be all around them.
I can’t imagine what they think they can do about this. They can’t pray them all away, or vote them all away, or barricade the neighborhood – they can’t do, well, anything at all to stop it.
Time, on the other hand, will do something about them. The attrition of old age will inevitably reduce their numbers, year by year; and in the meantime, the one thing they will do – whether they want to or not – is learn how it feels to be a member of a minority.
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