Do you live in the "real America?"

One of the great flaws of the modern Republican narrative is that it must, by its very nature, disenfranchise a huge number of Americans in order to be successful. They've gotten savvy enough to know that it can't be overtly racial disenfranchisement, but sexual orientation, religion, profession and, most importantly, where you live can still all be factors of what a real American is and isn't.

If you aren't a Bible-believing tradesman who lives in a rural area, you aren't actually an American, according to the Republican narrative. If you're a homosexual creative artist living in an urban environment, you're actually a threat to America.

But we all know what this is code for. Republicans are Americans. They love America. They think American thoughts. They raise American children. They do American things.

Everyone else is, at best, unclear on what America really is. We Democrats are no longer the opponents across the aisle. We are exotic foreigners bringing bad ideas and dangerous lifestyles to these holy shores of New Jerusalem.

I've spent the past eight years becoming increasingly unsure of my conviction that their politically isolationist attitude would not triumph in America. I regret that it seems to have taken a massively ill conceived war and an economic meltdown approaching the meltdown that marked the beginning of the Great Depression to prove me right.