From driftglass:
It turns out that while Carl Sagan’s parable of two antagonists, each with a fistful of matches, in a locked room awash with gasoline —
— might have been an accurate and memorable way to describe the need for nuclear arms control during the Cold War, it doesn’t work at all when it comes to modern American politics.
Because in modern American politics it turns out that while there are indeed two antagonists stuck together in a locked room awash with gasoline, one of the antagonists — the Republican Party — actually wants to burn the building down.
In fact, they spend all their political and media power to flick lit matches into corners filled with terrified women and children. With migrants and minorities. With the old and the infirm. With our most stalwart allies and with our constitution.
And they laugh about it. Let that sink in.