you really must understand the present:

Even here in California, 50% of cars on the freeway are SUVs, and they're political statements: they say, we're going to take the rest of the world down with us because we don't give a damn. Essentially they're Republican vehicles: when you see an SUV go by, you know the driver voted for Bush ...

So it'll come down to another election - and with the last two elections both in their different ways perhaps having been stolen, we can't even really count on democracy anymore. It's pretty scary here ...

The current guy is worthless, probably the worst president in American history. There's a sort of stupid, small-minded meanness - a pathological assholery - to him. I think he likes doing bad things. And I think a fair amount of his base approves of that resentment - against the idea of progress, against the future, against the rest of the world ...

-- Kim Stanley Robinson, via Guardian Unlimited

(Incidently, the author of my most-favorite sci-fi novel of all time -- one of my favorite novels period -- not to mention one of the best series ever written.)