Have you watched "Don't Look Up" yet? Brilliant satire addressing the very point you're making. Even when failure means destruction of the planet, an assortment of politicians, capitalists, and cynics will manage to sway huge swaths of the population into thinking something else is more important. Painfully plausible.

And that's my point. I fear that tribalism--the far-right's mandate to own the libs regardless of the price to our republic or our species--has come to matter to those low-information voters more than any rational consideration.

As for "We hold these truths to be self-evident," how many people these days can tell you the next line? And how many act like they believe in the equality it cites?