You the People cannot be trusted to keep fascism at bay.
Of course they can't. The founding mythology? The military fluffing? The pervasive propaganda over American exceptionalism?
It's a fascist country. It just doesn't always have a totalitarian government.
Yes, but it's not just brighter near the outer edges, it's whiter, thanks to the inclusion of more blue light, and that less ruddy colour does a lot to affect how we see the gradation from light to dark.
They are harder to find than they should be, but there are pictures of the Earth occulting hte sun out there, and you can see how the Earth's atmosphere is aglow with scattered sunlight. There's more light closer to where the sun is than where isn't. The Blue Ghost lander pictures of the eclipse are probably the most accessible right now:
The bright ring around the Earth in ths image is sunlight streaming through the Earth's atmosphere. See how blue it looks? And how it gets brighter closer to the sun?
That's why.