Why is America so divided?

Politics International Politics
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Why is America so divided? I read the reader letter to the Atlantic (below) and it got me asking all over again about the deep divisions and mistrust in America, as is more than amply seen here in the Flob. To an outsider from a country where guns are tools essentially for feral animals, and only lunatics, cops and criminals keep them for self defence, it astonishes me to think that otherwise sane people purchase firearms or consider it normal to carry a knife. But clearly, such is the deep distrust that runs through the US.

I’m currently reading a great book on the Kennedy years and the constant theme is the contempt and fighting between the conservative old guard and the younger elected and appointed officials. The distrust ran exceptionally deep, with otherwise sane people in the Kennedy admin from both sides having seriously considered the possibility of a military coup.

In this recent presidential campaign the forces of deep distrust are again at full bloom, with the Repubs in particular playing hard on Obama’s ethnicity, and dragging up the insane possibility that the man is somehow a terrorist, or at the most generous, has an agenda that is opposed to the interests of the majority of that country’s people.

is it the case as was outlined in the article that prompted the letter below, a continuation of the culture wars of the Vietnam era, or are the roots to all of these as deep as the “Civil” war?

[quote]30 Oct 2008
The End Of America’s Longest War?
A reader writes:
Earlier this week, in your post “The Top Ten Reasons Conservatives Should Vote For Obama”, you wrote under Point 4: “A truce in the culture war. Obama takes us past the debilitating boomer warfare that has raged since the 1960s. Nothing has distorted our politics so gravely; nothing has made a rational politics more elusive.”

On the one hand I agree with you; on the other hand, you don’t go nearly far enough. An Obama presidency means much more than a truce in the 60’s culture war. It means the end of a much older and more terrible war, in which the 60’s was merely one battle: the American Civil War. That is what is at stake here. [/quote]

More importantly, does anyone really believe that an Obama victory will put to rest this deep distrust? If not, what is the logical conclusion to this level of avowed hatred and distrust?

HG

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Liberals and leftists thrive in hate. Unhappiness, envy and fear oozes from their pores.
If they ain’t hatin’…they ain’t breathin’

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So it’s just that youse all like a decent scrap? Good grief, man! Nothing like cutting out the crap! Good work . … I say with a little bit of a blush. :laughing:

HG

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It’s laughable to think a left wing Democrat like Obama will cure America’s partisan divisions. After a few months the red half of America will end up hating him as much as the blue half currently hate Bush.

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It’s true. As long as there are conservatives terrified of gay marriage, fearful of the dark skinned immigrant, so pretrified of living a life without the crutch of fundamentalism, then our work is never done.

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[quote=“Huang Guang Chen”]

More importantly, does anyone really believe that an Obama victory will put to rest this deep distrust? If not, what is the logical conclusion to this level of avowed hatred and distrust?

HG[/quote]

Maybe so. Obama comes from Illinois. Last President from Illinois was Abe Lincoln. :ponder: Oh snap, :astonished: could this be Abe Lincoln reincarnated and back to clean up his karma?!?!?

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I think you’re right. Tall skinny man from Illinois … it’ll pretty much take Obama winning to get the Republicans to even start to question how far off they’ve slid from any sort of traditional, normal conservatism. Whenever I talk to older, Eisenhower/Nixon, Ford or even Reaganish Republicans, it’s like a whole other world from the one where the Republicans of today are at. A party that was once rooted in high idealism with its origins as the party of abolitionists back in the 1840s/1850s as a successor to the fractured Whig party, they went on to trying to hold a position as a “pragmatic” party before suddenly sliding over the past 16 years into pulling together widely disparate groups of extremists together with a batch of promises that were sometimes at odds with each other.

That the slide into hyperpartisanship appeared at that time is probably no coincidence. After a 1992 election in which the Dems and Repubs were considered enough “two brands of the same stuff” that billionaire nutter Ross Perot threw his hat in the ring, it seems the Republicans were determined it would be a good strategy to rebrand themselves and to effectively say: “Whatever the Democrats want, we want the opposite!” This differentiation effort led to a lot of demonizing – as part of building up their new “brand” in those heady Gingrichean years, it was helpful for them to paint Democrats as unpatriotic, spendthrifts who liked to put babies into sausage machines and give released convicts the keys to your house.

If we back off a moment from the hyperpartisanship, I would tend to say the vast majority of Americans have the same sort of lives, dreams and values regardless of how they vote. Nobody likes being robbed, nobody is truly “pro-abortion”, we all do love our country, and we all would like to have as much take-home pay as is effective for us still have functioning resources (clean water, garbage collection, police protection, decent and safe roads, decent schools, etc.). People can always disagree as to the best way to do it, but that doesn’t mean people don’t share the same basic values.

But once you start to demand hatred of “how” someone wants to get something done instead of “what” is to be done, then it starts to really slide downhill. Take garbage collection and privatization efforts – intelligent people can discuss the relative costs of having city employees versus private companies haul trash. City employees appear to be more expensive initially, but private companies also have had past problems with adding to corruption (bribes in exchange for contracts), organized-crime involvement, and not dumping the trash where they’re supposed to (i.e., in places that may affect water supplies, etc.). The people on either side of the issue are not particularly “pro-socialism” or “pro-gangster”, but the Republicans have found it good business to pigeonhole Dems on even debateable issues while the Dems have been quite milquetoasty in their responses.

If classic Republicans knew what had happened to their party, they’d be spinning in their graves. Lincoln would abhor the race-baiting and the pandering to southern voters, Eisenhower would miss the pragmatism and the fellowship of a joined nation.

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Damn fine post, mofa. :bravo:

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So that’s why you support the most partisan member of the Senate for POTUS? Yeah, the most partisan member of the Senate is a Democrat. Obama.

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:ohreally:
Where do you get this stuff?

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It’s true. As long as there are conservatives terrified of gay marriage, fearful of the dark skinned immigrant, so pretrified of living a life without the crutch of fundamentalism, then our work is never done.[/quote]MM -
Oh really?
Did you get registered to vote in the US election at one of the Obama voter registration parties here on the island?

Of course they told you that all the overseas Americans(USA) registered at these events are being verified through their IRS files. Of course they did…right?

(btw…my spullchunk says it petrified)

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That’s low TC. Come on now.

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So that’s why you support the most partisan member of the Senate for POTUS? Yeah, the most partisan member of the Senate is a Democrat. Obama.[/quote]

I don’t know if he’s the most partisan, but he has certainly worked hard to be

msnbc.msn.com/id/23276453/

Mind you, looking at the summary of top ten key votes I actually agree with most of them, particularly for abortion rights and against leaving Iraq. I too am pro Death :wink:

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:ohreally:

Where do you get this stuff?[/quote]

Oh, my bad.

There are a whole ten Democrats more partisan than Obama. But, there isn’t much room for them to be much more partisan… I mean, the difference between 97 and 100 is only 3.

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It’s true. As long as there are conservatives terrified of gay marriage, fearful of the dark skinned immigrant, so pretrified of living a life without the crutch of fundamentalism, then our work is never done.[/quote]MM -
Oh really?
Did you get registered to vote in the US election at one of the Obama voter registration parties here on the island?

Of course they told you that all the overseas Americans(USA) registered at these events are being verified through their IRS files. Of course they did…right?

(btw…my spullchunk says it petrified)[/quote]

KKKan u speak louder? It is difficult to understand ur words, cummin out of the echo chamber as they r.

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America is not the only country with a high rate of gun ownership. Take Switzerland, for instance.

Anyway, like every place, America is very much shaped by its history. It has (had) a completely different set of circumstances to Australia.

Australia was essentially mono-cultural/racial; founded by convicts (not religious puritans), a couple of hundred years later (so there were radically different ideas floating around); federated peacefully and has never fought a war on its soil. Of course that’s going to give a very, very different perspective.

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So that’s why you support the most partisan member of the Senate for POTUS? Yeah, the most partisan member of the Senate is a Democrat. Obama.[/quote]

Oh, I was wondering when you were going to find out about that secret Partisan-o-meter that had been installed back in the Roosevelt administration. That thing used to go fuckobazoo whenever Josef Tito would visit America.

Good thing for the Republicans that nobody has found out about the Fuck-o-bazoometer right next to it because that thing used to get into one hell of an awful feedback cycle everytime the Partisan-o-meter would go so fuckobazoo that it would make the Fuck-o-bazoometer go fuckobazoo, itself.

By the way, Senator McCain is reportedly the only other thing that has made that feedback cycle start up.

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[quote=“GuyInTaiwan”]America is not the only country with a high rate of gun ownership. Take Switzerland, for instance.

Anyway, like every place, America is very much shaped by its history. It has (had) a completely different set of circumstances to Australia.

Australia was essentially mono-cultural/racial; founded by convicts (not religious puritans), a couple of hundred years later (so there were radically different ideas floating around); federated peacefully and has never fought a war on its soil. Of course that’s going to give a very, very different perspective.[/quote]

I mean guns specifically for shootin’ people. In any case, I thought Switzerland’s guns are mostly hunting, and military - yeah, yeah, shootin’ people related, but essentially with some military discipline factored into their use.

I’d say Australia’s history is equally as violent as America’'s, up to the civil war, and I’m sure our much abused abos could do without being completely forgotten from our early days, especially when we spent so much effort trying to wipe them out. perhaps we were just better at it than Americans?

Hmm, now as for America being so divided, perhaps I should just sit back and watch the thread and ponder. I didn’t really think we’d get to go each other’s throats on here. :laughing:

HG

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[quote=“TainanCowboy”]Liberals and leftists thrive in hate. Unhappiness, envy and fear oozes from their pores.
If they ain’t hatin’…they ain’t breathin’[/quote]
Projection: a common symptom of Republicanism…

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:ohreally:
Where do you get this stuff?[/quote]
From the Republican Smear and Lie Machine, of course.