Do you think it is true that “we really are two nations now, irreconcilable and divisible”?
If so, what do you think it means?
About The Author
BooMan
Martin Longman a contributing editor at the Washington Monthly. He is also the founder of Booman Tribune and Progress Pond. He has a degree in philosophy from Western Michigan University.
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I wish it were that simple. Then all we’d have to do is split up. But both “nations”…however you wish to define that word…and all of their sub-nations right on down to every individual who is not absolutely, unchallengeably wealthy on a massive scale…is under the rule of a grand cabal of financial manipulators and their enforcers/overseers in a slavery system that has so far been more successful than any other in the history of mankind. I mean…at least most of the victims of other oppressive systems knew that they were oppressed. Here? Digitally-produced smoke and mirrors combine in a huge disinformation system that convinces the slaves that they are “free,” even when 50+ years of evidence proves that they…that we are not free.
So it goes.
Are we free?
When we are forced to vote only for Tweedle-Dum and Tweedle-Dee?
When any potentially effective opposition to this criminal system is silenced by a blanket of non-personing disinfo before they can possibly get to a position that would allow them to actually do something?
C’mon.
We’re one nation.
One nation under God?
No, one nation under guard
Info guard.
Bet on it.
AG
I like this response. I do think we are seeing a “wealth pushback” to return us to the late 19th Century and completely reverse the New Deal. Social Darwinism at its worst, including fundamentalist Christian/neo-Calvinist thinking like “If you’re poor, God doesn’t love you (and that’s OK).” When you add that to de Tocqueville’s observation that every American, even if poor, considers himself a possible millionaire (maybe temporarily down on his luck) the “low information” voter and conservative social paradigm for mass manipulation is complete.
American Progressivism in the early 20th Century sense (anti-trust laws, trust busting) seems to have less chance now despite incredible corruption and illegality in our financial sector. (It horrifies me that Jamie Dimon still has a job and isn’t under indictment, to cite just one example). But it took a major Depression to ignite the New Deal, and we saw that Obama had no stomach for a new New Deal in 2008, thus missing a once in a generation opportunity to turn things around.
Maybe things have to get worse before they get better. But that won’t happen until we get serious about fighting the Republicans tooth and nail. I hope the public’s disgust with the shutdown isn’t forgotten in the froth about a poor Obamacare rollout. It shouldn’t be.
There’s no reason not to get rid of the New Deal.
Labor rights only came about because those fighting for them were willing to become violent and those in charge wanted to save capitalism. Communism and socialism are gone, they pose no threat so there is nothing to save capitalism from. The modern left has nothing let to bargain with because they swore off violence. Without violence and the threat of communism there is no reason to play ball.
Furthermore mechanization, the internet, 3d printing have made society worthless. You don’t need a community anymore. The last remaining thing is the power grid, renewable energy will kill them. Renewable energy will let the rich and corporations have their own premium power grid and get off of using (and thus paying for) the grid for common people. Once we have renewable energy we do not need the working class anymore, and we will never need them again.
The only decision is do we want a libertine do what you want life in that future, or do we want to have our personal behavior controlled by the bible thumpers. The economic and industry outcome has been decided for some time. And a left that frown on violence and cheers energy solutions that will enable the final break… well they are all sheep going to their own slaughter.
It’s over.
What’s worthless is to have smug a-holes like you concern trolling resl Democrats. Just bugger off.
Far from over, given the fact that much more happens in any modern society than your very limited description allows. The vast majority of corporations need the sheep as you describe them, simply as consumers the true underwriters of their bottom line.
Any attempt at making a society with only very rich masses of extreme poor with a sliver of middle class servicing the rich, cannot hold in a modern state, unless extreme repression measures are taken to harshly control the masses of poor.
The Soviets were the most successful at attempting it in any type of modern industrial state, but in the end their efforts failed the masses who rejected them.
The Chinese are self modifying to prevent them following the Soviets unto the dustbin of history.
The clueless who think libertarianism can reasonably work in a modern society are as deluded as Ayn Rand was when she fuelled her writings by the meth pills she took, and she too meth pills for years.
Don’t believe me google “Ayn Rand meth addict”.
Labor unions didn’t become violent, they acted in self-defense. You act like this all happened in a vacuum and they just decided to act violent to get what they wanted. No. The punched the fuck back. And if you think middle class people will just sit and continue to take it, you’re mistaken, friend. People will get violent. Just you keep on pushing them.
I’m pretty sure bullets still cause massive internal damage and knives can still remove a head off of a body.
Bet on that.
No. I live in a red district. What’s different is the way the tea baggers and their bus drivers (ALEX and Koch) have mostly succeeded in controlling the narrative.
A nation can be defined as a group of people with a common political identity that desires self-government in an independent state. (Yeah, I used my textbook for that wording.)
In this sense, the South in 1860 was a nation (or at least the political elites constituted a nation unto themselves).
Today, it seems we are more fighting over control of the existing state. And the fact is, we are not divided north from south, red state from blue state in any clear definitive way. Romney won 30% of the vote in Vermont. Obama won 25% in Utah. Lincoln won 0% in many southern states.
This is even reflected in the language of the Teaturds in “taking our country back”.
This is less about being two different nations (where do libertarians fit in? where do corporate friendly Democrats?) than about hyper-factionalism.
I like this response.
We are a very large and diverse country, and any time you assemble a few hundred million people across a few million square miles, there is going to be some lack of feelings from one for the other.
Best to accept that we are what we are and not pine for some fake history of natural purpose and shared meaning that has never existed. Thinking this way is exactly what will turn you into a Tea Head, in that you will mistake fantasy for reality.
In other words, a little fighting is probably normal. And this is seems to be an ‘a la carte’ culture, so there it is.
As per always, the only thing I wish is that the left would fight back harder when the right gets in a lather, instead of negotiating and bartering in the hope for some national purpose and unity which will always be out of reach.
I do wonder if our political institutions can cope with this hyperfactionalism. Madison proposed that factionalism can be defeated by pluralism and large geographic distance. He thought factions would come and go around certain issues.
But since the modern GOP is effectively nothing more than a set of grievances, they can never coalesce around anything other than being against what Democrats are for (see Romneycare). Madison did not anticipate parties, but the system evolved to make use of parties.
We’ve ALMOST reached a point where partisanship has reached the intensity of factionalism. Where the GOP can’t even vote for a bill they once supported, you’ve reached a point where the party system is fundamentally broken and in turn is breaking the governance of the country.
Of course not. We’re one nation with a large insurgent conservative population that is still struggling with adjusting to 20th century reality (yes, I mean 20th). Various political interests find it in their narrow self interest to support that insurgency.
Not in the slightest.
The anti-Obamacare stuff is nothing more than political gamesmanship, no more or less.
It’s gamesmanship unless they somehow manage to cow enough fake Democrats ino gutting these protections.
Just as the robber barons of old didn’t recognize their salvation and fought FDR’s New Deal, the Kochs, et al. don’t understand that Obama is trying to save the bloated rot of capitalism.
If they succeed in their crusade against the ACA – an impossible feat without the aid of corporatist “Democrats” – the gamesmanship is over.
I’d expect a radicalized backlash to the Democrats which then would will really tip the already-strained political balance. Right now there is no equivalent force to the antebellum abolitionists. The
worst people in the worldneo-Confederates have monopolized political passion for far too long in our country.In my mind, upending the life-saving ACA (on top of climate denialism, Christianist Dominionism, and unprecedented income inequality), changes that.
I’m ready to join one if it pops up. But someone up-thread was right, they can’t be flower children, they have to be union organizer tough.
Absolutely true, but it don’t matter because the elites rule both of us. End of line.
Yes, to a large degree.
The battle is rural Red areas v. urban Blue areas – with the suburbs reddish to bluish purple, depending on how Blue the nearest city is.
NY, overall a Blue state, has rural areas as Conservative as any in AL, or LA, or Ks.
And Texas and GA, and other Red States, have Blue cities.
I call this, “The Cold Civil War.”
What can get us together?
Well, if we’re invaded by Russia, or China, or aliens, or, even the North Koreans, then we’ll all be screaming “WOLVERINES” towards one another, in states both Red and Blue.
And if we won, we’d probably go right back to having our “Cold Civil War.”
“You think this man is the enemy? Huh? This is a worker! Any union keeps this man out ain’t a union, it’s a goddam club! They got you fightin’ white against colored, native against foreign, hollow against hollow, when you know there ain’t but two sides in this world – them that work and them that don’t. You work, they don’t. That’s all you got to know about the enemy.”
Joe Kenehan, Matewan
The divide is between those who have and those who don’t.
AND THE NEXT FUCKING TIME YOU LINK TO AN ASSHOLE LIKE TARANTO GIVE ME A HEADS UP SO I CAN DON A HAZMAT SUIT.
Why are you talking about Taranto?
Cascadia! Ain’t nuthin’ east o’ The Rockies we need.
No fear.
There Really Are Two Americas: Republistan and Democravia
I hope it’s temporary and demography really is destiny. Otherwise, we’re fracked.
Sure there is a sort of ideological bifurcation in the US. But one piece is so destructive and retrograde lately it no longer rises above what mostly feeds it: fear and hate. That doesn’t qualify it as a nation.
I kind of lost it when I got to this:
The assumptions packed into that language just make me laugh. The authors really give the GOP more credit than they deserve. I thought Sirota had more on the ball than that.
GOP leadership is trying to pass legislation? Yeah, that flood of legislation from the House is a torrent of activity. Only in the sense that they want to roll back any attempts at progress. Not fix them, but roll them back.
The GOP has ideas? Where is their plan to reduce healthcare expenses and expand care coverage for Americans? Where was their comprehensive medical care plan that included elimination of the “pre-existing conditions” problem?
They certainly had opportunities when they held both chambers of Congress to move things along. And that is what makes the “replace” another obvious lie when they talk about “repeal and replace”, a trademarked GOP idea. They would be more honest if they just came out with “repeal and yada, yada, yada”.
Divert more money to the wealthy and blow up more countries don’t really count as ideas so much as psychological disorders.
And when their professed goals of shutting down government and defaulting on debt will do more damage to the country than the financial problems they claim they want to solve, we’re talking outright lying and full scale self delusion.
I also found it funny that the cherry picked criteria of these “two nations” included public transportation, but did not once mention the ever obvious urban v. rural divide.
A moderate friend told me I sound angry and that is no way to bridge divides. But isn’t there a point where the bigoted religious extremism and abject hateful greed deserve nothing but dirision and ridicule? Is it sanctimonius to call someone, or some group, out on immoral behavior? The Republicans are hateful, ignorant assholes. My friends and family who vote Republican, but say they are just “fiscal conservatives” have no excuse anymore, there is no pretending that they are not complicit to these hateful, ignorant actions of the Republican Party. They should be afraid of what angry liberals will do, and no, not violence. It is time to call out “moderate” Republicans for being part of this–the frightened death-throes of white priviliege.
Can any of them define what they mean by “fiscal conservative?”
I’m so fiscally conservative that I understand that socialized medicine costs half what is spent on “health care” in this country, includes everybody, and has better aggregate measures of health and longevity.
So economically conservative that I understand that our bloated military and prison industrial complexes are huge drags on our nation’s economic vibrancy.
So conservative that I can understand the relationship between income and wealth equality to health and happiness.
etc.
No more than we have ever been since 1776.
I started reading Garry Wills’s Henry Adams adn the Making of America, which got me rummaging around in the histories of the Jefferson and Madison administrations. Our current society looks positively united compared to the vitriol that was being dumped in the period from 1800 to 1816. And it was personal. Burr murdered Hamilton (as Henry Adams’s grandmother succinctly put it). The West almost rebelled and New England was talking secession.
What I’m seeing is a moderation in Southern politics except for some of my friends who are clearly GOP party activists or even operatives. And a heating up of left wing politics as the cities use austerity to shut public facilities while subsidizing gentrifying development.
And a profound anger at Congress as an institution. The Democrats still are too feckless to capitalize on the Republicans’ extremism.
If we are two nations, the split is between the totally out-of-touch and privileged 1% and the struggling 99%.
By next summer, the rollout of Obamacare will be behind us and the public will know in their own experience the good things and the bad things. Some more states will have legalized gay marriage. A few more states will have referendums to legalize marijuana. The immigration movement will still be in the streets. There will be additional pushback on voter ID and Republican overreach from groups like North Carolina’s Moral Monday. There will be ferment like we’ve not seen since the 1960s. And with a little luck and hard work there might be a Democratic governor in Texas or Arizona or even South Carolina – and new Democratic Senators from Kentucky or Georgia. And on March 18, 2014, we will see whether Chicago will be rid of Rahm Emanuel.
Those divisions driven by the culture war are healing in spite of GOP attempts to restart them.
But the failure of the economy remains even as the stock market shows the beginning of a new bubble. That division remains.