[Update:] America Has Changed, Obama Can't Take Credit

[UPDATE1: haven’t had a chance to read all comments, I’m in a bit of a time bind. Getting ready to move to London City, the Isle of Opportunity with the coming of Brexit and the British £ falling 20%. Will view the political lunacy on both sides of the great divide (Atlantic Ocean I mean) from afar. Decison time for Syria in Lausanne talks, the regional powers (a$$holes) and Kerry/Lavrov have concluded, after 5 years of bloody sectarian/religious/civil war to let the Syrians decide their own future. Yep, way above my pay grade, need to be a corrupt politician and propagandist to believe this stuff. People suffer and decision makers gather in palaces with gilded ornaments . What a corrupt end of civilization we live in. You bet on it. ;-)]

The division in America runs deep, this election just mirrors the cultural divide in society. There is no hope for change!

Hidden faultline: how Trump v Clinton is laying bare America’s class divide | The Guardian |

The sign hanging on Main Street announces, “Crawfords Restaurant, Guns & Ammo“. In the window an illuminated sign elaborates: “Breakfast, lunch specials; cards, gifts, toys, ammo, guns, groc.” Inside, there is an unpretentious cafe and shelves of gift cards, tinned food and other sundries as well as camo hats, firearms and ammunition. A deer’s head is mounted on the wall.

The family that helps run Crawfords, in downtown Boonsboro, Maryland, owns more than a hundred guns. Allen Crawford, Pam Rutherford and their four teenage daughters are deer hunters; a single kill yields around 80 to 90lbs of meat for their dinner table, and they donate the hide and antlers to be recycled as furniture. Come November’s presidential election, they will vote for Donald Trump.

“You either have the common man with Donald Trump or the privileged with Hillary Clinton,” Rutherford said this week. “Clinton’s supporters could go 50 miles or less from their plush condos and elegant houses and find someone who has to hunt to support their family. I don’t think they realise that.”

EDUCATIONAL REVERSAL SINCE BILL CLINTON

One marker is education. In 1992, Republican voters were much better educated than their Democratic counterparts, according to the Pew Research Center. Today registered voters with a college degree favour Clinton by 23 percentage points, while those without a college degree prefer Trump by five. This trend cuts across demographic groups, although it is most pronounced among whites. The Slate website noted: “The educational split among white voters is the defining characteristic of this election.” If this holds in November, it will be the widest educational divide at the ballot box for several decades.

TRUMP’S FOLLOWERS ARE DEER HUNTERS

Clinton’s followers would object to him hunting deer, Stonesifer believes. “They have their opinions and I have mine. As long as we don’t bother each other, that’s fine. If you try to interrupt me when I’m hunting, that’s different.”

The country has a bigger divide now than ever, he added. “You’ve got your gay rights, abortion laws, racism. Everybody’s split. It wasn’t this bad when I was growing up. Everybody’s afraid to say something ‘cos you’re going to hurt someone’s feelings. The 80s were better. I think God needs to be back in the picture; everyone’s taking him for granted. Times are getting nearer.”

« click for more info 5 facts about the NRA and guns in America (Pew Research Center)

Kevin Dobereiner, 36, owns two small businesses and complains that taxes are too high. He is also supporting Trump. “He’s not a liberal and we’re $20 trillion in debt and unemployment is too high and our healthcare is terrible. The community organiser-in-chief has no qualifications and Hillary Clinton is just an extension of that.

“I don’t care what Trump says; I care what he does and he’s not a billionaire because he’s stupid. I like a guy who puts his foot in his mouth because at least he tells the truth.”

Trump’s plain speaking has been identified as one of the sources of his appeal to voters angry at the status quo in general and Republican establishment in particular. Even his outlandish gaffes are said to humanise him, emphasising his status as outsider and non-politician. His anti-Mexican and anti-Muslim diatribes have disgusted liberals and been cheered at raucous rallies, where he declares his love for “the poorly educated”.

Clinton’s “basket of deplorables”