Posted on 10/13/2016 6:29:08 AM PDT by 2ndDivisionVet
A new University of Virginia survey, conducted by the Gallup organization, reveals Americans' deep dissatisfaction with the country's political culture, personified by the leading candidates for president, Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump.
Commissioned by UVA's Institute for Advanced Studies in Culture, the "2016 Survey of American Political Culture" is based on 1,904 telephone interviews with a nationally representative sample of American adults. It provides a granular picture of some of the underlying dynamics of American political culture today – dynamics researchers say are likely to shape democratic life through the early years of the 21st century.
Speaking Wednesday at Gallup headquarters in Washington, James Davison Hunter, the institute's executive director, said the unprecedented public disaffection exhibited during the election campaign season reflects a deep fault line between the general American electorate and the political establishment.
He said this chasm is marked by mistrust of government, cynicism toward leaders and personal alienation. Hunter cited survey findings that confirm these levels of disaffection:
•Nearly two-thirds (64 percent) of the American public has little to no confidence that the government in Washington will actually solve the problems it sets its mind to solve.
•Vast majorities of those polled believe that most politicians are more interested in winning elections than in doing what is right, and that while the system of government is good, the people running it are incompetent.
•Significant majorities agree most elected officials don't care what they think and that they don't have any say about what the government does.
In addition, two-thirds of those polled said they have little or no confidence that people in government will tell the truth. That is up six percentage points from a similar survey conducted by the institute in 1996.
The new poll also exposes deepening worries about the United States' two-party system. Sixty-four percent of those polled believe that what American really needs is a new political party, because the current two-party system isn't working. More than half of all Democrats (53 percent) and Republicans (56 percent) hold this view, but three out of four (74 percent) of the growing number of independents are especially adamant about this.
Hunter said this year's election brings into relief that America is, in some ways, two nations within one. "Each nation has its own values and visions of what the country represents," he said. "Trump and Clinton are highly symbolic, like flags around which each nation, or tribe, mobilizes."
To be sure, policy differences between supporters of one candidate and supporters of another exist in every election cycle. What is different this year, the institute's survey reveals, is the breadth and depth of those differences – the cultural chasm separating the Trump and Clinton nations.
Also appearing Wednesday at Gallup headquarters, Carl Desportes Bowman, the survey research director, enumerated several other findings of the poll.
•Seventy-three percent of all Americans believe the economic system is rigged in favor of the wealthiest Americans.
•Sixty-two percent of the American public agrees that the leaders in American corporations, media, universities and technology care little about the lives of most Americans.
•Nearly three out of four Americans (73 percent) believe that political correctness is a serious problem in our country, making it hard for people to say what they really think.
Bowman said that surprisingly, some of the disaffections enumerated in the survey results are less pronounced among minorities. For example, when asked to rate their confidence in the United States government, Bowman said both blacks and Hispanics exude greater confidence in government.
"In general, whites are twice as likely as blacks and Hispanics to be very distrustful of the government on a variety of measures," he writes in the poll analysis.
In the analysis conclusion, the researchers write, "The candidates in the 2016 election have become potent symbols of different dispositions toward the world and different aspirations for its future. These dramatic differences point to the decline of a shared civic culture that provided a basis for compromise, set limits on partisan disagreements and made possible the broad governing consensus that historian Arthur Schlesinger Jr. called the 'vital center.'"
Nope. Just two.
Urban US vs rural / suburban US.
If the differences were regional, we’d already be shooting. But they are not. Our enemies are just a few miles down the highway or the interstate, not up North or down South.
Parasite and host.
Just wait until all those mussie rapeugees start naming their enclaves and replacing state names.
When have we not been two nations in one outside of WW2 or the 1980s?
Definitely. It’s much more civilized than the horrible civil war that alot of people are instinctively fearing.
No disagreement
We are one serious political mistake from a Civil War. JMHO!
If we divide America into two nations:
The Ascendant Nation will soar into glory, joy, prosperity, strength, morality, liberty, justice for all, and greatness. The American Dream will continue to fulfill itself!The decadent nation will continue its descent into a hell-hole of misery, weakness, poverty, immorality, lies, corruption, totalitarianism, intolerance, injustice, violence, rot and decay.
22 posts and no one points out the elephant in the room: millions of Spanish speaking people changing the face of the country into something unrecognizable (well, you’d recognize it if you simply crossed the border at Nogales)?
Two nations? Yeah: Mexico being forced on America.
The Bolshevik gangsters are just being buttressed by the illegals, who are their army. Absent the mass influx of the last 40 years, the Left would have shrunk to insignificance as they aborted and contracepted themselves out of existence.
If we divide America into two nations:
The Ascendant Nation will soar into glory, joy, prosperity, strength, morality, liberty, justice for all, and greatness. The American Dream will continue to fulfill itself!The decadent nation will continue its descent into a hell-hole of misery, weakness, poverty, immorality, lies, corruption, totalitarianism, intolerance, injustice, violence, rot and decay.
You ask, “Yeah, why is that?”
Now in retirement with too much time on my hands, I’ve given some thought to that question, and here are my thoughts on the subject:
Survival of the Unfit
Charles Darwin’s Theory of Evolution (often referred to as The Theory of Survival of the Fittest) describes the positive effects resulting from any “pressure” on an animal species that removes the least fit among the species and allows only the most fit of the species to reproduce. Many of us are well aware of this “Survival of the Fittest” theory, but few are aware that Darwin also makes mention of the negative effects resulting from unlimited reproduction of a species’ least fit when the weak, the lazy, and the stupid are left unchecked.
We like to think otherwise, but our species, Homo sapiens-sapiens, isn’t that long “out of the trees” and the same laws of nature that affect all of God’s creatures apply equally to us. If we were to observe any other species that had been allowed to reproduce without limitations, we would know immediately what the consequences will be.
Whenever the weak; lazy; and stupid of a species are allowed to reproduce unimpeded by predators that feed off the weak; lazy; and stupid, they soon outnumber the strong, productive, and intelligent. When the weak/lazy/stupid dominate the gene pool, the entire population becomes weak/ lazy/stupid, and then the population collapses.
In the past, when these collapses occurred within human populations, they have been referred to as a “Malthusian Collapse.” Thomas Malthus, a Nineteenth Century Economist, thought these collapses were caused simply because past civilizations had reached a point where human populations could no longer produce sufficient food supplies to feed themselves, but he never pinned down the exact reason for the food shortages.
I now think some of these collapses of past human civilizations may have occurred when the unproductive weak/lazy/stupid greatly outnumbered the strong/productive/intelligent of the population. In other words, the majority of the population became too lazy to perform the work necessary to provide for themselves and what was left of the strong/productive/intelligent refused to continue to do it for them.
These collapses have occurred at frequent intervals throughout human history, and Western Civilization is, in my humble opinion, currently on the cusp of one of these collapses.
D.J. Taylor
“whites are twice as likely as blacks and Hispanics to be very distrustful of the government on a variety of measures”
Do black folks not realize that police are the armed government?
We are a house divided against itself, and all that that implies.
Russia knows their time to act is short. As does China.
I think you have it backwards. The left on the left and the right on the right.
I was just talking with my teenage son about this. We are a nation split in half with almost no common ground. It’s at the point of absurdity:
Surely we can agree that stabbing a baby just weeks from delivery in the head and sucking it’s brain out before ripping it from the womb is wrong.
Nope...they want that.
Well at least we know that teaching young elementary children that anal sex is normal and healthy shouldn’t happen.
Nope...they want that.
How about enforcing the immigration laws on the books to protect us all from terrorists who may sneak in?
Nope...that’s racist.
Keeping the second amendment?
Too dangerous.
First amendment for everyone?
Too hateful.
9/12/2001
I'm hoping for a 3rd party to come along. America is getting wound so tight that something is bound to fracture. Politics is the least critical piece of our country, so if that's what breaks, we'll be the best off.
Secession would likely be the worst.
Though, I've a different opinion than many here on FR - I think that the liberal states (Northeast Corridor, maybe West Coast) will secede, rather than Texas, Mississippi, et al.
Why? Liberals are easier to herd and arrogant enough to think that they'd be better off without "Flyover Country".
Only way conservative, red states get out is if they're forced out by the Feddle Gov't. Which is a possibility too, but a little less likely. Herding Conservatives is like herding cats, and all but the most radical of them realize what was posted upthread - the enemy isn't only a Hipster Dirtbag from Manhattan, but also just up the road in your closest city.
Just my $0.02. YMMV.
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