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.'"
The problem with the analysis is that there really are no Red States or Blue States. That’s a function of the two major political parties.
The dividing lines aren’t by state, or by county, or city/town, or neighborhood.
The divisions are door to door.
It would be a terrible mess.
Takers vs Makers?
For the individual American (that is spelled with a “c”), there are only 3 palatable solutions if hitlery gets in.
1. Emigrate to a country with like minded expats.
2. Secession with Texas at the center of a new nation
3. A military coup with the installation of a benevolent dictator.
Voting will not matter anymore. Article 5 is a joke. CW2 along with WW3 will make the US the most dangerous place in the world.
That was a great 4 months.
Awful lot of FReepers seem to be hoping for such a thing, though. I sincerely hope that they're wrong.
Should through some mischance or rigged counting of ballots, Herself is elevated to the office of Presidency, the bifurcation and possible balkanization of that territory once known as The United States of America” will be well under way.
Now, this can be amicable, or it can be with a great deal of bad feelings.
Divide the country, not on state or even county boundaries, but by congressional districts. Those that went “red”, be allowed to organize into a separate nation, based on the constitutional principles that once governed the United States of America. Those that went “blue” may set up whatever kind of cockamamie socialist-theocratic-tyrannical-despotic regimes they like, but the it would then be incumbent on the “red” districts to strictly limit and use extreme vetting on any individuals who wished to migrate back into the “red” districts from “blue” districts. Those who cannot stand the prosperity that would arise in the “red” districts would be free to depart for any of the “blue” districts that would accept them, but it would be a strictly one-way-one-time choice, no reneges or do-overs.
I spent yesterday in the “other country.” I was with my extended family breaking the Yom Kippur fast. I walked in knowing not to touch the subject of the election because I’d be the only person in the place who was a Trump supporter. The driveway and street filled with lexuses, hybrids, bmw’s and one Tesla.
I walked into the kitchen to hear a conversation in progress where a man was saying “I just can’t wait till this election is OVER.” Several others agreed enthusiastically. Then he went on. “What Hillary needs to do after the election is....” and no one skipped a beat. They all ASSUME Hillary will win. They seem to KNOW she will win.
Now, these are bleeding heart libs. They brag about the little volunteer work they do and act like they care so much.... but it is the poor illegals they care for, the REFUGEES, all the wrong people. Then they hop into their shining new expensive cars and plan their next expensive vacation. They think they are so good and caring.
I don’t like their world.
I’m actually much more open to finding a common ground that can appeal to 80% of people - enough conservativism to be sane, enough liberalism to appease the terminally offended, but not going overboard on either.
Right now the liberals are crafting the world in their own image. It’s dangerous and incoherent. It needs to be rolled back.
I understand I will never get the society I want, exactly. But we have to move closer towards that goal. The nuttiest 10% of liberals will always be complaining and alienated. The nuttiest 10% of conservatives will always find something to disapprove. Admittedly, I’m in the nuttiest 10% on the right, but finding that broad commonality will serve everyone better.
Door to door political instability means the whole country, and indeed the whole world, loses.
emotionalists, altruists, collectivists, parasites, statists, socialists
vs
reason, rational self interest, individualism, independents, limited government, capitalists
This is what the Political Establishment does not grasp. You can con and lie and scheme to put Hillary in office, but it will not make the Sanders/Trump voters go away.
Clamping a lid on a pressure cooker rarely works out well.
The US Media/Political Establishment reminds me of the French Aristocracy in 1787.
Figure Sanders as the candidate for the "Liberal Left".
Cruz or Trump as the candidate for the "Conservative Right".
And Hillary/Rubio/Kasich/Jeb/etc all elbowing each other out of the way as a candidate for a "Moderate Party". You and I both know Hillary isn't moderate, but she's positioning herself that way.
Like I said, Something's gotta give, somewhere. I'm hoping that it's our political structure that breaks, since it's the least valuable. If our social structure gives out (think, race war) that would akin to our government breaking (think secession). Results from either of those would be horrific.
We need to be divided.
I feel for you. My relatives in New York are also big on virtue signaling. They told me Trump was just like Hitler.
This election year is breaking up friendships and turning families against each other.
Virtue signaling — or simple hypocrisy, if you will — has come to dominate all discourse.
After all I have heard, I think I’d rather be an honest reprobate.
“Regardless of who wins next month, half the people are not going to look on that person as their president.”
Already happened. Libs never accepted GWB as their legitimate president, and conservatives, as a rule, have looked upon Obama as being illegitimate from day one.
This country is so politically divided, it’s a wonder CWII hasn’t already broken out.
“TAKE IT TO THE SUBURBS!!!”
“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.”
Too true, but it’s even worse than that. The socio-political division exists in neighborhoods and even families, all throughout the nation.
Few of us live in places that are monolithically conservative, or liberal. We’re like a sea of red and blue confetti, thrown into the air and fallen to the floor.
It’s a nightmare scenario we live in.
One half of the white population faces legal discrimination in access to higher education, jobs, and promotions (while funding much of the government that imposes those sanctions on them).
Affirmative action is a national disgrace, and nothing less than an official policy that women, blacks, and Hispanics are genetically inferior to white & Asian men.
They would never let the productive half of this country stop feeding, housing, and schooling the unproductive half.
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