How Americans Regard One Another Has Changed Drastically
I’d like to shake the hand of the guy who went rogue with the road sign here. But, while his message is funny, it makes an important point.
Americans from the baby-boom and the earlier generations remember a time when our personal politics meant relatively little in the way we regarded one another.
As an example, 50 years ago, few parents were upset if one of their children proposed to marry someone from the other major political party. Yet that’s no longer the case. Today, more than half of Democrats interviewed said they would object if one of their kids wanted to marry a Republican (and vice versa).
What has changed fundamentally? In particular, how did the MAGA movement come to divide us so completely?
In my mind, it’s largely a function of the fact that what we now call “news” is no longer information; it’s content designed to capture our round-the-clock attention and make us loyal to one club or another. News is no longer a service; it’s an extremely lucrative business, and the only way to establish and maintain these megaprofits is to have two halves of America, each of which considers the other half “assholes.”
Every time I encounter an EV driver in a relaxed setting, suppose I spot someone walking to or from his vehicle in a parking lot, I ask, “Say, how do you like your car?” I have at least a few hundred of these one-question surveys under my belt at this point.
At left is just one more example of the absurd nature of the U.S. political scene as we move through the 2024 election season.
Fortunately for the state of North Carolina, most of its residents share the political sensibilities of the more productive and civilized states. The author of the meme probably doesn’t know that California, if it were a country, would be the 5th largest economy on Earth. That’s something to be emulated and respected, not ridiculed.
Poor education, little affluence, horrible healthcare, but plenty of political rancor and Fox News viewership.
Lauren Boebert is a darling among the Christian right in rural Colorado. And with this resumé, why shouldn’t she be?
It’s true that the physicists of the later 19th Century believed that they had discovered all the major, basic principles that govern the universe. Then, of course, came Einstein, followed by the quantum physicists and all the theoretical stuff that has come along since.
Apparently, Trump’s legal team has run out of ammunition in one of the former president’s election interference cases, though what they’re asserting here is correct.
Great quote from public intellectual Garrison Keillor here.
News flash: If you’re a part of a “Christian movement” that demands that “the government be a part of God’s wrath,” you have deep-seated psychological issues that are unlikely to resolve by encountering some meme on social media.
When we look at new car sales in Norway, we see that only one in 10 is powered by an internal combustion engine.
