The current state of ideological polarization in the U.S. will lead to...

Don't think too much about the question -- answer quickly, with what your gut says.

Not because I actually believe it -- or in "God" for that matter -- but as I read down the list of choices, that was the only one that made me feel happy.

Otherwise, I have to say, damned if I know how this is all going to turn out. I know what I'd LIKE to see, but my anxiety level is way too high to get a decent read from my intuition.

Thanks for the chuckle, though.

sw

Frankly, it's the only choice that makes me happy, too.

Aw, come on, you're amongst friends: What would you like to see happen?

But I really don't believe it. It think it will get worse long before it gets better.

I fear that civil war is a possibility, but I am philosophically and spiritually opposed to buying into fear, so I refrain from allowing myself to feed those thoughts.

Metaphysically, the deepest message I've gotten is that all our human struggles are at some point going to be trumped by some major earth changes. I just don't *know* how soon that will happen.

Otherwise, I think what's most likely to happen is that we will continue on a downward spiral for some time to come -- no big dramatic "civil wars" or "revolutions" just continued deterioration.

Humans have an unfortunately large capacity for adjusting to hideous circumstances and accepting them as "normal", and Americans in particular have *denial* honed to a fine art.

So I think we will most likely limp along, coping with our increasingly dysfunctional system until either entropy or Mother Earth brings it to a halt.

sw

And if the Rapture is Real, the most likely outcome. What would Jesus say to Bush, playing like a savior? If it is true, he is in deep cosmic doo-doo right now.



http://www.wgoeshome.com

The Presidential seal being a halo to this clown is the ultimate blasphemy. :puke:

Otherwise an emotive pic, though I wish humans would make life so that more pics would be happy ones.

The ideological pendulum will swing leftward...country will continue left for about 10-20 years. Slight shift rightward again after that, but cannot be sustained because mounting environmental problems will necessitate leftist views and leftist (read government) intervention.

...(and perhaps there's an actual theory about this I haven't heard of) that the U.S. experiences a "sexual revolution" -- and with it, a general leftward swing -- every 20 years or so, followed by a decade or so of hard-right "clampdown" on mores, resulting in a very repressed, paranoid, and ultimately boring society. Someone who knows a lot more than I do about American culture before the turn of the last century will have to jump in and tell me if this theory holds water for the 18th & 19th centuries. But it seems to me:

L: 1920s/Roaring Twenties: Sex, bathtub gin, drugs, jazz
R: 1930s/Depression, Hoover
L: 1940s/WWII: Sex, booze, swing
R: 1950s/McCarthy, bomb shelters, Leave It to Beaver
L: 1960s/Sex, drugs, rock and roll
R: 1970s/Sex & drugs, maybe, but Nixon, Nixon, Reagan, Reagan
L: 1980s/Sex, drugs, punk
R: 1990s/RW mania flourishes; Promise Keepers, etc.

2000-? Seems we're overdue for a Leftward shift!

the Republicans fuck things up for a while and then the Democrats come in to save the day.

There's that, all right! :D

cultures tend to embrace either Eros or Thanatos (militarism, destructiveness).

It might be more like a 40-year cycle, but I think that theory is generally correct. Of course, there are some contradictions there, too: the post-war 20s were a time of mostly underground social/sexual license, coupled with fairly strong conservative trends (e.g. Prohibition, the beginnings of drug hysteria). Actually, pretty much all post-war periods in American history are marked by a conservative shift, and I think it's also proportional to the social upheaval of the war. Vietnam was particularly destructive to the social fabric, and look where we are now (freepers, fundies, RW think tanks, etc.).

I know a bit about these kinds of trends in the 19th century. You might look up the Impressionist and Symbolist movements in Europe, especially in France. It's definitely similar.

Apropos, I just saw a great drug hysteria propaganda movie the other night, "The Cocaine Fiends". It's from 1937, I think about the same time that "Reefer Madness" was made. Those films, and their social climate, certainly support the theory.

...it seems there was an especially long lapse between Vietnam and the subsequent rightward shift? I'm nodding in agreement with you, but the 1970s appear to throw a monkey wrench into the works.

Of course, the major social upheaval of the 60s began roughly mid-decade, so perhaps at least the first half of the 1970s could be considered an extension of the 1960s... ending with Carter's win in '76, and beginning the long slide into conservatism with Reagan in 1980.

I will indeed read up on the Impressionist and Symbolist movements -- my education of European history is sorely lacking. Thanks for the direction!

Ahhhh, "Cocaine Fiends" -- I think I'm one of about twelve people who actually own it on tape. If you liked that one, check out the Rhino Video catalogue, or Something Weird Video, for much, much more of the same, as well as VD/sex-hygeine and driver's-ed scare films from the 1920s to the 1970s.

My personal favorite for years has been one called "Dope Mania," featuring highlights from drug propaganda & exploitation films spanning all decades. Watch "Emergency's" Kevin Tighe turn into a heroin addict! Learn how you, Mr. Police Officer, should scope out every home you enter for telltale signs of marijuana use! See the Evil Weed turn proper young ladies into naked surf hussies! Great for parties. :)

but I forget what their explanation is. I think in part it was the scope of the social upheaval; remember that as early as the '50s, the US was already providing 90% of the financing for France's little escapade in Indochina, keeping them in the game long after they had given up any rational hope of victory. So Vietnam was a long-term war that spanned three decades. And it didn't end until 1974, while the social upheaval continued unabated. It was discovered fairly recently that LBJ was calling for a near-WWII-level general mobilization for Vietnam, and the Pentagon brass refused. The reason: we wouldn't have the reserves necessary to control domestic unrest if that mobilization was called!

You could probably argue that the Kennedy assassination touched off the cultural "hot war"; that's just my theory, everybody's got one. : )

Reagan's win in 1980 does put a convenient bookend on the tumult of the '60s, but I think that's a little simplistic. The founding of the RW think tanks was primarily a '70s phenomenon; it was a reponse that a Nixon-appointed Supreme Court justice (I forget who) called for. The ruling class was terrified of the social movements that came out of the Vietnam era, particularly the Third World solidarity movement and the alternative media. The idea was to circumvent the will of the public by using huge amounts of $$$, covert ops/psyops, and by waging "total war" in the Third World. Many in Carter's administration, and Carter himself, came out of these think tanks (CFR, Trilateral Commission, etc.).

So the crackdown began in the mid-'70s, approximately. Some of the social effects weren't seen until the '80s; the explosion in the number of divorces is one example. I'm not sure that there's a good explanation for all of this. The only thing I can think of is that the scope of the social upheaval was unique in our history (both for political and technological reasons) and took a long time to build. The RW counterattack has been even more sustained. Moyers I think spoke on this recently and said that there has never been anything like the RW think tank/media nexus in human history--EVER.

a general breakup. The problem isn't just 1 dimensional rw/lw. There are issues of religion, race, and culture as well.

Enjoy today. Tomorrow is looking iffy.

be a civil war, at least not for a long time. Currently there is polarization because of the controversy of Bush becoming President and the Iraq war, but this will eventually calm down. Also you can't divide states by red and blue. Few states have an overwhelming majority of one party over the other.

Plus a civil war would be bad for the left due to the fact that the right has far more gun owners.:-(

And welcome to DU! :hi:

The presence of a common external enemy (al-qaida) makes civil war unlikely but it could also enable a creeping fascism to settle in as paranoia increases and people look for a strong leader.

However the economic fallout of globalization, the massive deficit, the loss of good jobs etc will fracture the right and soldify the left.

climatic shifts,unsustainable pollution, greed, hubris, sheer stupidity and averice appears to be leading to eminate collapse of the Federal government(along the lines of USSR). Money along with the corporations will fail and much knashing of teeth will be heard.

I could go on but I won't.

...that the right wings time has come, but I fear before that happened, there must be a civil war, so I clicked the first one.

On edit: Typo

If you look at the red state/blue state divide in 2000 and compare it to the battle lines of the Civil War you can't help but notice the similarity. Two Union states did go red in 2000 but they were the border states of Indiana and Ohio and the border states had mixed loyalties then as well as now. West Virginia went red too, but its very statehood was the result of those mixed loyalties. The repugs advocate many of the same losing propositions the Confederacy fought for then; explicitly where they can, i.e., state's rights; implicitly where they must, i.e., segregation and discrimination. They have co-opted the former states of the Confederacy and nursed their continuing resentment of defeat into a strong constituency which seeks to win politically what they could not win by force of arms. If they succeed it would put us in the awkward position of having to assert our right to secede. Would another Civil War be far behind?

...way of looking at it. And yes, I do believe that if they succeed, another civil war won't be far off.

Welcome to DU too, btw. :)

There's some connection between the hatred expressed in past Southern racism and the hatred expressed today by some republicans.

First attributed to the Nixon campaign, although I'm not sure how fair that is; they probably deserve credit for perfecting something that had been going on in the South since Reconstruction.

I think that's the only thing that will stop the right wing.

Sad but true.

They are like the fascists of old, seen in other countries. Who had their asses kicked.

Fascists have to get their asses kicked in order to shut the fuck up.

...do you think would be most likely to do the job? And how?

That's an open-ended question, because I know you could be referring to either a physical invasion, or a virtual conquest (i.e., by means of economic sanctions, for instance). Or maybe both, since anything is possible at this point.

But it seems the inevitable fate of fascists.

Am I wrong? Who am I forgetting?

I suppose Franco locked Spain up for decades, but I can't see the world letting that happen to America. Especially if America continues to start wars.

I can easily see the European countries ganging up on us, blockading us, and perhaps finally attacking in order to stop the US from killing people and invading other countries.

The hatred from the right wing is just growing. The more they appear to be losing, the greater their hatred grows.

That woman punched in the face in SF by some guy who didn't like her art strikes me as a classic symbol of what is happening in this country.

Letters to the editor urging that we nuke cities, one by one, until the terrorist attacks stop (like we're having attacks every day, we're not, but that's another story).

There are people in this country, and there are a lot of them, who want to kill and kill and kill. The more the world resists them, the greater their desire to kill.

I don't see any way to stop them except to kick their asses into the dust.

History has shown that the only thing that stops people like this is unambiguous, embarrassing, crushing defeat.

is: totally deniable intelligence operations, probably by the UK, France, Germany, and maybe Russia. There's no conceivable way those countries will let the US go completely off the rails. It endangers the entire human species, and that's not an exaggeration.

Of course, I voted for the first option though. It's going to be bloody no matter what.

Get your souls in order....

This nation is too deeply divided -- and in so many ways. I feel that these divisions are beyond repair.

Red states against blue states? Even the reddest of the red states is only 65% red. That's a whole TON of blue people.

liberal vs. conservative
pro-life vs. pro-choice
gay vs. straight
male vs. female
whites vs. people of color
native-born vs. immigrant
educated vs. uneducated
rich vs. those who are not rich
Christian vs. those who are not Christian
and so on, and so on, and so on....

Unless we send all the right wingers to Oklahoma or something (not a bad idea)

that there is very little ideological polarization in the U.S. ... what we've come to understand as a classic struggle between left and right is in actuality being fought over a very narrow spectrum ...

this is not to argue that the issues in conflict are unimportant ... but they do not address the fundamental failings of our democracy and therefore cannot ultimately lead anywhere ...

the advertised struggle covered in the media is nothing but a battle between cobra and mongoose staged for the benefit of the wealthy ... and while we battle for survival, we fail to understand that we share a common oppressor ...

capitalism and its wealthiest stockholders have a stranglehold on our democracy ... each day, the wealthiest grow more wealthy and more powerful ... and the simple maxim about divide and conquer distracts us from our true enemies ...

we grovel in the dirt over many great issues of the day all the while failing to see the ultimate conflict that stands between most people and real freedom ... we are powerless until we awaken to this truth ...

and so, the sad truth is that the current state of "ideological polarization" is nothing but a sad illusion ... and the great pendulum that now swings our way is still a pendulum nevertheless ... capitalism, that can know only greed, must be destroyed if we are ever to free ourselves from the entrapped ebb and flow of our current political predicament ...

it does not seem to me that either Republicans or most Democrats share these views ... and until they do, they are little more than cobra and mongoose battling for the rich man's entertainment ...

my gut says the first choice.

Would like to have more faith in human beings, but it would take a f***ing miracle to get everyone working together and making a better world.

either by a left-wing or right-wing enclave or possibly even both. There's already one movement, ChristianExodus.org, that advocates getting large numbers of fundies to move to a single state and secede from the rest of America.

And honestly, I'm not sure that's an entirely bad idea. Realistically, we can't wish away millions of RW nuts any more than they can wish us away. Secession, or at least drastic decentralization of this country, could be one of the least worst solutions.

We'll always be divided, but there will be no civil disruption over it. We'll never that incoherent, even under Bush.