View Single Post
Old 2004-11-09, 01:22 PM   #44
sperry
The Doink
 
sperry's Avatar
 
Real Name: Scott
Join Date: Nov 2002
Location: Portland, OR
Posts: 20,335
 
Car: '09 OBXT, '02 WRX, '96 Miata
Class: PDX/TT-6
 
The way out is through
Default

Quote:
Originally Posted by AtomicLabMonkey
In my opinion you're close, but on a slightly wrong track. I don't think the country is divided along North/South lines anymore; it's divided along the lines between urban and rural populations, wherever they are located. The large trend you see looking at a map is that the massive built-up population centers of the country are mostly on the two coasts, east and west, and their political outlooks tend to be fairly "liberal". Then there's the rest of the country in between which isn't anywhere near as developed, and for the most part it tends to be fairly "conservative". The two major parties have just latched onto these respective areas because they have easy support in them.

I agree that the divide is only becoming more of a problem, not less.. the bitterness between the two only seems to be getting worse with every national election. Left unchecked, trends like this can lead to civil war in a nation...
But it was the same urban vs. rural division between North and South that played a major part of the Civil War. Granted slavery was wrapped up in there, but I really don't think that the South believed slavery was that important to keep, I think they were just pissed that the Northern control Federal Government didn't seem to under stand how important slavery was to the Southern's farm economy.

And now the "South", aka the "Bible Belt", aka the "Country Folk", aka the "Morally Strict" population of the nation are feeling that the Liberals that (let's face it) control the media have gone to far with the errosion of the nation's moral values. While I'd tend to agree that our media is full of shit (bad TV shows, awful music, rediculous ads, etc, etc, etc) I certainly don't think that it's the government's job to control the morality of the nation. And I especially don't see the moral decay of our media as a big problem considering the terrible forign policy of the current administration. I mean seriously... we're at war, hated (and even feared) by most of the world's nations, teetering on the brink of economic collapse, spending money like it's armegeddon, and all people can think about is whether or not guys should should hump each other.

To be honest, I was very surprised that the election turned out the way that it did. The Democrats couldn't have scripted a better situation to oust an incumbent President... I guess never underestimate the homophobia of Middle America. And in hind-sight, I see that this was really a long time coming... like I said, I should have noticed it 4 years ago, but it didn't click as to why people were voting the way they were.

And now that I'm part of the voting minority in what IMO should have been a very clear-cut election in the other direction, I fear for our country. If the majority of the people in the US are willing to ignore the single most important aspect of our government, and ammend the Constitution to include their personal religious beliefs as law, then how are we any different than the Taliban, or any other government based on fundamental religligious "values"?
__________________
Is you is, or is you ain't, my con-stit-u-ints?
sperry is offline   Reply With Quote