Hi globestocks,
What I sense is a deep divide along ideological lines
Naw, not ideology. That's passe. I'm an ideologist. I'm an Anarcho-Groucho-Marxist, but I'm not too serious about it.
What the divides really are, IMHO, relate more to where folks are on the economic ladder, first of all. And, in equal measure, what religion they fanaticize about.
In broad strokes that are bound to be too general to be useful, Republicans are largely fundamentalist Christians who are skeptical about Islam, atheism, socialism, racial equality or change. In no particular order.
Democrats are largely polyglot acceptors of diverse religio-ethical points of view and ethnicities, and hope that more folks, rather than fewer, can share the American dream.
As far as growing further apart, all you have to do is look at the growing and gaping disparity between the richest and the poorest among us to understand that economic stratification is at the heart of the divide you see among us.
A heartless Republican party sees rape & pillage capitalism as the shining future. A headless Democratic party sees no solutions to the problem of inequality and injustice, so it punts on issues like welfare and progressive taxation. And it will struggle mightily to try to effectuate any sort of significant electoral reform between now and the next Presidential election. Probably for naught, because the party that prefers electoral equipment disparity is the party in control.
-Ray |
