A thread for Democrats Only
POSTED BY: THGRRI
UPDATED: Sunday, September 6, 2026 15:36
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Two Increasingly Polarized Cultures
There is evidence from the social sciences that as a society becomes wealthier, its values tend to drift toward self-expression and secular rationalism, away from traditionalism and survival values.
The US has long been something of an exception among developed democracies — it has been drifting (mildly) in the direction of traditionalism. The explanation for this, Wilkinson hypothesizes, is that the small aggregate movement is hiding an extreme divergence underneath:
Quote:On this theory, globalization has effectively split the US into two countries: an economically booming urban country (albeit with plenty of poor people inside it) and a stagnant or declining rural and exurban one. The fate of midsize towns and cities seems to depend on which of those two currents they catch.
The United States may be dividing into two increasingly polarized cultures: an increasingly secular-rational and self-expression oriented “post-materialist” culture concentrated in big cities and the academic archipelago, and a largely rural and exurban culture that has been tilting in the opposite direction, toward zero-sum survival values, while trying to hold the line on traditional values.
Like economic activity, Democrats are increasingly concentrated in cities. In a paper last year, Mark Muro and Sifan Liu at the Brookings Institution found that the fewer than 500 US counties that went for Hillary Clinton in 2016 represent “a massive 64 percent of America’s economic activity as measured by total output in 2015.” The other 36 percent of the nation’s economic output is Donald Trump country spread out in 2,600 counties.
These two Americas have experienced diverging fortunes and have consequently been diverging in values, ideology, and even personality. Increasingly, cosmopolitan risk takers flock to cities while traditionalists remain in rural and exurban areas. The economic sorting has been both a driver and a consequence of the extraordinary polarization of US political life.
www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2017/3/22/14762030/donald-trump-tribal
-epistemology
The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at www.mediafire.com/folder/1uwh75oa407q8/Firefly
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The Balanced-Budget Amendment Is Deeply Stupid and dumb-messaging-vote season in Congress is even dumber than usual.
When Congress returns from its two-week recess on Monday, it won’t have a whole lot to do. Most of the meaningful legislation that was going to get done before the midterms was buried in the 2,232-page omnibus that passed a couple of weeks ago. There will still be some work over the summer — a farm bill, for example, that’s already a predictably hot mess over proposed cuts to food stamps. But otherwise, the 115th Congress is just about ready to spend the remaining time it’s not on recess doing the important work of voting on messaging bills and pretending they matter in any way.
And what better way to kick off messaging season than voting on a balanced-budget amendment to the Constitution? The House has teed up a vote next week on such an amendment. All in all, a great way to collapse an economy through the unimpeachable logic of, “If families have to tighten their belts when things are tough, so too should the federal government.”
The Treasury Department will need to borrow about 1 trillion bucks each of the next few fiscal years—in good economic times. Deficits during the next recession are going to be hilarious, and the austerity required to bring them into balance during recession would do the trick of landing the country in a depression. Even though the amendment wouldn’t go into effect until five years after its ratification, on the plus side, that five-year waiting period would give us plenty of time to reserve our spots in a nationwide bread line.
This thing isn’t getting two-thirds support in the House, it’s not doing anything in the Senate, and three-quarters of states, which happen to enjoy the federal government’s unlimited printing press given the restraints of their own balanced-budget requirements, would never ratify it. The goal of the vote this week is to allow Republicans running for office, when confronted by constituents about their remarkable ability to create boom-time trillion-dollar deficits, to say, “I voted for a balanced-budget amendment.” Only seven more months until Election Day.
https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2018/04/the-balanced-budget-amendm
ent-is-deeply-stupid.html
The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at www.mediafire.com/folder/1uwh75oa407q8/Firefly
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Quote:
Originally posted by second:
Two Increasingly Polarized Cultures
There is evidence from the social sciences that as a society becomes wealthier, its values tend to drift toward self-expression and secular rationalism, away from traditionalism and survival values.
The US has long been something of an exception among developed democracies — it has been drifting (mildly) in the direction of traditionalism. The explanation for this, Wilkinson hypothesizes, is that the small aggregate movement is hiding an extreme divergence underneath:Quote:On this theory, globalization has effectively split the US into two countries: an economically booming urban country (albeit with plenty of poor people inside it) and a stagnant or declining rural and exurban one. The fate of midsize towns and cities seems to depend on which of those two currents they catch.
The United States may be dividing into two increasingly polarized cultures: an increasingly secular-rational and self-expression oriented “post-materialist” culture concentrated in big cities and the academic archipelago, and a largely rural and exurban culture that has been tilting in the opposite direction, toward zero-sum survival values, while trying to hold the line on traditional values.
Like economic activity, Democrats are increasingly concentrated in cities. In a paper last year, Mark Muro and Sifan Liu at the Brookings Institution found that the fewer than 500 US counties that went for Hillary Clinton in 2016 represent “a massive 64 percent of America’s economic activity as measured by total output in 2015.” The other 36 percent of the nation’s economic output is Donald Trump country spread out in 2,600 counties.
These two Americas have experienced diverging fortunes and have consequently been diverging in values, ideology, and even personality. Increasingly, cosmopolitan risk takers flock to cities while traditionalists remain in rural and exurban areas. The economic sorting has been both a driver and a consequence of the extraordinary polarization of US political life.
www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2017/3/22/14762030/donald-trump-tribal
-epistemology
The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at www.mediafire.com/folder/1uwh75oa407q8/Firefly
You realize that article just said that non-Democrats are the ones that are keeping the country intact, right?
If we were any other successful country in history, we would have imploded in under 200 years by excessively indulging in ultra-liberal behaviors.
Do Right, Be Right. :)
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Quote:6ixStringJack, the USA imploded several times. The most famous occasion was the Civil War, where ultra-liberals were opposed to the perfectly biblical, time-tested for thousands of years, economically important institution of slavery. The ultra-liberals did put the country back together again over the extremely violent objections of conservative Southern slave owners. In Texas, Republicans are still whining and complaining about that war and how unfairly they were treated by ultra-liberals: where I live in Baytown there is a college and high school named after Robert E Lee, beloved and famous conservative fighter against all things ultra-liberal.
Originally posted by 6IXSTRINGJACK:
You realize that article just said that non-Democrats are the ones that are keeping the country intact, right?
If we were any other successful country in history, we would have imploded in under 200 years by excessively indulging in ultra-liberal behaviors.
Do Right, Be Right. :)
The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at www.mediafire.com/folder/1uwh75oa407q8/Firefly
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Bad example. The Civil War wasn't about slavery, and the South had a point.
Do you have another one?
Do Right, Be Right. :)
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Quote:The Phantom of the make-believe Ultra-Liberal Republicans rises yet again, in the delusions of the Freedom-Hating Democraps.
Originally posted by second:Quote:6ixStringJack, the USA imploded several times. The most famous occasion was the Civil War, where ultra-liberals were opposed to the perfectly biblical, time-tested for thousands of years, economically important institution of slavery.
Originally posted by 6IXSTRINGJACK:
You realize that article just said that non-Democrats are the ones that are keeping the country intact, right?
If we were any other successful country in history, we would have imploded in under 200 years by excessively indulging in ultra-liberal behaviors.
Do Right, Be Right. :)
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Quote:JewelStaiteFan, you lost your tiny mind. Now you've gone so far as to deny the Civil War was about slavery and Robert E Lee fighting to protect the property of slave owners. This movie review you could complain about, since it compares Trump's skills to Stalin's. How could the reviewer possibly know when the book on how the Trump White House is run hasn't been written yet? Except the book has: Fire and Fury, Inside the Trump White House.
Originally posted by JEWELSTAITEFAN:Quote:The Phantom of the make-believe Ultra-Liberal Republicans rises yet again, in the delusions of the Freedom-Hating Democraps.
6ixStringJack, the USA imploded several times. The most famous occasion was the Civil War, where ultra-liberals were opposed to the perfectly biblical, time-tested for thousands of years, economically important institution of slavery.
Trump mentioned in "The Death of Stalin" review:
Anyone following the news coming out of the White House in 2018 couldn't help but see the tiny-minded bully Donald Trump and his leaking, backbiting, constantly-fired-or-resigning staff reflected in this film, even though the "The Death of Stalin" was based on a graphic novel by Fabien Nurya and conceived long before the 2016 presidential election. Nearly every civilization has suffered through some version of this madness. Iannucci's just here to skewer it, not in a lofty or smug way, but an earthy and immediate one, as if to remind us that yes, indeed, it can happen here, wherever "here" is. The end product joins an elite series of similarly blackhearted comedies about the reptilian impulses that drive men in power: "Dr. Strangelove," "Apocalypse Now,” “Catch-22," "M*A*S*H" and (lower mammal division) "Animal Farm."
www.rogerebert.com/mzs/30-minutes-on-the-death-of-stalin
The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at www.mediafire.com/folder/1uwh75oa407q8/Firefly
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The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at www.mediafire.com/folder/1uwh75oa407q8/Firefly
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Quote:
Originally posted by second:
The end product joins an elite series of similarly blackhearted comedies about the reptilian impulses that drive men in power: "Dr. Strangelove," "Apocalypse Now,” “Catch-22," "M*A*S*H" and (lower mammal division) "Animal Farm."
You view Animal Farm as a comedy?
Seriously. WTF is wrong with you?
Do Right, Be Right. :)
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Quote:Funny that you should mention Animal Farm, an allegorical novella by George Orwell. Once the pigs were in charge of the farm, they started over-eating, well, like pigs. The GOP equivalent is over-paying: add Mick Mulvaney to the list of Big Spenders with Other People’s Money. He created a bunch of new positions that never were needed before and then paid his people $259,500 a year. That is more than the salaries of members of Congress, cabinet secretaries, and nearly all federal judges apart from those who sit on the Supreme Court. Republicans are Pigs.
Originally posted by 6IXSTRINGJACK:Quote:
Originally posted by second:
The end product joins an elite series of similarly blackhearted comedies about the reptilian impulses that drive men in power: "Dr. Strangelove," "Apocalypse Now,” “Catch-22," "M*A*S*H" and (lower mammal division) "Animal Farm."
You view Animal Farm as a comedy?
Seriously. WTF is wrong with you?
Do Right, Be Right. :)
www.motherjones.com/kevin-drum/2018/04/add-mick-mulvaney-to-the-list-o
f-big-spenders-with-other-peoples-money/
The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at www.mediafire.com/folder/1uwh75oa407q8/Firefly
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