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Re: Republicans vs Democrates
| quote: | Originally posted by me&myself
Recently I was asked, how people in USA feel about the Democrates being real close to winning this time?
Please don't hesitate to write some of your thoughts about both (R and D).
Being apolitical i can say nothing about that) so i am making a lil research. |
It looks like this got a bit derailed.
US sentiment towards the two parties is a huge question.
The first segment of the US populus to understand are the hard liners, those people who will not support the other party no matter who is running. To these people the other side is the enemy. Democratic hardliners use words like "conservative", "business", "coporation", "Republican", "investment", "the market", and "trust fund" as swear words.
By contrast Republican hardliners use "liberal", "hippy", "green", "PETA", "Democrat", "Fag", "socialist", "comunist", "national medicare", and "social security" as swear words.
Of course these nuances don't even apply to all of the Dems / Reps hardliners, and "globalization" seems to be a swear word in both camps right now.
But these hardliners apear (says the Canadian) to be a minority. Because there are only two parties most people seem to fall more in the middle.
The centrist population will have opinions about each issue and is just as likely to fall into either political party on one issue while supporting the other on another issue. This is part of what really makes America great, I will not deny it. Evidence of this centrist population are seen in the differences between candidates such as McCain, Paul, and Guiliani. All three of them make Republicans uncomfortable because thier blend of conservative and liberal stances flies in the face of hardline bi-partizan politics.
In my opinion, that has made watching the Republican primaries more exciting then the Democarts. Obama and Hillary seem to be only very slightly different. I'm guessing the reason for thier similarity is because they want to stand firm on as little as possible because right now shutting up will ensure a Democratic victory.
A last group, which I think is growing quickly, is the cynical centrists. These people don't particularily like either party, seeing them as elites that are out of touch, or people who are to far removed from thier lives to actually have any effect on it. In the cynical center both parties look esentially the same. My feeling is this is where Ron Paul is getting his support from. He's the only candidate who has stood out and stood up to difficult issues without pandering. He is waking up to confronting some harsh realities while everyone else is still trying to keep the American dream alive.
In the end the grass roots are actually quite far removed from the polished, stylized, hollywood portrayal of America that is omnipresent in international media. To understand actually going on and why the cynical centrists might feel the political class aren't going to help them do a little digging into actual American living.
The "black marks" are well discribed if you know where to look. Micheal Moores first movie, "Roger and Me" I believe, shows the sad rust belt reality of the fadding north. Places like Michigan (flint is Micheal Moores home town), Cincinati OH, Syracuses NY, Buffalo NY, Rogchester NY, Ithica NY, Pitsburgh, Philidelphia, Detroit, and Chicago are good examples of the under belly of lost manufacturing.
New Orleans by contrast is a disaster still. It doesn't look like anything is going to get fixed any time soon either.
The Catskills (sp?) mountain range in the south also hide some of the worst depravaty in the country. Inbreading, illiteracy, disease, iscolation, and progress are things that don't even concern this group because they are to busy hunting 'coons for supper to worry about that (of course they aren't going to have huge voter turnout either). As alarmist as this sounds there is some truth in it, area's of the south (NOT the whole south) had to have the word invented simply to describe the level of backwards that is acchived in this region, "hillbillies" (the people that red necks and hicks make fun of).
Across the coast in LA gangs run large sections of the city. Reading about LA in the past 30 years is like seeing three gangs compete for control. Two are black and one is white. The sad thing is that the white gang seems to go by the name LAPD (los angeles police department). I'd need some people on the ground to confirm this but the city sounds like it is really segregated by armed and violent organiztions (LAPD included). My suspicion is that other cities (like Miami, Chicago, Detroit) have similar problems.
Yeah, so the hard liners pick thier party and stick with it but three huge segments don't like either party, switch back and forth, or have so much difficulty staying alive that anything beyond regional politics matters little to them.
That's my lengthy rant from arms length (Canada).
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