32% of Democrats think America is a bad place
The more we think about this previous post, and secondarily, this one too, as well as the Rasmussen poll question below, the more troubled we are. A third of Democrats — 32% — think America is a bad country:
82% of Republicans think the United States of America is “generally fair and decent.” We think a large number of Americans would have agreed with this statement during much of our history. Only 50% of Democrats agree with that statement today, and a third of Democrats (32%) believe that our country is “basically unfair and discriminatory.”
Here are our questions for the 32%:
– if you believe the country is unfair and discriminatory, what do you think about the men and women who fight for the country? They kill in the name and for the cause of such unfairness and discrimination.
– are they not pigs and dogs, stupid or boorish or simple-minded folk who idiotically follow some evil leader out of misplaced loyalties or their own evil intent?
– are not the statements of Howard Dean (“evil” Republicans), Dick Durbin (“Hitler…gulag…Pol Pot”), and commentators like Jane Smiley (“unteachable ignorance” of the red states) reflections of the view that America is itself some kind of gulag of the coerced and the stupid?
The last point is the heart of the matter. If America herself is “basically unfair and discriminatory,” and you are one of the 32% who believe that, then there must be an evil coterie who keep America from changing into a good country. So if you are one of the 32% who believe America is bad, not only do you believe America is bad and that our soldiers are bad, or doing bad things, but you must believe that there is a majority, or power elite, that is so bad, so evil, and so powerful, that they prevent the country from changing as you would like.
A country cannot long endure if a third of its citizens believe it is a bad country. What happens to a political party, a third of whose members believe that their nation is a bad place, remains to be seen.