XPost: soc.culture.russia, soc.culture.usa   
   From: ltlee1@hotmail.com   
      
   "The principal danger to the United States is not any out-of-control   
   technology or fringe militia group. It is not economic grievances run   
   amok. It is not even Trump, who is as much a symptom of what ails the   
   United States as he is a cause. Instead, the greatest source of danger   
   comes from a cultural clash over the nature of the United States’   
   identity—one with profound implications for who gets to be a citizen.   
   Its key actors are not isolated radicals but large numbers of ordinary   
   Americans. According to new research carried out by my team at the   
   University of Chicago, tens of millions of Democrats, Republicans, and   
   independents believe that political violence is acceptable. Many of them   
   hail from the middle and upper class, with nice homes and college   
   educations.   
      
   The country’s fight over its national identity has multiple dimensions.   
   But the most serious is demographic change. In 1990, 76 percent of the   
   U.S. population identified as white. In 2023, the U.S. Census Bureau put   
   that figure at a little over 58 percent. By 2035, the share is set to   
   fall to 54 percent; a decade later, it will dip below 50 percent. These   
   changes have led to rising anger among conservatives, many of whom see   
   increased ethnic diversity as an existential threat to their way of   
   life. These voters have embraced Trump and his nationalist movement,   
   which promise to stop such change in its tracks. Trump’s exclusionary   
   policies and rhetoric have, in turn, prompted a ferocious backlash from   
   liberals, who embrace demographic change—or who at least fear that   
   conservative success will cost Americans hard-won freedoms.   
      
   The anger on both sides is in keeping with historical precedents.   
   Scholars have long understood that social change and demographic shifts   
   are a potent catalyst for violence. And as elsewhere, the turn toward   
   force in the United States is fundamentally populist in nature. The   
   millions of Americans who support political violence have concluded that   
   their country’s elites are so thoroughly corrupt and that their   
   democracy is so completely broken that riots, political assassinations,   
   and coercive attacks are acceptable and even necessary to bring about   
   the supposedly genuine democracy that people deserve."   
      
   https://www.foreignaffairs.com/united-states/our-own-worst-enemies   
      
   --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05   
    * Origin: you cannot sedate... all the things you hate (1:229/2)