Showing all posts tagged: America
Tune into the vibe, ignore the opinion polls
7 November 2024
Tyler Cowen, writing at Marginal Revolution, last July:
Democrats and leftists are in fact less happy as people than conservatives are, on average. Americans noticed this, if only subconsciously.
Cowen made a whole heap of observations — I’ve quoted but one — about the then upcoming US Presidential election. But it’s tuning into the vibe that interests me. Opinion polls may say one thing, but it’s the mood on the street, if you can tap into it, understand it, that matters.
I can’t say the result was what I hoped for, but let’s keep an eye on the vibe, and see what it tells us going forward.
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America, current affairs, politics
New York Times publishes stinging rebuke of Donald Trump
5 November 2024
On the eve of the US Presidential election, The New York Times has published a strongly worded dis-endorsement of Republican candidate Donald Trump. It’s short, succinct, and well worth reading.
Unlike counterpart publications, including The Washington Post, and Los Angeles Times, The New York Times issued an endorsement of Democrat candidate Kamala Harris, at the end of September.
The result of the Presidential election is usually clear by early afternoon Wednesday, east coast of Australia time. In terms of the Electoral College numbers that is. I suspect there’ll be quite a number of eyes on the outcome here tomorrow afternoon.
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America, current affairs, Kamala Harris, politics
American bloggers, personal website publishers, may be among ‘enemies within’
1 November 2024
American newspapers The Los Angeles Times, and The Washington Post, have come under fire for declining to endorse US Presidential candidate Kamala Harris. Their refusal to endorse Harris does not, however, from stem from a desire to back Donald Trump. Rather, both publications had prepared endorsements for Harris, but were blocked from publishing them by their owners.
The suggestion is the proprietors of both outlets fear they may face retribution for endorsing Harris, should Trump be elected. For some time Trump has threatened reprisals against Americans he sees as being the “enemies from within”, should he assume the presidency. Those showing support for Harris — in what is an election in a democracy, no less — would appear to among these “enemies”.
But major news outlets are not the only publishers concerned by the prospect of a Trump presidency. Bloggers, and personal website publishers, are likewise worried that their writing may see them labelled as an enemy within. People, like you and me, who are exercising their right to the freedom of speech, the cornerstone of any democracy, are also fearful of the outcome of the election, as US blogger Tracey Durnell writes:
In the lead-up to the election, I’ve been thinking about this blog: how much it adds to my life to be able to write and think freely… but also, how a written record of my views could become a liability if Trump wins the election or commits insurrection 2.0. I chose years ago to blog under my real name — and my political views are pretty clear. To a Christian extremist, a vocal “porn-writing” leftist woman like me — a woman without children, no less — is “the enemy within.”
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America, blogs, current affairs, politics
40% of Americans believe in creationism, 40% of Australians do not
20 July 2022
Recent Gallup research reveals forty percent of Americans believe humanity and the universe were created by a divine act, in the last ten-thousand years. About a third believe we have evolved over millions of years, with divine guidance, while not quite a quarter of Americans do not think a divine being plays any part in our existence.
Forty percent of U.S. adults ascribe to a strictly creationist view of human origins, believing that God created them in their present form within roughly the past 10,000 years. However, more Americans continue to think that humans evolved over millions of years — either with God’s guidance (33%) or, increasingly, without God’s involvement at all (22%).
While these numbers are similar to polling carried out about five years ago, a gradual increase in Americans who do not believe in a god has been observed since the late 1940s. This trend mirrors data from the last Australian Census, conducted in 2021, which found about forty percent of Australians have no religious affiliation, up from thirty percent in 2016.
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America, Australia, religion, trends
Rachel Kleinfeld: there won’t be a second American civil war
20 July 2022
Rachel Kleinfeld, a senior fellow at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, doesn’t see an oft spoken of civil war erupting in the United States, but the prospect makes for sombre reading.
Civil wars happen largely in countries with large, poor populations facing a bulge of young men, the demographic most likely to use violence. They generally require governments with low capacity levels, and high rates of corruption and brutality. When the U.S. Civil War erupted in 1861, the Union army had just ten infantry regiments controlled by a miniscule federal government riddled with corruption. Civil wars don’t happen in wealthy countries with strong institutions and strong militaries, like the modern United States, because it would be quixotic to try to overthrow such states.
On the other hand, Tom Klingenstein of conservative think tank the Claremont Institute, believes America is already in a state of cold civil war, with the battle lines drawn between those who want to preserve the American way of life, and those who he thinks seek to destroy it.
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