Billmon waxes historical on Two Americas

It's such a treat that Billmon is back with such regularity. He's always worth reading. Check out A House Divided. Here are a couple of excerpts but check out what he thinks is a better comparison of the situation today than the old Civil War division. I think that you'll find it surprising, apt and troubling. I know I did... and in that order.

If I had to boil our modern kulturkampf down to two words, they wouldn't be blue and red, they would be "traditionalist" and "modern." On one side are the believers in the old ways -- patriarchy, hierarchy, faith, a reflexive nationalism, and a puritanical, if usually hypocritical, attitude towards sexual morality. On the other are the rootless cosmopolitians -- secular, skeptical (although at times susceptible to New Age mythology) libertine (although some of us aren't nearly as libertine as we'd like to be) and less willing to equate patriotism with blind allegiance, either to a flag or a government.

[...]

But this too puts a premium on hot button politics -- in order to pull what would otherwise be a diverse collection of individuals with diverse interests and opinions (conservative on gun control, for example, or liberal on the environment) into one politico-cultural camp or the other. I don't think it's any coincidence that one of the biggest political success stories for the traditionalists lately has been the rise of the megachurches, which often draw from a broad cross section of suburban society, generally offer an extremely generic brand of Protestantism, but indoctrinate their members in a very specific brand of conservative politics, usually built around abortion, homophobia and hyper-patriotism.

The result of all this is a political conflict that grows steadily more vituperative, uncivil and tinged with overtones of violence -- a dynamic which, given the emotional and philosophical tendencies of the two camps, definitely favors the authoritarian right (i.e. the traditionalists.)