July 6, 2010--Nine Fissures

From Thomas Powers New York Review of Books review of Gail Collins' As Texas Goes . . . How the Lone Star State Hijacked the American Agenda:

The underground rivers of anger boiling beneath the American political landscape in this presidential year . . . may be seen as posing with new intensity the great unanswered question of American history: What lies at the core of the divisions of the American people? Battalions of scholars are ready to cite chapter and verse in explanation of the big divisions-- 

The poor against the rich, the country against the city, the nativists against the latecomers, the whites against the people of color, those who hold money close against those willing to spread it around, the believers in the inerrancy of the Bible against the secularist acceptors of science, those who wish to hear nothing about sex against those willing to discuss everything, those who would wield the rod against those who would spare the rod, those who want to control women against those ready to let women decide. 

These are the nine fissures that split the American national psyche. All center on questions of control.

I think he has it about right.