[lbo-talk] The New, Nihilistic America

[mike larkin]

"...Looking at the data from 1992 to 2004,
Shellenberger and Nordhaus found a country whose
citizens are increasingly authoritarian while at the
same time feeling evermore adrift, isolated, and
nihilistic. They found a society at once more
libertine and more puritanical than in the past, a
society where solidarity among citizens was
deteriorating, and, most worrisomely to them, a
progressive clock that seemed to be unwinding backward
on broad questions of social equity. Between 1992 and
2004, for example, the percentage of people who said
they agree that “the father of the family must be the
master in his own house” increased ten points, from 42
to 52 percent, in the 2,500-person Environics survey.
The percentage agreeing that “men are naturally
superior to women” increased from 30 percent to 40
percent. Meanwhile, the fraction that said they
discussed local problems with people they knew
plummeted from 66 percent to 39 percent. Survey
respondents were also increasingly accepting of the
value that “violence is a normal part of life” -- and
that figure had doubled even before the al-Qaeda
terrorist attacks...."

http://www.prospect.org/web/page.ww?section=root&name=ViewWeb&articleId=10844

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