In the United States, we strive to grow and to accept the new reality, whatever it is, good or bad. We also try to preserve the old. We try to maintain our family and cultural identity. Whatever changes are necessary to adapt to the future, we try to integrate the new with the old, so that there is continuity in our culture, our family, our lives. In most parts of the country, ethnocentric origin used to determine to what extent a person could participate in society. It is difficult to face up to the fact that we are all racists. There is some comfort to be taken in the realization that it afflicts us all and we can face the problem together. As a society, we have determined that racism is an unwise cultural path to continue. Changes like this don't happen in a day, or a generation, or even in a century but we don't give up. Little by little, things change. Things gets better. We are not discouraged by how far is left to go, we resolve to keep trying.
Not everyone is traveling the path with us toward equal opportunity. Some people like the way it was before and want to go back, not forward. They see the changes as threatening to their position in society. They feel it may cause their families to suffer. They may be right. For whatever reason, these people remain vested in a system which denies participation based on ethnocentric differences. It is not a large group but it is significant. For these people, the political party of choice, is the Republican party.
One of the principles that this country was built upon was freedom of religion. In most parts of the world, one particular brand of religion predominates. Even in the best circumstances, it is difficult for people with beliefs different from those in the majority, to live comfortably. There is always social ostracization, sometimes persecution. There are usually legal proscriptions against religious practices that deviate from the norm. People of different religions are often forced to live according to the religious laws of the majority religion. It is not uncommon for people with different religious practices to be dispossessed from their homes, their wealth confiscated, they and there families driven from the country or even killed. We have tried to build a society here, that is not like that. People here can worship as they like, or not. They respect the rights of their neighbors to do the same.
Some Americans are vested in a system of religious persecution. They feel so strongly about their own religious beliefs that they are unable to tolerate others whose beliefs vary from theirs, past a certain point, or those who deny the need for religion. These people seek to mold a society more like other parts of the world, where people of the predominate religion require the rest to conform to their standards. There are not a huge number of people who feel this way but their numbers are significant. For these people, the Republican party is the party of choice.
For the thousands of years of human civilization, mankind has struggled to survive and to elevate himself above a mere animal existence. The main tool we use to do this is our ability to communicate with each other and agree on new cooperative behaviors rather than to endlessly repeat the behaviors that went on before. Up until the modern era, male and female roles in society have been strictly defined. Men dealt with things of the world. A woman's place was relegated to child bearing, child rearing and domestic duties. With the population of the world at around 6 billion, we would seem to have solved the problem of mere numbers, in regard to survival as a species. A woman's value to society can no longer be gauged simply by how many new individuals she can bear and rear to adulthood. In just the last two centuries, since the founding of our nation, women's roles in society have been undergoing constant change. There has been little of a voluntary nature in these changes. The changes in the roles of gender were dictated by the times and were often radical and abrupt, upsetting the status quo going back to the dawn of time. Most of us foresee more changes coming in gender roles, although there is a lot of different opinion as to what direction those changes will take.
There are some, in our society, who are very uncomfortable with the rapidly changing roles of gender. They would like to move back toward a model where women would more closely follow a traditional pattern of child rearing and domestic behavior and would defer to men responsibility for all other matters. They feel fear and disgust at the rapid breakdown in traditional gender roles. The numbers of these people are not great. They are, in fact, surprisingly small, given the huge changes that have taken and are taking place and in so short a time frame. For these people, the political party of choice, is the Republican party.
Homosexuality has been proscribed throughout human history and yet it has always been with us and in about the same numbers. It is pretty clear that homosexual urges in some individuals are naturally occurring and cannot be suppressed or eliminated. No culture has ever stopped homosexual activity. It is usually enough that the homosexual fulfill his or her heterosexual societal role and then practice homosexuality nefariously. Don't ask, don't tell, has a long historical precedent. Much like the subjugation of women to domestic and reproductive roles, the suppression of homosexuality would seem to be a function of optimizing reproductive capacity. It was important that the only societally sanctioned sexual pairing be a reproductive family group. The place of homosexuals who choose to live openly in society, without also seeking membership in a heterosexual family unit, is rapidly evolving and I have no idea where the present trends may lead. All indications point to increased autonomy by openly homosexual individuals, although it is by no means clear that all homosexuals want to engage in an open lifestyle.
Some segments of American society are opposed to the idea that homosexuals should be able to live openly, according to their own desires, within society. One of the most interesting groups to oppose the openly homosexual are closeted homosexuals, who often have very successful lives and enjoy positions of high status. The political party of preference for those that oppose the destigmatization of homosexuality, for whatever reason, is the Republican party.
America has a proud military tradition. It is the tradition of the citizen soldier, who comes to the colors during times of threat to the nation and returns to civilian life when that threat has been met and eliminated. Military service was also widely seen as a rite of passage for young adult males in society. When all of the families of America, from the most exalted to the most humble, joined in sending their sons off to fight in times of challenge, it acted to weld all Americans together. War was declared when we faced genuine aggression that challenged our national sovereignty and a consensus of the population had come to understand and agree on the threat.
The military tradition in America has radically changed. The propaganda machines of ever more imperial Presidencies, after involving the nation in ever more political, partisan and unilateral conflicts, over several generations, are unable to rouse the citizen soldiers to the colors anymore. Large segments of society distrust the motives behind current military activities and council their young against enlistment and will not tolerate conscription. They don't perceive a legitimate threat. The armed forces have taken on a more insular nature, with some families becoming multiple, multi-generational providers of military members and most families sending no one at all to fight. The lower levels of the enlisted ranks of the infantry, who actually do the fighting and bear the brunt of the casualties, are increasingly difficult to recruit and standards for recruitment have been lowered to the point, where the functionality of the troops we are able to produce, is inconsistent, at best. This remains true even though pay and benefits are at an all time high and casualty levels are lower than in any previous combat theater. Because most families shy away from sending their members into the military and because the military itself has become insular from the mainstream of society, a communication gap has opened between the military and the general population. Military members and their families often believe other segments of society do not support them. They believe because the theaters of conflict in which they or their family members serve, are not viewed positively by most of the population, that they themselves are viewed negatively. They are encouraged in this view, by their leaders in the military and the government, who would rather deal with division in society than mutiny in the trenches, especially when such mutiny would be embraced by the ever waxing political opposition to the current administration.
The military is not a large segment of American society but it is one of the most important and powerful. Due to the increasing insularity of the military and the increasing distrust of the military toward the population in general, the Republican party has become the party of choice for the military.
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