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I remember the closing scenes of the film 'Easy Rider' in which redneck farmers in a pick up truck kill two long haired bikers for no apparent reason. I thought - what kind of place is America? -ethinker

A place where we enjoy making violent, largely plotless, and drug-fueled movies, evidently.

I thought they only killed the one in the middle of the movie? I've only seen "Easy Rider" once, and a couple of years ago. My mom made me watch it one weekend after she bought the special edition DVD. I would not consider it representative of my country in any capacity - like most movies, it gains an emotional reaction by cataloging extremes. Like the graveyard scene. (Which creeps me out so much I shudder whenever I think about it) Keep in mind the actors and the film-makers were pretty doped up during a lot of that movie.

"So America is stuck. Two countries, mutually irreconcilable, who never meet each other and don't want to either. Who distrust each other at best, despise each other at worst, and who have absolutely no understanding of the other."

The writer has been taken in, like many Americans, by a narrative of disaparate communities that don't exist in a pure form in reality (much like the "Desperate Housewives" show she notes at the end of her column doesn't really exist anywhere). I've lived in a small, all-white, and working-class town in the midwest and I've lived in some of the biggest and most diverse cities in the U.S. That experience and my international travels have convinced me that people are basically the same everywhere you go - generally well-intentioned, disconcerted by difference but intrigued despite themselves, and resentful of being stereotyped even when they are the epitome of that stereotype.

I went to a liberal college in New York City (you'd think that would be redundant if you were from small-time America and bought into the east coast latte liberal stuff, but then you would be wrong) and in one political science class we discussed gun control. I'm an advocate of gun control to an extent, but I think some initiatives are pretty overtly unconstitutional, and I don't think guns should be outlawed everywhere and from everyone. I brought up the viewpoint of a friend that I noted was a Republican and I got a blank stare from another classmate who said disbelievingly and only half in jest, "You have Republican friends?!" (Of course I do, I hail from the south.)

But I was in the south during the run-up to the invasion of Iraq, and I knew otherwise reasonable people who were convinced that arguing against the war like I did was unpatriotic, because they likewise bought into these narratives. I think both groups of people would get along fine if they ever met and as long as they didn't talk about hot-button issues at the start, but most of them will never bother to meet.

As for hoping for change, the developing population patterns of the U.S. population - towards the west and concentrating in more urban areas - will do it for us, though when the winds will start to shift is anyone's guess. One of the things the writer notes that is true is the correlation between relative isolation and extreme political positions. I know a young woman from Boston who has never travelled further south than New Jersey (I found this out because she was shocked I-95 extends down to Florida) and who thinks that people (besides me, of course, she assures me) from my state are probably mostly hicks.