The wild getups, the in-yourface bumper-stickers, the foul language at the restaurant, the snarky tone in the weekly newsmagazines, the loud bass thumping from the thousand-dollar woofers, the Lee Atwater approach to public discourse—what are these if not the mating calls of a neutered body politic, of people who can allow the full-scale invasion of a country that never attacked them but who will come to blows over a parking space? Or, if you want to push it all the way: what are these displays if not the cultural patrimony of ancestors who could tolerate chattel slavery and be incensed to the point of open revolt by a tax on tea?
— Garret Keizer, Of Mohawks and Mavericks