Yeah, that thought pattern does explain much of the dysfunction in american government

   The salient fact of American politics is that there are fifty to seventy 
   million voters each of who will volunteer to live, with his family, in a 
   cardboard box under an overpass, and cook sparrows on an old curtain rod, if 
   someone would only guarantee that the black, gay, Hispanic, liberal, 
   whatever, in the next box over doesn’t even have a curtain rod, or a sparrow 
   to put on it. - Davis X. Machina, balloon-juice.com

that perfectly captures the zeitgeist of the 90s on...