Stripes at 45: A Patriotic Movie

  Many posts have discussed patriotism and American exceptionalism.

Stripes premiered 45 years ago today.  Two years ago, Rich Cohen wrote at WSJ:

Released in 1981, “Stripes” is the story of a burnout named John Winger who, seeking direction, joins the Army. It was the first summer after the election of Ronald Reagan, whose campaign had been powered by the eerily familiar slogan, “Let’s Make America Great Again!” It was a time of high inflation, simmering tension with a communist rival and deep polarization in our politics.

In other words, a moment much like our own, which might explain why Murray’s speech still speaks so powerfully to my own teenage kids. I can’t think of a better statement of what ails us and what still makes America and Americans exceptional.

“We’re not Watusi,” Murray tells his fellow grunts in a moment of disunity and crisis. “We’re not Spartans. We’re Americans, with a capital ‘A,’ huh? You know what that means? Do ya? That means that our forefathers were kicked out of every decent country in the world. We are the wretched refuse. We’re the underdog. We’re mutts!…But there’s no animal that’s more faithful, that’s more loyal, more lovable than the mutt.”

Murray played it for laughs, and it was funny, but it was serious too. It celebrates our tolerance, stick-to-it-ness and ethnic jumble. It’s John Winthrop’s City on a Hill remade in the shadow of “Saturday Night Live.” I rank it with FDR’s First Inaugural and Lincoln at Gettysburg. It’s the speech we need today.

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 This silly speech in a silly movie expressed a powerful truth. The Germans of World War II were all the same because they were all the same. We are all the same because we are all different. Which means those differences don’t really matter. Our ancestors came to this country to leave all that B.S. behind. It was the American creed rephrased in the vernacular. It was beautiful. 

Only later did I fully appreciate that Murray, along with screenwriters Harold Ramis and Len Blum, had given us a great gift: a way to love our country without feeling gullible, sentimental or corny.

America: The Signers Would Be Disappointed

 Many posts have discussed patriotism and American exceptionalism.

Andy Kemp at Gallup:

As the United States approaches its 250th anniversary, just 19% of Americans say the signers of the Declaration of Independence would be pleased with how the country has turned out.

Just over three in four Americans (77%) now say the founders would be disappointed, compared with 71% in 2013 and 42% in 2001. The latest findings come from a May 2026 Gallup survey.

 

Other Countries Now Take a Dimmer View of the US

Many.posts have dealt with international views of the United States.  They have taken a negative turn.

Richard Wike, Laura Silver, Moira Fagan and Jonathan Schulman at Pew: 

A new Pew Research Center survey finds negative – and often overwhelmingly negative – views of U.S. President Donald Trump in regions around the globe.

Across 36 nations polled, a median of 23% of adults express confidence in his leadership of world affairs. In many countries, confidence in Trump has slipped since last year.

Overall ratings for the United States are also largely negative. Favorable views of the country have declined in many places over the past year, including double-digit drops in Indonesia, Italy, Nigeria, South Africa, South Korea and Turkey.

There are seven nations in the study where a majority of adults rate the U.S. positively. The highest rating (81% favorable) comes from Israel. Some of the lowest ratings are from predominantly Muslim publics, such as Malaysians, Pakistanis, Turks, and Palestinians in the West Bank and East Jerusalem. (We were unable to survey in Gaza.)

Pew took the poll before the US-Iran memorandum of understanding, which has cratered Trump's standing in Israel. 

Polling Averages

Many posts have discussed the problems of surveying public opinion in the 21st century.

At Strength in Numbers, G. Elliott Morris discusses polling averages:

In our 50+1 generic ballot average, the published Democratic margin across polls read about D+7 a couple of weeks ago and reads D+5 today — a paper loss of two points that reader Tyler was asking about. But take the raw numbers for the parties (Democrats at 48.9% and Republicans at 43.4; a change from 49.1 and 42.4 two weeks ago), and the drop is only from D+6.7 to D+5.49 — a drop of about one point, not two.

Unfortunately, this incident of exaggeration is inherent to a tradeoff we made when deciding how to present the data. The general practice in polling analysis is not to show decimals on differences between percentages, because a number like “D+5.4” implies a precision the polls just don’t offer (see: 2024, 2020, 2016, etc). Or, if you’re going to publish decimals, you should include a margin of error either visually it in the text.

The tradeoff is that a small move in the margin between the parties sometimes looks bigger than it is, which is exactly what caught Tyler’s eye here. A 1-point change became 2.

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But much of that 1-point decline is likely mechanical — a product of what data is available for the average. Over the last 2 weeks, new polls have tended to come from firms that lean to the right and produce numbers that are typically on the lower end for Democrats — Quantus Insights, McLaughlin & Associates (Trump’s pollster), and Morning Consult are a few examples. The average I publish for 50+1 tries to account for some of this availability bias (see my methodology) but there is only so much you can do if your trend is being bogged down by biased data. The high-quality New York Times/Siena poll that had Democrats up 10 points is now over a month old.

This is a dynamic of poll-aggregation that people often miss or ignore. A smart polling average can remove a lot of noise from polling data, but the tool inherently still wiggles around from sampling error and house effects even when the “truth” of public opinion is stable. A poll of 1,000 people has a margin of error of roughly three points — and you’re blending at best half a dozen of those from the last week, and usually less.

This doesn’t mean polls are useless — they are still the best tool we have for predicting elections, and the only one we have for directly measuring how people feel about public life. But it does mean that averages tend to move around somewhat predictably. So how much movement is worth paying attention to? Let’s boot up the historical polling averages and take a look.

US: Still Religious and Prosperous

Many posts have discussed international views of religion.

Ryan Burge on the World Values Survey: 

The most recent version of the survey is Wave 7, and it was fielded between 2017 and 2022. It contains 64 total countries, but some don’t have responses to religion questions, so we are left with 54 countries. Which is still a lot.

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One final scatterplot before I close up today. This one is just a simple replication that is widespread in my corner of the world: specifically, the secularization hypothesis. This is the idea that as a country becomes educationally advanced and economically prosperous, it will be less religious. I created a composite index of religiosity based on a number of questions about religious belief, belonging, and behavior. Then I grabbed a measure of GDP per capita to assess economic prosperity.

What about outliers above the line? One big surprise is Puerto Rico. Its GDP is $40K but their religiosity index is .83. The combination of a strong Catholic Church and the rise of Pentecostalism probably explains a lot of that. Then you’ve got a bunch of Eastern Orthodox countries who are more religious than they should be based on their GDP: Cyprus, Greece, and Romania all fit this pattern.

Where does the United States fit? Well, it’s still an outlier. The religiosity index is .62, and GDP is nearly $70K. In order to fit the trend line in this scatterplot, GDP would need to drop to just $28,000 or religiosity would need to dip to .47. 

The Reflecting Pool: Bureoning Algae and Peeling Paint

Previous posts have discussed federal monuments.

Sahil Kapur and Sophie Ziedalski  at NBC:

President Donald Trump’s makeover of the Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool ahead of America’s 250th anniversary celebrations is not going according to plan.

First, the project overshot Trump’s initial cost estimate of under $2 million — and has already topped $14.6 million, according to a federal spending database.

Then, the new Trump-branded “American flag blue” color was short-lived as algae turned the pool green, causing the administration to send crews to dump hydrogen peroxide into the expansive pool to deal with the problem.

In recent days, NBC News spotted some blue paint chipping off the surface, with strips of it peeling away and floating atop the pool for visitors and passers-by to see as the busy summer tourist season in the nation’s capital gets underway.

You know who's obsessed with the Reflecting Pool? Donald J. Trump. pic.twitter.com/vqZZEC4WEa

— The Bulwark (@BulwarkOnline) June 20, 2026

The $1.7 million no-bid contract to clean the Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool went to a company ultimately owned by Trump donor John J. Cafaro, who previously pleaded guilty in separate federal cases involving bribery and campaign finance violations. The company's name?… pic.twitter.com/TXBU7c7jIr

— MeidasTouch (@MeidasTouch) June 19, 2026

American Dream 2026

Many posts have discussed American perceptions of the future. 

Stephen Raynes at Gallup:

As the United States approaches its 250th anniversary amid growing partisan divisions and widespread concerns about the country's direction, less than half (46%) of Americans believe everyone in the country has the opportunity to achieve the American Dream. While confidence in the state of the Dream has softened on most measures since 2024, belief that it is important to strive for (78%) has remained resilient. Despite this general decline since 2024, most U.S. adults still believe they will personally achieve the Dream (69%) and agree that the Dream is unfinished (58%).

These findings come from the second wave of the Milken Center for Advancing the American Dream (MCAAD)-Gallup American Dream Study, a nationally representative web and mail survey of more than 6,300 U.S. adults, conducted Jan. 7-March 4, 2026. The survey is part of an ongoing collaboration between Gallup and MCAAD to study how Americans connect to the concept of the American Dream. The research is featured in the center's long-term exhibition, the American Dream Experience, in Washington, D.C.