The U.S. is not the only 'divided' country

WSJ.com - The Wall Within:

"In conversation, former East Germans always emphasize how important 'equality' was to them, much more important than 'freedom.' In the past, equality meant 'I have just as little as my neighbor.' Now it means, 'I don't want to have less than my neighbor.' In the past, East Germans were all equally poor; now they all want to be equally rich. But now there are intra-societal distinctions, and this is a situation they can't stand. Most of them have it better than ever before, but the price of prosperity is a loss of equality. So they react like spoiled children, getting more dissatisfied the better off they are, just because the neighbor's children have two more designer jackets than they do. And they take their anger out on their parents. The psychoanalyst Hans-Joachim Maaz says the East Germans feel 'slighted,' while former Protestant minister Joachim Gauck talks about a 'transitional society' whose citizens want 'someone to take care of them, because they never learned to take responsibility.'"

This sounds vaguely familiar, but I'll not go there.