Adam Wainwright, Derek Jeter & NY’s race for governor

In a pivotal scene of Aaron Sorkin’s A Few Good Men, a tough and hardened Marine colonel named Nathan Jessup declares “You can’t handle the truth” to the young military attorney questioning him during a court-martial proceeding.

The colonel, portrayed brilliantly by Jack Nicholson, may be on to something, albeit not in the context he uttered in Sorkin’s 1992 film.

This summer, more than 11 million of us watched the Major League All-Star Game, which doubled as a much deserved (and perhaps overdone) tribute to New York Yankees shortstop Derek Jeter, who was making his final appearance in the midsummer classic.

When Jeter led off the game with a double to right field, even Sorkin could not have written a better script. But that all changed when Adam Wainwright, the pitcher who faced Jeter in the first inning, revealed he had given the Yankee shortstop an easy pitch to hit.

Power is concentrated among a minority of citizens – and it may not change

A new study on political ideologies in America confirms what we easily can learn by viewing cable television on any evening: We live in an era of deeply divided viewpoints.

“Partisan polarization – the vast and growing gap between Republicans and Democrats – is a defining feature of politics today,” the Pew Research Center wrote in the study.

While that observation is hardly a new revelation, there are other elements of the report that document some interesting, and alarming, facts about the nature of democracy in America in 2014.

For example, we already know that individuals who lean heavily to the left or to the right dominate political discourse on the airwaves and the Internet. But the study also very clearly shows how those on the far ends of the political spectrum wield a disproportionately large influence on politics, government and democracy.