But saying “Things will improve over time” is a great excuse not to personally make that change. With inaction, change can come too late…or not at all for far too many.
Fair enough. But it was meant to say that Americans came together despite previous divisions and will do so again. It was not meant to imply this would be easy, automatic, without conscious effort or without stimulus.
We are not unique, and it is also possible that we will NOT come together and bring us back from the precipice. This isn’t a game of see-saw, this is a game of tug-of-war, and tug-of-war is a game you can lose easily.
Perhaps. History tends to be more cyclic than linear, though. And most people are still in the middle (which would make either game uneventful).
To me, this is a novel insight that deserves more consideration. Seriously.
So, be the boogeyman that the right makes us out to be? Nothing on your list is something that Democrats actually want.
What makes you think that that is a winning strategy?
When you realize who it’s actually going to be a winning strategy for, it certainly make sense.
My father was like this. To his mind, the world contained only two things, good and evil, and so everything else was one of those two things. America is good and Christianity is good, therefore America is a Christian nation. Abortion is evil and homosexuality is evil, therefore all of those homosexuals are out there getting abortions. And this also meant, of course, that compromise, on anything, was always unacceptable, because in any choice, no matter how mundane, one side was good and one side was evil, so the only possible option was to choose the good one, absolutely.
Maybe, if we just leave everything to go on on its own, things will eventually swing back to sanity. But how and when? Maybe the way that happens is that the US degenerates into a third-world nation, and eventually picks a fight with some civilized nation, and they have to conquer us to prevent us from doing more harm and they impose sanity on us. That’s one of many possible cycles that history has gone through many times before, and could go through again. But it’s not a cycle I’m eager to see happen, even if it does end up well.
I think Canadian world domination looks pretty good right now.
Right. True conservatives are likely to vote Democrat because that is, in fact, the conservative option. Today’s Republican party is anything but “conservative” by any definition; they are a bunch of radical neo-Nazi white supremacist theocrats, and their current hero is an orange psychopathic demagogue. The last overtly conservative US president was Barack Obama.
Yeah, I’ve known a few people like that myself, and that’s where I realized how they operate.
What kills me is that reverse part- where if you’re not on the same side, you’re automatically assumed to be working against their goals, or that their goals are NOT yours.
I tend to think that’s the most cancerous thought pattern of the whole thing- that’s how we get stuff like the populist Republican hatred for environmental things. Because it’s Democrat-associated, and the Democrats are against all the things they hold dear, then environmentalism must be something that must be opposed tooth and nail.
Which has to lead to some interesting cognitive dissonance; most GOP types are hunting/outdoors friendly and all about wildlife conservation, and you’d think environmental protection would dovetail right into that. But apparently conserving wildlife and protecting habitats aren’t just aspects of environmentalism, but something totally different?
By whose reckoning? I’d call Obama far more of a centrist than a conservative. Even by the standards of the last three quarters of a century he’s not conservative as much as somewhere left of center, but not very far left. I think Biden definitely falls in very much the same category as Obama actually.
You’re right in that today’s GOP is “reactionary” with a desire to roll back the clock on a lot of modern policies. None of that is conservative in the sense of preserving the status quo or at least challenging attempts to change the status quo.
So that’s, like 6 or 7 votes right there for Team D!
By the reckoning that derives from his policies, as, for example, this careful analysis by the Washington Post:
ETA: That’s not a criticism of Obama. It’s a criticism of the current state of American politics. Democrats represent both the center and the conservative side. Republicans represent the radical, deranged, white supremacist, theocratic, science-denying side.
Thank you.
Over these many years, my political values and views have changed very little. However, I’ve watched the Republicans slide so far rightward, they’re off their cracker and now in Crazy Town.
It’s why they constantly characterize people like me – once considered moderately left of center – as the Extreme Elitist Left™ now. There’s no other way to claim to their followers that they, the Republicans, are the “normal” ones.
While still somehow getting votes from self described conservatives.
Having spoke with conservatives, I believe that what someone upthread said is 100% on the mark. They know how bad the Republicans are, so in order to justify their support of the Republican party, they have to claim that the Democrats are even worse.
Oh, they passed Crazy Town a while ago. They traveled down Insanity Drive all the way till they leapt from the Cliffs of Madness.
I’d agree with that, for sure.
Channeling my inner conservative crackpottery,
And there you have it folks! Yet another example of comunist socillist liberal demoncRat hippocrasy and antiWhite racism!
I just don’t think the old labels, taken from the seating of the Estates at a pre-revolutionary meeting in France hundreds of years ago carry much accuracy.
Aren’t traditional Conservatives all about the proper rule of law? More now seem to flout it, and to flaunt this. I don’t generally respect Bothsides-ism. But is Russia still left wing? There is also a difference between equal rights and inclusion, which I deem very important, and thinking everything is a right. Rights are important and should not be diluted. Russia has no right to invade Ukraine.
I really don’t want the history books to talk of the America Nazi empire of 2024, and how itm led to a war and America had to be invaded and de-Republicanified.
I don’t think it is too late. But I have to think that. We aren’t Germany 1935.