Probably because I’m a musician, a sizable circle of my ‘friends’ on the blue plague of the internet, Facebook, either lean, bend, or precipitously plummet towards the left. Having spent most of my adult life similarly afflicted (been in recovery for several years now, thank you for your prayers), I sympathize.
A recent post of mine, to be later embellished here on StringDancer, elicited many responses from my liberal buddies. One in particular (by a real-life friend with whom I regularly have spirited yet good-natured, civil debates) delivered a series of responses worthy of a response.
… you are advocating splitting the country in two, right? That doesn’t sound like you’re all in on preserving the union no matter what.
Preserving the union would be my preference, but achieving anything remotely resembling ‘unity’ seems increasingly unlikely. As I previously mentioned, the political Venn diagram of the US is losing its overlapping center. When a nation comes to the point where the center does not hold, where irreconcilable differences generate an impasse, the better solution is peaceful division.
(As the creators of no-fault divorce, I would think liberals would understand this better than anyone, though to be fair, some conservatives, including the venerable Ronald Reagan (himself having divorced three times) also supported it.)
When the prevailing cultures of a nation cannot reconcile their differences, and a peaceful separation is rejected by both sides, there typically can be but one of two results: either one culture surrenders to subjugation by the other, or the factions go to war.
In any diametric standoff, I would prefer there be a third option, even if it has to be created out of thin air and desperation (for fun, see Kobayashi Maru). Since I would categorically refuse to be subjugated by what I consider to be a hostile and soul-crushing agenda, and yet would prefer to avoid the horrors of another civil war, in my view the practical thing is to at least discuss how we might be better off simply going our separate ways, and how we might achieve it.
It’s worth noting that the Civil War of the mid-1800s was waged over two fundamental issues: the practice of slavery, and the assertion of states rights to run their economies as they wished. Southern Democrats led the charge in defense of slavery, while the north supported the abolitionist movement, led by the very first president produced by the nascent Republican party, Abe Lincoln.
The policy differences back then were relatively few in number and quite fundamental. Those of today are vastly deeper, more diverse and complex. Polarizing issues such as abortion and gender, welfare and other social safety nets, immigration and border security, education and student loans, health care and insurance, fiscal policies, the Bill of Rights, the electoral college (and the list goes on and on) are dividing this country to such a degree that I personally see no avenue to compromise and reconciliation, much less anything resembling a meaningful “unity of purpose” in 21st Century America.
In short, both sides, conservative and liberal, are already feeling real and palpable subjugation by the other. Each views the other as not merely a political adversary, but as an honest-to-God threat to the what they hold most dear. The clamor for dominance by the Dems, and the fuming indignation of the right, are rocking the foundations of the republic. All this makes at least a discussion of the possibility of going separate ways a worthwhile exercise in problem solving.
Both the left and the right are looking for a way forward that is life giving.
Seriously? Let’s put this in very basic terms: The indisputable fact that the left is by and large pro-abortion and the right by and large firmly against it invalidates your assertion that both parties seek “a way forward that is life giving”. I could think of several other examples, but in a rare effort towards brevity, I’ll leave that hot potato where it is.
I don’t think it’s helpful to call either side “radical”. That drives division or at least contributes to it.
Nor is it “helpful” to remain oblivious to the very real breakdowns occurring in society today. I prefer to call a spade a spade, and not a pickaxe.
Neither side can be pigeonholed as radical, but both sides clearly have their radical contingents. What makes them radical can rightly be defined as their intentional (and typically vehement) departure from a more centrist, populist, and more significantly, traditionalist agenda consistent with the ways that made this nation great. Extremism is seldom a good thing, and yet the left is increasingly embracing it.
Today a growing number on the left refuse to even acknowledge that America is a great country, blind to the irony that the very right to free speech they enjoy to criticize the nation so mercilessly is found nowhere else on the planet. No other nation has anything approaching our Bill of Rights.
The so-called “progressives” are desperate to rewrite history, obliterate any memory of the road taken to where we are today, and to launch us into some collective fantasy world, the strict and oppressive parameters of which were learned from their leftist university professors. More and more of today’s liberals are actively engaged in progressing the traditional and historical precepts of America straight into the dustbin of Marxist blather.
Meanwhile, those on the right, as I observe them, are by and large consistent and resolute in their devotion to the same or similar values that have defined conservatism for decades, if not centuries. There’s a clear and well-defined continuity to conservative thought, whereas the “progressive” ideal is to destroy the past and replace it with a construct completely of their own making, irrespective of history, culture, customs and tradition.
What defines a “right-wing radical” has not substantially changed in my lifetime, and just as it’s unfair to label every liberal a wanna-be socialist revolutionary, it is unfair to label all conservatives as racist xenophobes knuckle-dragging their way from the local Christian bookstore to the nearest gun shop with murder and mayhem on their minds.
I think it’s beyond dispute that the platform of the radical left has shifted immensely in recent years. Lefties have not merely moved the goalposts, they’ve arbitrarily changed the rules of the game, redefining what is to be considered “politically correct” on almost a daily basis. THIS is what is driving the division, not conservative disdain for a rapidly morphing and largely unintelligible political landscape.
Mail in balloting is not a new idea…it’s been happening for over a hundred years. We need to make sure it’s fair and our local election boards are tasked with that. I think they can do it.
I voted by mail once. I was living in Europe during the 1988 election and was grateful for the ability to cast my vote from afar. Very handy tool for travelers, but it was never intended to replace conventional voting systems. And on such a mass scale as that advocated by Pelosi and other Dems hoping to exploit corona hysteria to pry hapless Joe into the White House, there are clear risks of fraud.
Hans von Spakovsky, a senior legal fellow in The Heritage Foundation’s Edwin Meese III Center for Legal and Judicial Studies, had this to say: “All-mail elections have all kinds of security problems. And the reason is very simple, these are the only kind of ballots that are being voted out of sight and out from under the supervision of election officials.
“That’s why it is, unfortunately, easy to not just engage in fraud in those kinds of elections, but it’s also easy for voters to be intimidated. And that’s a cause for concern and should be a cause for concern for anyone interested in having an election process that is fair and has good security too.” [source]
Our cities haven’t been burnt to the ground. That’s a gross overstatement.
You took that out of context. I did not say our cities have literally been burned to the ground, I said the leftist radicals’ intent was to so burn them. It wasn’t for lack of trying that remnants of cities remain standing and unscathed by the arsonists. Maybe they simply ran out of matches.
Covid 19 is a real thing. I think the Trump campaign itself is acknowledging that by requiring attendees at their next rally sign a form saying that they can’t sue the campaign if they contract the virus. The question becomes why are they holding a rally when they know they are putting people’s lives at risk.
I consider Covid little more than the flu on steroids and cocaine. I was convinced of this within a week of its announcement to the world. It’s unquestionably extremely contagious, but otherwise its effects pretty much mirror any garden variety influenza that rears its ugly head every year.
That the entire world became convinced of its purported lethality so quickly, that so many people fell under the spell of the mainstream media and so-called “experts” who all stood to rake in millions from the promotion of the disease and some miracle vaccine to be released sometime in the next 18 months, was confounding to me. We voluntarily take down the entire world economy… for this? The Covid phenomenon is probably the third or fourth greatest hoax ever perpetrated on a gullible society.
Why is Trump firing up his monumentally successful rallies, you ask? Oh, so he can inspire the patriotic spirits of the 800,000 or so people who have signed up to attend is all. Those who make it in, I’m confident, are far less worried about putting their personal lives at risk than they are of putting the nation itself at risk, which is precisely how conservatives view the current dynamic at play within the unapologetically socialist Democratic party.
Overall it seems like you are casting Trump as an innocent lamb before the slaughter. He has done nothing to bring on any of the opposition he faces.
I’m suggesting no such thing. Considering Donald Trump ‘an innocent lamb before the slaughter’ is ludicrous on its face. And quite the contrary — he has done everything to bring on the opposition he faces from the self-serving left… and would have done much more had the spineless RINOs in Congress backed his play.
Trump’s agenda was (and is) to dismantle the Deep State, to correct a half-century of liberal indulgence, to liberate the economy and shut down our porous borders, among other things. This of course infuriates the Dems, and the deranged quality of their discontent has been truly breathtaking in its extremism, irrationality and criminal manifestations.
I so appreciate my good friend, a moderate liberal (and thus rare these days) who will voluntarily sit with me for hours and discuss in measured tones the differences in our world views. Neither of us try to browbeat the other, and a little levity is always popping up here and there in the discussion, as it should when friends talk. Her FB response to a post I tossed up required more of me than I am willing to give on that site, and so I took her questions to heart here in StringDancer. Thank you, my friend.
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