Sunday Discussion Group

June 3, 2007

When I worked at Americans United for Separation of Church and State, it was frustrating to debate rivals in the religious right, not because they held competing opinions, but because they accepted a different reality.

I would note that the Constitution separates church from state. They’d say, “No, it doesn’t.” I’d say the Founding Fathers intentionally created a secular Constitution. They’d say, “No, they didn’t.” I’d say prayer in public schools is perfectly legal, just so long as the school stays out of it. They’d say, “No, prayer is banned in public schools.”

We couldn’t get to debating substantive controversies, in which judgment and opinions mattered, because we couldn’t agree on the basics. Their perceptions of reality were fundamentally different. We were speaking different languages.

E.J. Dionne Jr. had an interesting analysis of the presidential race(s) the other day and noted that Democrats and Republicans seem to be speaking different languages as well.

So when Democratic presidential candidates get together, they argue about who has the best health-care plan. When Republicans have a big discussion, it’s about torture and who’ll use it when. […]

Our two political parties and their candidates are living in parallel universes. It’s as if the candidates were running for president in two separate countries. Their televised debates next week will be productions as different from each other as “American Idol” is from “P.T.I.”

The parties do have some things in common — Iraq and the economy are concerns for both. But beyond these two issues, what matters most to Republican voters is hugely different from what matters most to Democrats. The polarization between the parties extends to the very definition of our country, its problems and the stakes in the next elections.

Dionne reviewed some data from April’s Pew Research Center survey and found that Iraq still dominates as the nation’s most important, pressing issue (far more so with Dems than Republicans), but after the war, the two sides part ways. “Consolidating these results dramatizes how different Democraticland is from Republicanland: 42 percent of Democrats listed one of three big domestic issues (the economy, health care and education) compared with only 20 percent of Republicans. The hot-button issues of immigration and abortion were overwhelmingly Republican concerns (20 percent to 2 percent).”

Is the divide so ingrained at this point that reasoned debate is impossible? And what are the implications?

The Democratic mind is focused on serious domestic problems, the Republican mind on terrorism and national security. How will the two parties reach any consensus on issues that one side cares about so much more than the other?

Republicans will have little incentive to compromise to achieve health-care reform. Democrats don’t perceive the terrorist threat at all the same way Republicans do. Republicans have less room for compromise on immigration, given the passion on the issue within their ranks.

In their primary fight, why should Republicans talk much about any domestic problem? Mitt Romney will not gain much by discussing the new Massachusetts health plan he helped push through, nor will Mike Huckabee get many votes by touting the education reforms he championed in Arkansas.

Even Dionne’s characterization is open to some debate. Is it not the case that Dems are deeply concerned about national security, offering an alternative to Republicans’ vision, while the GOP has decided to forgo domestic policy discussions altogether?

And getting back to the anecdotal intro, isn’t part of the problem that too many on the right are operating under their own reality? Ron Chusid noted the other day that on everything from Iraq to science, “Liberals and conservatives…disagree on the basic facts.”

So, what do you think? Are the two sides of the American political divide speaking different languages? Does it matter? Or are these differences perhaps overstated, and the divide not as large as it seems?

Discuss.

2 points. Reasoned debate *is* possible, if we are compelled to do so. What the Dems and Republicans are doing, as CB mentions, is speaking to the issues which they feel set themselves apart in the base, but on comfortable topics. All of the candidates are spastic on Iraq because there is no clear-cut way to discuss it nor are there any clearly obvious ways forward without setting off the attack dogs from the opposing side *and* extreme elements within one’s own party. Look at the flack (sic??!?) that Clinton gets for that war resolution…even though she’s said repeatedly that she didn’t support the invasion as GWB did it. Look at how the GOP howled at Ron Paul for saying that we have to look at our policies as a nation – such as interventionist invasions and propping up autocrats – and how they contribute to the root cause of militant extremism. Why are the candidates going to waste energy on topics where they will get beat up from both sides; they think it best to keep the powder dry and stick to safe party topics.

This isn’t about facts, per se….we could talk till the cows come home about the scientific basis for evolution, global warming, or the fuzzy psychological arguments against torture or racial profiling. It is not in the nature of the political candidates to educate the public, especially not those on ‘the other side’, so they don’t even try.

My 2 pennies.

  • The weakness in the overall argument is that Democrats want to golf with a plastic putter and a whifle-ball, while the Rethuglikanner beast brings a sledgehammer and a bowling ball to the putter-golf course. Compromise cannot be reached when you have a chimp-in-chief who interprets the word as meaning “give me everything I want, and forget about anything that you want.” The GOP and their “28%-equals-a-mandate” base will only come to the discussion table when Dems learn to flex the power of the cash register—and start ringing up “no sale” to the operational policies of the curent administration.

    Oh—you want DoJ to do its freaking job? Simply threaten to defund.

    Same thing with OVP.

    Here’s an idea—tell the bubblehead at NASA to get with the program on global warming, or take a butcher knife to his budget.

    Another idea—Bu$h’s idea to bring all natural catasthrophe services under WH control, instead of using FEMA, should be countered by a threat to pull all FEMA funding. reason? One word: KATRINA. Bu$h blew this one big-time in ’05; he has no business handing billions of dollars to a “disaster tsar.”

    They’ll come to the table grudgingly—but they’ll come, just the same, if they’re threatened with a hit to their profiteering friends’ wallets. For some strange reason, ReThugs always do….

  • isn’t part of the problem that too many on the right are operating under their own reality?

    There are all sorts of delusional people on the planet. The problem comes when the people who should know better (legislators and would-be leaders) pretend to take them seriously. I say pretend because of such revelations (har) as BushCo’s attitude towards the religious right.

    For whatever reason, the ReThuglican candidates are still playing to that small, noisy group known as Das Base. I could be wrong, but I can’t think of a time when a serious Democratic candidate has tried to appease to the left’s radical elements. If a left-wing group wanted religion outlawed in America, not one Democratic candidate would pay them the least bit attention and might even tell them to shut up.

    The divide between reality for Democratic polititians and Republican has nothing to do with language and cognitive abilities. We’re talking about polititians here, they know how things work and they know what they’re doing (with a big question mark for McCainiac), therefore we use the word pandering to describe their behaviour. If we thought they were sincere we’d just call them crazy.

    The divide is one of cynicism, even contempt. Republicans are far more cynical about the intelligence of their average voter, what they can understand, what they’ll believe. Reasonable people would want to hear about Romney’s health care plan. But Romney doesn’t know or care or believe such people exist among the voters he is trying to court so he talks about Gitmo.

    Reasonable people would love to hear about Huckabee’s education reforms. But Huckabee is too busy throwing red meat to Das Base. And so it goes. As long as the Republicans believe they can get into power by pounding their chests and cheering for torture, they’ll keep doing it even as they laugh at the stupid proles who’re cheering for them.

    When they get their arses handed to them on a platter after the next election they might be ready to mimic the Democratic side of the aisle and talk to people who are old enough like adults, not easily distracted children.

  • The level of political discourse is pretty much a direction realtion to the intelligence and sanity of those in the discussion. The smarter and more sane the folks are, the smarter and the saner the discussion.

    Part of the problem is that the Repubs have been hijacked by extremists and ideologues. Hard to have a debate with someone who won’t agree with you on pretty much anything if they can’t even question their own beliefs as pointed out by CB.

    Does this mean that liberals have a monopoly on reason? No. Never have never will. However that being said, we do have an ability to process new information and change our views when it becomes apparent that things aren’t working. At least this is why our mistakes aren’t usually the dropping off a cliff variety.

    Right now, many of the Bushies are living in a fantasy land populated with unicorns and fairies, all-you-can-eat-steak buffets for 1.99 that won’t make you fat, gasoline is unlimited and non polluting, and the idea that Saddam was a BFF of OBL. The only way to get the Bushies out of the mindset is to destroy the illusions and force them to deal with cold harsh reality. Some need to be coddled, others need to have that pounded into their faces, others who are mentally fragile will need a straight jacket and still others will cling to the fantasy till the day they die.

    Afterwards, the rational Repubs must push the Bushies (Necons/idiots and the Fundies) deep into the margins such that they never get the reins of power ever again.

    And the RW noise machine has to be destroyed. As mentioned by many here, the “Fairness” doctrine must return as well as a national mental health program.

  • It’s as if the candidates were running for president in two separate countries. [T]wo political parties and their candidates are living in parallel universes.

    What about two parallel countries?
    Two meta-countries sharing the same land mass. You choose which ‘country’ you want to belong to, vote the government you want, and live by its laws. You have some kind of electronic tag that defines your choice.. and off you go.

    A follow-on to Battlestar Gallactica?. Should copyright that. Nice theme to play around with. Thanks CB, I was needing inspiration.

  • I recently enjoyed a trip to Italy, specifically Tuscany. I saw a painting there which I had never paid much attention to before, Massacio’s “Trinity” , a large fresco in the church of Santa Maria Novella, Florence, painted between 1425 and 1428. It is said to be the very first instance of true perspective drawing, with a calculated vanishing point. You can use the diminishing size of the rosettes painted in the ceiling to actually calculate the depth of the room depicted.

    Prior to Masaccio it’s as though painters either didn’t see, or didn’t care about, perspective. As was pointed out by our guide, Kirk Duclaux, previous painters weren’t blind. They knew about perspective, but it wasn’t important to them. What mattered to them was not the corrupt physical world of the senses but the “entirely other” world of faith and the divine. Angels and saints which occupied that world had halos around their heads which would have encumbered movement within the spaces they occupied. Jesus wasn’t painted as a baby but as a tiny version of an old man (with wisdom far exceeding any real old man). Earthly objects, if included at all, were there to demarcate the “sacred space” from the “mundane”. The focal point was salvation.

    Massacio’s new way of depicting things was really a change in point-of-view, from the world of the sacred to the world of the ordinary, the profane. It violated “common sense” : the so-called vanishing point usually isn’t even in the physical painting but rather behind it. Noble or holy objects or people, if they’re far enough in the background, are painted smaller (tossing out the convention of representing worth by apparent size). But perspective did, as Vasari said, offer a framework in which everything visible had a proper place and size in the physical world. It was a technique which, even if it wasn’t understood mathematically, could be easily executed.

    Even after perspective caught on, which it did rapidly, people still saw things in the old way. That Masaccio painting clearly has a vanishing point at the foot of the cross where the world of the sacred meets the world of the profane. Yet many critics, even relatively modern ones have claimed the central focus to be Christ’s head or navel … not because it looks that way, which it doesn’t, but because they already believe that to be the case.

    Republicans are living in a pre-perspective universe. For them it has all been corruption since the 1950s. They paint that era without race hatred or discrimination against women or gays (actually without gays altogether). They see a bucolic world of small town values and no big city or international problems. They look back fondly on the last glimmer of that imaginary past, Ronald Reagan (ignoring his role in creating many today’s problems, taking credit for bringing down the Soviet Union, a fate predicted much earlier by our ambassador George Kennan).

    The trouble with today’s Democrats, as I see it, is that all our leaders seem to feel the need to make connection with the myths of (get some votes or money from) that dying generation. It’s as if we still need to paint like the Byzantines or Romanesque painters. We don’t. The myth of the ’50s will die of its own inertia if we’ll just let it. If we just “move on”. If we just paint the world the way we see it and quit relying on focus groups or “experts” to tell us what we should be seeing.

    True revolutionaries (Jefferson, FDR) help others to see things in new ways. Take out a dollar bill and look at it. The phrase “In God We Trust” – featured over the “ONE” – is a comparatively recent (1950s) addition, tacked on in fear of the presumably godless Soviet state. Many of us, in fact, don’t trust in God; all of us are guaranteed the right to that belief. The great seal on the same dollar bill contains the much older “NOVUS ORDO SECLORUM”, officially translated as “”A new order for the ages.” We need Democrats who sense that new order enough to tell everyone else all about it.

  • The great divisions Dionne speaks of are largely the results of politicians, pundits and religious leaders appealing to the worst in us in order to expand their own power, riches and fame. But we, the public, are just as responsible for allowing them to inflame our passions to the point that fear, self-righteousness and outright hatred of each other makes it functionally impossible to get along with those of different beliefs or opinions.

    If Americans truly believe in the notion of “one nation, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all,” we need to stop falling for the partisan propaganda that tells us those who agree with us are beyond reproach and those who disagree are evil. We must return to the seemingly forgotten rule most of us were taught as kids: “Do unto others as you would have others do unto you.”

    On the other hand, if we find those notions quaint, and dedicate ourselves to vanquishing our opponents and winning at all costs, there is no hope for a United States. By giving in to hatred, self-righteousness and fear — and abandoning the notion of reason upon which our nation was founded, we relinquish our claim to the great experiment our founders launched. We prove to the world humans are incapable of resolving their differences except by intimidation and violence, and we prove to the world that human nature cannot sustain the high ideals of representative democracy. We might as well return to tribal loyalties and forget any notion of common good that requires compromises we are unwilling to make.

    The truth is that we share more in common than we think, and those commonalities are the source of our strength and affluence. We must stop letting the forces that would divide and weaken us set the agenda and rule the day.

    Our founders had good cause to believe that reason was the common ground upon which persons of different opinions and beliefs could meet. They’d seen the divisiveness that grows out of societies acting primarily upon beliefs, and envisioned something better. Unless America calms down and returns to reason we will continue to live in parallel universes, perceiving different realities and speaking in different languages. But not for long.

  • In a country as poorly educated and deeply anti-intellectual as this one, rational, dispassionate, intelligent, political discourse will be rare in the best of circumstances. Our current circumstances are very far from the best. Roughly 25% of the country is in the Christian-wingnut category, and Bush’s regime has been pandering to them for six years. Roughly 50% of the Congress comes from this know-nothing crowd, and the media, as usual, panders to the lowest common denominator, and sells it to us as entertainment. People generally only want to reinforce what they already have come to believe or accept. There are very few truly open minds, and we don’t agree on the basics. Theocracy vs. democracy; the Ten Commandments vs. the rule of law; barbarism vs. humanism; unilateralism vs. multilateralism. Where is there broad agreement on these issues across the spectrum of ignorance that is the hallmark of this country?

    The divide between the paranoid national security types, and those with a progressive domestic agenda has always existed: the Amerika Firsters vs the Roosevelt New Dealers; the anti-communist right vs Kennedy’s New Frontier, now the war-mongering bellicose anti-terrorists vs.the humanistic diplomats. It’s always been the same game: power. Introduce race, gender, and sexuality issues and you get the festering stew we have now. Any candidate who takes an expansive view on a range of issues will be pillioried instantly. Thus most intelligent voters will always be doomed to voting for the least unacceptable candidate.

    The past six years have only brought into sharper focus what was previously more vaguely apparent. Americans no longer, assuming they ever did, see themselves as part of the same country because we increasingly do live in different realities. That there are so many Republicans thinking they can win the presidency is a measure of how divided they and we are. And they aren’t talking unity. Each is talking to only his own more-or-less conservative/delusional constituency, which they hope to miraculously broaden into a winning majority.

    The U.S. is undergoing Balkanization, and no one on the scene can do much about it. Clinton governed from the middle, and made everyone mad. Bush rules from the ideological right, and doesn’t much care who gets mad at him because he’s following divine instructions. No matter who gets into office (I hesitate to say ‘elected’ anymore) in ’09, he/she will be an improvement, but that’s hardly saying anything because the next occupant of the White House will not get there as the result of a reasoned, rational national discussion.

    That’s more than 2 cents worth,

  • Until we get campaign finance reform and take the profits and corporate money out of our elections, one cannot trust the rhetoric of candidates, or their parties.

  • Let me put forward two points which may explain the apparent disconnect between the Democratic and Republican candidates this time out. First, there is the old truism that Democrats run to the left in the primaries and the Republican run to the right. And second, without an incumbent in the race to set the agenda the candidates are free to select the issues that they view as most important. If there were an incumbent in the race the candidates of the opposing party would be staking out positions on the issues set by the incumbent which were shifted in the direction of their base. Without an incumbent in the race the candidates of both parties are free to select their issues in alignment with what their respective bases consider most important. Someone with more time on their hands than me could go back and see if this were the case historically. However, the current situation may be further aggravated by the fact that the lame duck may go down in history as the worst president ever. This makes it very unlikely for the Republican party to hold the White House, which means that Republican candidates may not be tempered in their positions by the need to run to the center in the general election, and Democratic candidates may be willing to take more risks for the same reason.

  • Thinking and reading are relics of the quaint past.
    Most Americans are mind numbed by countless hours of exposure to television’s titillation of their lower brains with ultimate the purpose of implanting subliminal suggestions for commercial gain. Every day we hear thousands of seductive whispers in our ear and and when we’ve done what the voice has instructed, we have no idea how much these voices have influenced us. Politics is just another division run by our of our media mind control masters.
    Two dimensions of independent thought?
    Nah, just a Pavlovian reflection of where you tune in.
    The reason our country seems so crazy is that we are all hearing unexamined announcer voices in our head.

  • OK, here’s today’s little knife-twist in the ribs:

    There are as many realities as there are minds.

    There are no two identical points of view, either physically or figuratively. [Anyone care to dispute that?]
    Reality is an inner experience, not an outer given. [Big dispute?]
    Reality is what we create, not what is created for us. [Troublesome?]
    We are free to categorize our experiences any way we want. [Come on, that’s for sure.]
    Our emotions determine how we see things. [Think about it?]

    So… If any, or even some, of the above are true, then we have a basis for discussion. Or, should I say, I would have a basis for joining the discussion.

    Without contradicting such premises, everyone has the feeling of sharing a common reality. By ‘everyone’ we mean human beings, and maybe some animals. Other beings that we can’t perceive right now we just have to leave out of the story. The question is: How can we accept the uniqueness of each individual experience, yet feel that we share a common reality?

    Theists solve this problem by invoking a ‘God’, but in so doing create an even worse problem (the exposition of which I will spare you, today). It’s the “All the world’s a stage, and all the men and women merely players.” system. It has a certain convenience, but it doesn’t bear scrutiny.
    Non-theists deny themselves the option of a creator god, and try to examine what ‘experience’ actually is, where it comes from, and what to do with it. It’s more of the “They have their exits and their entrances, and one man in his time plays many parts, his acts being seven ages.” style.
    So, if you’re a theist, parallel realities is quite a tough nut to crack (without cracking nuts!). You’re forced into looking at how people’s perceptions are shaped, and how to relate to the resulting incongruities. Courageous stuff in a noble cause.
    A non-theist, however, would see karmic gradients and Venn diagrams. A lot of people do similar things for similar reasons over many lifetimes, and so acquire a set of similar perceptions and ways of working. This may be why large-scale wars tend to occur in roughly thirty-year cycles — whole armies reincarnate in synchrony.

    Electoral politics inevitably involves compromise between personal opinion and party policy. Electoral pressure, in a predominantly two party system, drives a kind of political speciation. There is selective advantage in being distinct. Counterbalancing this is a selective disadvantage in being too distinct: becoming marginalized. These two opposing evolutionary forces create a kind of political pulsation between extremes of convergence and divergence. At the moment we appear to be in the divergent phase of the cycle. Assuming we are involved in a negative feedback servo-mechanism here, there’s not so much to worry about. On the other hand, if the model is mistaken and the political process goes hunting off the scale, grab that foil and duck-tape and dive for the cellar.

    At the end of the day maybe it’s all just a load of kettles calling a load of pots tartan [2800+ to choose from].

  • The unfortunate thing is that most people do not know how to think. It is literaly that profound a difference. Back in the early Jurassic when I was still in elementary school, there was a report put out – “Why Johnny Can’t Read” – that generated a lot of hand-wringing. It’s been like that ever since, as the otherwise-unemployables of the education establishment stumble from one failed theory of how to teach reading successfully to another. I don’t know if it was different before (wasn’t there) but I do know as a member of the last class of first-graders to get taught old-fashioned Victorian-era rote-memorization of phonics, that I and my friends can read – and therefore think clearly – and those who came later (my brother and sister being prime examples to me) are not so able, and there seems to be a phenomenon of the problem compounding itself as it gets worse.

    Really, if you can’t read you cannot learn to think logically and apply critical analysis to what you do read or hear.

    I was reminded of all this the other day when I read that market analysts see the publishing industry as essentially “dead,” with a future growth factor of 3% per year or less. Couple that with the fact I can go in someone’s house and pretty accurately predict their politics by what books are on their shelves or not (basically starting with whether there are any books on their shelves, you’d be amazed how many have none).

    This leads directly to the phenomenon under discussion: those who don’t know how to think logically or apply critical analysis believe in a faith-based reality unconnected to actual facts. Couple that with a dedicated 45-year campaign (as Richard Vigurie described it to Bill Moyers a few years ago) to create and grow a “conservative” (read fascist) movement – consider that the ideology of fascism consciously rejects rationalism and promotes the irrational – and you have what we have today: two different Americas living in alternative realities.

    There’s the cause. I have no idea what the cure is other than to fight like hell to defeat them politically and enact policies that discourage their fringe followers to the point they fall back into inactive apathy. And that is not a solution I like.

  • i think that the divisions in this country are so stark and so ingrained that it might seriously be time to think about making us two countries. the divisions between the two philosphies of running our country tend to be grouped geographically, so the split wouldn’t be difficult. that way everyone would be relatively happy living in a country that was governed in the manner that they felt was most appropriate. naturally, i’d be living in the librul north /snark.

  • “i think that the divisions in this country are so stark and so ingrained that it might seriously be time to think about making us two countries”

    That seems apealing, but do you want texas or alabama in charge of nuclear weapons?

  • This is why liberals like me are bizarrely wistful about the absence of “real” conservatives and/or libertarians from the public arena on the right. At least with them we’re all seeing the same reality; we just disagree about how to fix it. That’s a much more pleasant world.

  • Tom, I have no doubt you’re an intelligent guy, that you’re well-read, and that you can think. I often agree with your posts. That’s why I’m astonished when you make emphatic statements like the one you recently made about Jerry Falwell being a mass-murderer equal to Adolf Hitler, Josef Stalin and Mao Zedong. I’ve read a great deal about the first two, and unless Falwell was able to secretly bury several million corpses, I don’t think many people would find your statement credible.

    Of course, I’m a southerner and therefore automatically lumped into a regional demographic of lower intellect than plankton according to the Gospel of Saint Thomas. Here, in our shameless, fly-specked ignorance, we still call such narrow-minded worldviews bigotry. But we strive to learn from our moral betters in the west, such as Richard “I came from Califor-ni-a” Nixon, Ronald “I’m a Californian” Reagan, and “B-1-Too” Bob Dornan.

    The *problem* with national division is that so many people relish it. Therefore a *solution* must actually be desired. And if a solution is desired, it’s the same as finding yourself in a hole: Quit dividing.

  • Ed S’s analogy at #7 is both brilliant and beautiful, but it also demonstrates how Dems have snagged defeat from the jaws of victory.

    My only quibble with Ed is that I would note we once faced this “pre-perspective” versus “post-perspective” issue in politics head-on, and put the choice to the voters in stark terms.

    Bob Dole, painting Clinton as an irresponsible young hippie, talked of the glories of the pre-perspective age as Ed described them, and said at the climax of his convention acceptance speech that he wanted to be the Bridge to America’s Past.

    Two weeks later, Clinton, at the close of his convention acceptance speech, make the contrast as plain as could be, saying “I want to build a bridge to the 21st century.”

    We all know who won. The voters chose, as Ed said is necessary, to “move on.”

    And then. . . Al Gore. By choosing Lieberman, by running away from Clinton’s 8 years of peace and prosperity as fast and far as he could, by being more about earth tones and sweaters and whatever Donna Brazile recommended than about bigger themes and visions threw away Clinton’s triumph of perspective. And by allowing Bush to win, we gave the country back to the pre-perspective crowd. Gore failed to keep “moving on” and heartily endorse the post-perspective view in large part by being so timid and cautious, and so the country as a whole was led back, or slid back, to the past, as if Dole had won his election. This continues to be why I have trouble getting excited about Gore 3.0 (Gore 1.0 was 1988, when he was even worse, running as the pro-military Conservative Democrat in the primaries, and un-strategically skipping Iowa). [and no, I have not forgotten Nader, but I bash on him enough around here.]

    Now we have to win the Clinton-Dole fight all over again. sigh.

  • I’m on the “other side.” I read TCBR often because Steve is a clear and compelling writer, and the comments are, uh, unambiguous.

    I had the same worry about our ability to communicate across the divide, and that American unity was threatened in a way unprecedented in our history.

    Recently my father, a historian (with a decided slant toward military history), gave me a book I can’t believe I had missed: *The American Sphinx, The Character of Thomas Jefferson*, by Joseph Ellis.

    It was remarkable to me how similar 1803 was to 2007, in tone, in existential challenges to the nation, in political and constitutional skullduggery, and in the repeated tension of the spiritual v. the rational.

    After finishing the book I’ve begun to drill deeper into the main sources Ellis cites.

    I’m not nearly as pessimistic now as I was, the resiliency of this nation is astonishing, and the more “voices” the better. If we don’t listen, “… we’ll all hang together,” as someone said once.

    n.b.: Steve Gilliard, RIP.

  • Because their party has been taken over by extremists and yahoos, republicans have become almost entirely ‘reality challenged’. There are a few reasons for this.
    First, they focus on personality. It’s almost cultish. When they like someone, say a Limbaugh, O’Rielly, Coulter, or Reagan, that person can speak no untruth. When they dislike someone, say Michael Moore, that person can speak no truth. From there it’s downhill. They also see no need to decipher fact from spin. Many literally believe liberals hate America and revel in abortion. That’s an extreme example perhaps, but I think much of the GOP’s Culture of Corruption came about as a result of their buying their own spin as fact. If you believe every exaggerated instance of prior corruption as fact, then they weren’t doing anything abnormal – just taking their turn at the trough a little bit. But if you deal in the actual measurements of prior corruption, the GOP’s recent recent binge was staggering in both it’s scale and openness. They simply couldn’t have gotten there without first buying their own BS.

    Until they develop an interest in sorting fact from spin, any meaningful dialog is impossible. I’m not optimistic. From what I’ve seen of them in the last 25 years, the only way to advance in the republican ranks is to be loonier than the people around you.

  • I said above “We need Democrats who sense that new order enough to tell everyone else all about it.” I neglected to add “I suggest Edwards and Obama.”

  • If communication across the great divide has become impossible because accepted facts are not agreed or common ground cannot be found, then doesn’t Tom’s (#16) reluctant cure “.. to fight like hell to defeat them politically and enact policies that discourage their fringe followers to the point they fall back into inactive apathy.” become obligatory?

    In the European Union there are 35 active languages and 19 of the top 30 countries on the Global Peace Index. If they can do it, despite all the horrendous turmoil they’ve been through, then surely so can America.

  • It’s not fantasy land but it is different worlds and that’s the point. What the Democrats believe in, the issues they think are important do not matter to Republicans. The republicans don’t care about National Health care, civil rights, equal taxation, medical care for our returning veterans, minimum wage, emergency management, global warming etc.
    They don’t care. That’s it. They don;t care about any of those issues.

    The difference can be demonstrated in those “9 frightening words” Reagan liked to sum up for us, which republicans like to drool over, and which guides the philosophy that marks the beginning of the end of our democracy.
    Those “9 words” which show the selfish greed and elitism of the Republican party…but which also demonstrate the
    humanity of the Democratic party who support a common good philosophy.

    These 9 words: “I’m from the government and I’m here to help”………..Which Reagan hated because it meant it wated something from him, he may have to give up something. He’s doing fine with big money coming in and the government needs to get out of the way of his greed, and screw the environment or beggars or anyone or anything which gets in the way of his money-making monopolies. “You’re not taking a dime of my money because I’ve got the best attorneys money can buy and…”

    These 9 words: “I’m from the government and I’m here to help”….which the Katrina victims say oh thank God because everything they owned was just washed away; or the Missouri flood victims or tornado victims, or the pet food just killed my dog, or the bridges were going to collapse, or I no longer have to work in a sweat shop, or I can stay in school now and go to college because of government loans, or I now have the right to vote, or there is now more than one phone co. in town,, thank god we have hiways…the list goes on and on.

    The Republicans want to eliminate everything standing in the way of their personal fortunes. Eliminate all social programs because they don’t need them on a personal level.

    The Democrats don’t want to eliminate, they want to regulate.
    Corporations don’t want to be regulated. Monopolies don’t want to be regulated. Nor does energy dependence, the corporate media, big pharmacy, and especially this administration. That list goes on and on also.

    Democrats are trying to create a dialogue with the American
    public…..Republicans are trying to distract away from a dialogue and pound us with “fear” (“the smoking gun could come in the form of a mushroom cloud”, Just like the 50yr cold war with the Soviets who had nuclear weapons).

    After what the republicans in congress have done to America the past 10yrs., the only thing that would be keeping any of them in office is special interest. They can only buy or steal an election now thanks to finally getting “some” oversight. And look at all that’s come out in only 4mos time and without a special prosecutor in place.

    Vote on impeachment today and it would fail…but”if you build it, they will come”, and after 4mos with a special prosecutor appointed and the evidence would be overwhelming and we all know this.

  • I see crazy people on the left living in their own reality of organic produce, herbal remedies, bottled water, crystal and aroma therapy. You don’t see right wingers embracing that manure. (organics are nice, but the benefits grossly exaggerated)

    They also seem to think oppressed people are always better. At Oslo, the Palestinian leaders had the upper hand sympathetically until Yitzhak Rabin exposed them for the lunatics they were.

    They also seem to think poverty solutions are simple. Just let the government hand out food, shelter, and job training and everything’s great. They overlook that those who are working retail jobs for 20 years deserve better jobs than they have and deserve the job training more than the people who hope to pass by that 20 year grind and leave the hardworking stiffs in the dust through no superior merit or worth.

    This is not to say the right-wingers’ Polyanna act of outsourcing every lucrative occupation and America will, somehow, prevail anyway is a sensible approach either. I’d just appreciate our cleaning house of our own loons while we point fingers at the slightly nuttier people on the other side of the aisle.

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