(06-26-2018 05:45 PM)Fort Bend Owl Wrote: I don't condone any of it, but I would be more vocal in my displeasure about the various incidents if the folks here were more civil to me (which they're not at all). It's kind of hard to criticize bullies elsewhere when you're being bullied at the same time in a cyber variety.
That said, sadly, my (much more) liberal siblings seem to be getting angrier and angrier all the time in their various texts to me. I pray they're not one of the ones in the news next for doing something which crosses the line.
I'm probably older than many guys here. In my lifetime the meaning of the words liberal and conservative as they apply to politics have been distorted beyond recognition. As much as anything in the 50's and 60s, and before, they were approaches to the economic policies of this nation.
That changed under Lyndon Baines Johnson when being a conservative started to mean backing government policy as it had been carried out prior to Viet Nam and the social upheaval of that decade. So those who once supported fiscal conservatism seemed to be rolled into those who backed the government's take on things. Conservatives and Fiscal Liberals began to see the frustration in the country with Civil Rights issues, the war, and all of the unrest. At first (in 1968) it looked as though most Americans supported their government and military and those doing the protesting were easy to label as militant or worse "pro communist".
Pretty soon conservatives started wrapping themselves in symbols of tradition. The flag which both parties had always bathed themselves in suddenly began to seem more conservative. I guess in part because so many militant fringe groups burned it in the streets. The Democratic party which had been the party that got us involved in Viet Nam had candidates that seemed to gain steam by backing the youth and embracing the counter culture. Being against the war was a rallying point. But then those folks were burning the flag too.
So you had Richard Nixon embracing the "Carpenters" singing group to promote the wholesome image of the nation's youth on one side. And you had the protests at the Democratic National Convention on the other side where Hubert Humphrey was every bit as stodgy and flag wrapped as the average Republican.
By 1972 that had flipped. The disgust with the war was peaking and mainstream families were beginning to question its efficacy and cost. I think that in part played into Nixon's paranoia which would lead to Watergate.
Now I say all of this to illustrate that between 1968 and 1972 the terms liberal and conservative were distorted beyond everything they had traditionally represented. The terms had never been loaded before with moral issues. Confusing the matter was the lack of scrutiny each party gave to its supporters.
In the past every convention had platforms. The platform was the cobbled together agenda of the party moving into the general election. The platform of the party would represent the promises each of its candidates had made which had generated significant public support from their factions, but would weed out the radical and try to come to a compromise on what that party as a whole would support.
With the rise of equal rights for women you had women in both parties that supported the concept. Militant feminism on the other hand was a radical fringe of the democratic party's contingent and the cult of personality started to swell with leaders like Gloria Steinem. Politics on both sides began to shift away from ideas and into popularized personalities. In '72 you had Republicans against the war leading Nixon to promise to get us out with "Peace with Honor", a lovely phrase that enabled Kissinger to negotiate as MIA's the POW's that we knew the North had, but which they refused to admit to. Never have I been so pissed with the Grand Old Party.
But you had George McGovern on the other side (a good American and Veteran of WWII) but who threatened to pull us out altogether and quickly, leaving many concerns about the safety of the troops still there not to mention the POW's and MIA's. These were the issues that decided the election. But on the Dem's side the militant factions had grown by leaps and bounds. Many Americans who used to decide on the candidates or parties by their personal appeal or the promises contained in the platforms no longer felt like they had a choice.
To appeal to that side the Moral Majority began to take shape within the Republican party. Seeing the middle class slip away from it's ranks the Democrats began to embrace some of the tenets of the militants. And in that transition two America's were born. Those who wanted to hold onto the familiar, believe in God, carry on cherished traditions like Thanksgiving and Christmas and Easter while on the other side you had those pushing to get rid of Nativity Scenes that had for generations decorated a venerated corner of Anywhere, USA. Those who wanted to get rid of the words "Under God" (which had only relatively recently added to the pledge of allegiance), wanted to burn the flags that had draped the coffins of our fallen, who dawned Che' t shirts, and waived NVA flags, and who supported rioting as a means to get what they wanted.
If you don't know who Bernardine Dorn and Bill Ayers are or why they figured into the dislike of Obama then you are obviously too young to remember when blowing up a public building and seeking the overthrow of traditional American government was the aim of those two 60's radicals or to remember that one of their benefactors in chaos was one George Sorros. To have one as a friend and advisor of the president and another working on his staff, was the clarion call to those of us who were older that liberal now meant every faction who wanted to destroy what we loved. Add Sorros in as a chief campaign contributor and it was cinched.
The polarization of this nation was completed with the election of Obama. Not because he was an African American, but because of who he put in power with him.
No longer could we criticize our leaders for lousy policies, ineffective leadership, and in some cases treasonous undertakings. Because to do so immediately labeled anyone raising objections as a racist.
But, on the flip side to not support bad policies and lousy leadership, or crooked overseas business deals designed to line pockets from a republican president meant you were un American.
So today Conservative means Pro America and Pro Values whether those in conservative leadership are pro America or not, and whether they are moral or not.
To criticize the policies of a lousy and ineffectual Democratic President makes you a hater, bigot, homophobic, or the vile enemy of pick your agenda.
What we have lost is our freedom of speech on the left and the right. We have lost our right to call a crooked regime crooked, or an ineffectual leader ineffectual. Polarization is destroying democracy. It eliminated the platform first from the democratic conventions and then from the republican conventions. There was no point in trying to reach a consensus or form a coalition with radical wings in either party so the platforms died.
Now the so called debates are anything but policy statements or visions for our future. We are expected to line up behind and vote for whatever candidate our party elite gifts enough to get on the ballot and if it looks like a Bernie Sanders might beat the one the party elites gifted then rigging the voting rules of the party before the convention is a okay to make sure Hillary beats him.
Folks don't you see that as long as we are polarized the ones with the money to buy the candidates in both parties will continue to impose their will which is not to our benefit. If we are to be free again we must have the right to question any president, challenge any candidate, and we must find the middle ground on which to wage an election if it is going to benefit the country no matter which side wins.
The politics of extremism must die! The extremists have the right to speak their mind but the parties have the obligation to govern on behalf of everyone. Otherwise we will eventually have open civil conflict.
But while the politics of division are preached, and while our elections are about why the other guy is horrible and your guy is a prince, and no substantive issues are discussed, no solid promises are committed to, the corporate donors who represent conglomerates with banking interests will continue to buy the favors of both.
I submit that any political party that makes an election an us versus them issue is at its core treasonous. We are to be a government of the people, for the people, and by the people, and our oath of office is to the constitution that promises us the right of redress when that government fails to be that.
Instead in a climate of divisiveness and the mistrust that arises naturally out of it, we are slowly corrupting our law enforcement agencies into the body politic. That means that we will wake up some morning with an American Gestapo.
This president we currently have has been under attack by both parties because he isn't in the pocket of George Sorros or the Koch brothers. He hasn't hired people to work for him who once pledged to overthrow our democracy. But he is working against those who have been diligently working to put us under the thumb of those who line their pockets whether they were Republicans or Democrats, liberals or conservatives, pro life or pro choice, pro or anti anything. The issues du jour are what those in government laughingly refer to as the issues you care about. Neither side of the aisle gives a damn about them. What they care about is business as usual. Trump is anything but business as usual, and I didn't vote for the guy. I voted libertarian. But I have found him to be a fresh breeze that is mucking up a lot of sediment of corruption that those in charge thought was their foundation.
It's time to drop the rancor and observe what is going on. These opportunities don't come around often. And when they have as they did with Carter he was sabotaged from within his own party, much like what Ryan has been trying to pull now. Or with JFK or Reagan, and both were shot.
Your American hero president Dwight Eisenhower told you when he was leaving office and was asked if he feared the rise of Communism as a threat to America's future, that what he feared was the rise of the military industrial complex's power. That meant everything from major arms dealers to transportation leaders to those invested in the Federal Reserve bank who were lobbying Congress to take us further into debt.
Enjoy this opportunity. I'm old, and probably won't live to see another one. But it is in moments like this that America can be renewed for awhile longer. But if we are to take advantage of it we all need to drop the polarizing issues, and move more toward the middle so that the government will again be a compromise for the good of all of us, instead of a staged polarizing farce that covers the business as usual of special interests that can buy their favors whether on the left or right.
Our agenda should be paying down the debt while only pursuing programs that actually produce benefits. Streamlining the bureaucracy, providing for an adequate defense while expecting our allies to provide for their own but with our assurance to help in time of crisis, not spending billions of our dollars to give them a defense. Agreeing to focus on the needs at home but in productive non bureaucratic ways. And getting government out of our lives so that we are motivated by our earnings and have enough of them left to enjoy life a little bit.
Tolerance is best displayed when we wouldn't dare impose on another what we would want imposed on ourselves. As a people we can long endure if we just respect one another. But as Theodore Roosevelt once stated, we must all first agree to be Americans first and hold no other allegiance than to our nation and each other.
When you see those who are politically angry when they don't get their way, I'll show you a tyrant and an enemy of your freedom.
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You libs that post on this board, are you supporting the hate and anger that is
