(10-13-2019 07:13 AM)AdoptedMonarch Wrote: (10-13-2019 06:47 AM)Eldonabe Wrote: We need one more round of republican president.
Like it or not there hasn’t been enough time to weed out the crazy left and for now their free stuff for all still resonates with too many because they still don’t realize nothing is free, and wise still stay do not understand what that real cost will be. That will be a significant step backwards in the freedoms they currently enjoy.
Trump getting 4 more years SHOULD wake up the Uber-left and bring them back towards the middle again as they realize their radical left leaning ideas aren’t going to work. They just haven’t figured that out yet.
Nearly half of the electorate desperately want President Trump defeated in 2020. But, I believe, that only a small percentage of those are actually part of the “Uber Left”. The large majority are instead people who are willing to turn a blind eye to the lies and abuses of the political left (and their media enablers) just so long as it gets rid of the national embarrassment of our reality-show president.
This, b.t.w., is not all that different from the willingness of the right-leaning majority to overlook the lies, the bullying, the constant turnover at the highest levels of the administration, and the jaw-droppingly stupid tweets that issue non-stop from our president - - not because we like it, but because it is so very important to ensure his re-election in 2020 over the far crazier positions being espoused by the Democrats.
This is a long way of saying that the only true discord that I foresee in 2020, regardless of who wins, will be limited to the political fringes. Yes, it will get a lot of overblown coverage. But the rest of us will simply go back to doing what we do now - - living our lives and grousing about the awful state of our politics on the internet.
I agree with most of what you say here, but the last sentence seemed to me to be an amalgamation less true than its parts.
"The awful state of politics" exists because the representatives and senators no longer work for their constituents, the people. They work by and large for corporate America and for the government bureaucracy. That "awful state of politics" therefore has nothing to do with the internet as the internet did not create it, but rather only amplifies its awfulness.
The internet does however contribute in a major way to the growing ugliness of humanity. I see and interact with people daily who might be my bitter opposition on the internet, but in my daily life they might be working at a business, my neighbors, one of my doctors, family members, the people I sit with at a baseball game, or mere acquaintances.. My point being that when they look me in the eye and see a familiar face and who is civil and respectful, and I see the same in them, the basis for cooperation, tolerance of differences, and the loss of fear of the other, all become spontaneously present and in ways that transcend most, enough, of the differences to make civilization possible, and to permit even casual friendships. The same is true of race relations.
The internet is a crisis for the American way of life inasmuch as it enables levels of hostility that would never surface in the course of a normal day in the setting I mentioned above.
For this reason I believe the internet is a tool for division that the social manipulators are only toying with destructively at this time, but which will become, if we are not careful, the chief intelligence gathering tool that big brother will have as his analysts pigeonhole each of us into one of their various groupings. Right now advertisers are picking over the analysis of the software companies who are comprising our profiles for commercial targeting on our devices. It's only a small step from there to a distorted analysis of our views, and our perceived risks to certain political groups or ideologies, before it can be used as a hit list by the thought police of any side. In other words it is deliberately becoming, whether for commercial or political reasons, an intentional tool of division because the things each of us care most about in our personal lives becomes the defining characteristic in their analysis of us. Anyone's deepest held thoughts or beliefs are a distortion of who they are publicly as those are frequently the issues they wrestle with only in their own mind and soul.
All of us would be in constant conflict with one another if we let each other into our most private of thoughts. We all have our own personal core beliefs which we feel defines us and we tend never to compromise on those. And those bring us into our most extreme alignments or divisions if pressed. Thank God, we don't feel the necessity of bringing them up in most public situations. "The public" is the natural buffering of all that is pent up at the core of our "Id". We can negotiate on the periphery of our core beliefs in public without revealing them and without feeling they are directly under attack. Because of that reasonable compromises in how we will interact and how we can govern locally is still the rule, but thanks to social media surrounding city commission meetings even that is being polarized as the our worst fears are used to rally public support for one position or another.
The issue Adopted Monarch is that both parts of that final statement of yours are true but destructive for wholly different reasons. The Internet spans the nation where it is impossible for me to see the humanity of all involved. Therefore it is much easier to lump regions into allies and foes even though I know that isn't the reality of the individuals within that region. Locally I try very hard to communicate with authorities, and even rivals, via email if schedule won't permit a face to face meeting. What frightens me is that with younger people they obviously recoil and fear a face to face meeting even though by doing so I can't think of single such meeting where fear of the other was not mitigated and cordiality established.
So in short people aren't my mortal enemies, faceless absolute ideas and policies are. The internet divides us and radicalizes us before a face to face meeting is possible. And as long as we remain faceless to one another, as long as the thoughtfulness and honest expression isn't heard in another human voice, and as long as we can't visualize just how little a real threat the other person is as we see their humanity, then only death and destruction can come of it. And to see the possibility of being pigeonholed by government through our internet posts, or by those blunt surveys both parties call me at home to give over the phone (which I refuse to do), then only the purest form of evil will ever come of it, the elimination of all who don't conform with "your particular view". Right now I think every poster and everyone who speaks to an unseen person in a phone survey should hear their Miranda Rights first.
It's ironic that the unseen should be feared more palpably , but aren't as they are veiled electronically, than the faces you see every day, but right now people have it backwards.
