Do you support legalizing secession?

Nonsense.

 

I do so enjoy a cogent well reasoned and researched rebuttal but I did notice a flaw in the logic behind the 3rd paragraph.

 

An uninformed rant merits only a one word reply.

 

Or you could not think of a rebuttal to write. Go ahead - sing the praises of American democracy. Let's see some polling data about how satisifed and proud everyone is these days of each of its institutions. When was the last time this country accomplished anything that both conservatives and liberals felt good about?

 

Support to Ukraine and the extension/rejuvenation of NATO is a justifiable source of pride across the spectrum.
The complaint about gerrymandering is just whining; the practice is more than 200 years old. The answer is to win elections.
And I'm unconcerned by unhappiness with institutions; that's the source of improvement.

 

I think you missed the civics lesson on gerrymandering and I know you have not figured out what happens when you use computer generated algorithms and then add efforts by the republican controlled legislature to impede specific demographic groups from voting, and then you plant GOP partisans in the most sensitive position in the counting and certifying process to ensure that no result not preapproved by the state GOP gets certified. Some votes will count more than others. It's real special when some voter precincts have a half hour wait to cast a vote, and others have a 6 hour wait to cast a vote, while mail in balloting is gutted.

We did not stop the steal in time. The fix is already in, for decades.

 

You're just whining about your opponents' technical prowess. Get to work and match it. To this point they've simply been smarter and more energetic than you. It is fully in your power to redress that.

 

No it isn't but that misses the point. Its just a continuation of the failed dynamic of over 50 years t does not solve the essential problem. Blue and Red, we no longer share the same values, interests or aspirations . There is no reason to continue in direct opposition to each other in a futile effort that not will gain any of us anything. Instead, Blue states can quit this endless cycle of political warfare, before real violence begins, and start anew with a constitution derived from the old, but modernized, and improve the institutions so that they are more responsive and more flexible. And we can actually pass laws again without Red states obstructing us.

And when we leave the union, red states will have no serious interference in creating their conservative, Trump adoring white nationalist dreamworld. They can build their wall, stop the LBGTQ agenda, put guns in every hand, make English the official language, and put prayer and intelligent design back into every public school. Everyone wins.

 

Don't forget about putting the bible in the Constitution...red states! You could do that too.

 

They can make bending a knee a capital offense, and bring back the rack as the method of choice!

 

Funny but not funny. Under someone like trump anything is possible. They likely would have hung Mike Pence. And don't forget that trump praised a guy who bragged about committing cold-blooded murder - Duterte. Honestly, I can not only imagine trump having people executed, but torture as well. The man is a very dangerous lunatic.

I was thinking of the Arkansas State Capitol that wants religion in the their politics. This monument of the ten commandments was put in there. It was finally removed but that is what they want - an autocratic theocracy similar to the Taliban.

 

the point is that they can create a country consistent with their values, and priorities, and we can do the same. Everybody wins because the respective governments can actually accomplish goals for the people that they purport to serve. We spend far too much energy and time trying to thwart the will of each other and fighting battles that do not need to be fought. This has been the political equivilant of trench warfare in WW1 with rivers of blood spilt for 4 feet of territorial gain.

 

You are confusing your own personal frustration with systemic weakness.

 

You are making @btthegreat point if the only thing you can find that red and blue can get behind is "Support to Ukraine" and NATO. You must be aware that a significant portion of the right regards our current policies in that regard as neigh on insane, and I suspect there is a significant portion of the left that feels similarly (albeit for different reasons).

Although I disagree with bttegreat's solution to the problem, dissolution of the union, I do recognize that he's right on the diagnosis.

 

He's profoundly wrong, assuming his personal frustration equals systemic disfunction. It does not.

 

I don't want to pretend to speak for him, but if I understand correctly, he recognizes that we are different peoples with different values, and vastly differing views on almost every aspect of human existence.

The recent outrage of course is all over what amounts to a fairly rare loss of an issue. Since they don't lose much in the political sphere, they don't handle it well when they do, but the critique seems valid.

 

No. We are not.

". . . We are not enemies, but friends. We must not be enemies. Though passion may have strained, it must not break our bonds of affection. . . ."
--Abraham Lincoln

 

My views were not triggered by Roe except of course in indirect connection the same court's response to gerrymandering and a combination of these.
2 Arizona election officials abruptly quit before the primaries, citing continuous threats from Trump supporters over 2020 elections (msn.com)
https://www.nytimes.com/2021/05/13/opinion/cheney-2024-election.html
https://revealnews.org/article/inside-the-gops-purge-of-local-election-officials-in-michigan/
https://www.reuters.com/world/us/ge...-democrats-county-election-boards-2021-12-09/
https://www.politico.com/news/2022/06/01/gop-contest-elections-tapes-00035758
https://www.nytimes.com/2021/06/19/us/politics/republican-states.html.

Even if a third of these stories are true, its enough to feed a Democratic movement to 'stop the steal' of their own after midterms. Once confidence in election integrety is compromised on a national level, nobody will believe they have not been done dirty and as Trump has now shown, there is so much money and side benefits ( using these systemic challenges to scam for donations, free media attention, and poison any bipartisan goodwill, by extending the election itself) to be made in fostering and fueling claims of election fraud and virtually no penalty not too. We are not talking about just one new cottage industry. The political campaigns gain benefit, the candidates gain benefit, the parties gain benefit and certainly mass media gains benefit. And all these self interested efforts to keep the flames of public passion engaged, in an election should have been decided with a polite concession speech full of good wishes, and healing words, two months earlier WILL lead to more and more violence on both sides.

This court will refuse to 'intervene' or provide any direction when these challenges come up and this court is now tainted with charges of partisanship. There is no going back from this deadlock, and there is no going forward on issues with this deadlock. we are sipping hemlock with each primary and general election held in a purple state.

Its time to separate

 

You can't prove your point with quotes from Lincoln. Lincoln thought we were different enough to go total war on civilians.

 

In the name of preserving the union and, eventually, freeing the slaves. As would I. And afterward Lincoln set about healing. As would I.

 

Maybe I'm being a bit partisan here but it was your side that fired the first shots on destroying the integrity of elections, in 2004, and 2016. I think it this point every election will be challenged, and every election will be regarded as stolen by the losing side.

 

That "healing" had been an ongoing process that in recent years has been reversing. In any case the issue was about whether we are truly one people or not. Quotes from Lincoln don't address that. It's a totally different America that exists now.

 

We disagree.

 

I am taking a pause posting for this holiday and let folks enjoy this fourth free of my antithetical views. No reason to rain on expressions of patriotism on a holiday like this. But we do have a virtually insurmountable problem to solve here.