How do we heal the political divisions in America?

You make a sound argument for an un

You are using what would sound like a logical argument for an unsound analysis.
If you refuse to consider the behaviors from the viewpoint of an unbiased person, you can't possibly have an accurate perception of what is happening- nor can you apply a rational argument to it. You could fully believe what you say, and have it be as solid as peachfuzz.

The idea that the liberal/left/democrat groups (which I do see merging mentally) allow their perception of Trumps behavior or behavior of conservatives to control their behavior- and allow that behavior to be come remarkably like that of spoiled and undisciplined bunch of third graders- is hardly a sign of anything respectable, or any sign of maturity. That is reaction, emotional outbursts without self-control, without personal standards. They call everyone on the opposing sides horrid names, and think well, that's ok because I don't like them. We see 8 year old kids think that way- but good parents paddle their butts when they do, because it's childish, unsociable and spoiled conduct. Nobody makes anyone insult the president, or calsl for killing all republicans, or calling all white people nazis- they do that by choice. The bad behavior has become contagious- the entertainment crowd for example in in full meltdown, throwing self-respect to the wind to be part of the mob. There is a war against conservative values going on, with no real rules.

Smart people can be total fools, and they can do it in large numbers. Mob mentality, no real logic, no independent thought. History shows us this happening over and over- from the flesh-eating banana hoax to Jim Jones, smart people buy in to ridiculous beliefs. If you understand what critical thinking is, then use it to look at this situation- and you will be forced to change your opinion, or lie to yourself- one or the other, but you can't continue to believe what you seem to.

Certainly sounds like you are on the wrong side. There is a great deal of documentation on Critical Thinking, and I suggest you give it some study. One relatively easy guide to what it is and why it is so valuable is here:
https://www.globalknowledge.com/ca-...ole-of-critical-thinking-in-problem-analysis/

 

To begin with pull the FCC license from CNN an MSNBC.

 

Why would you expect us to assume something that is demonstrably false?

 

Lots of strawmen in that.

 

America has been politically divided since the moment it was first colonized by Europeans. That is never going to change. The only reasonable course of action is to accept the fact that meaningful degrees of "unity" among 320 million strangers is a Utopian pipe-dream that will never come true. The best we can hope for is a loose confederation of State and local governments that temporarily unify on narrowly defined issues through treaties, much the same way the USA and Canada relate to one another.

 

That which they weren't paying for was controlled via rationing as well as the draft.

 

Well, I suspect that the 3 issues you listed that contribute to the thinking patterns leading to divisions could be increased to twice as many, though it may be worthwhile to rank them by significance regarding impact. Listing your 3 first, the list may look something like the following:

1) intellectual laziness/not attempting to discover the middle-ground
2) lack of an understanding for how to find a consensus from among a group
3) an election system which encourages binary thinking by forcing binary choices
4) the tribal urge; the desire to belong to a group
5) cultivation of a world view via association with a father figure or trusted mentor
6) stability in that world view due to resistance to change and/or difficulty of admitting having been wrong

Your first point in how ranked choice would reduce polarization is good and deserves careful consideration. Having several position statements to evaluate would necessarily cause a person to compare them and think more deeply about the alternatives than we are currently inclined to do. That's important.

Secondly, when voters select 2nd, 3rd, and 4th choices or even more, those choices will in all probability represent greater and greater compromise with each additional choice. This could easily lead in many cases to more centrist candidates winning as the compromise advances. I could see Kasich being one of my choices in the 2016 election, for example. And casting a vote for at least one opposition candidate would be a wise choice, as it could further eliminate the possibility of an extremist of the "opposition" winning. In fact, for example, if all Democratic candidates were to lose, democrats could actually decide the election for Republicans and their candidates if one Republican stood out as most desirable and democrats voted for that candidate as one of their lesser choices.

 

someone pointed out to me that the sort of 'populism' and innate distrust of existing institutions is always at its highest after a major depression or recession in which the generation has seen an assault on its core assumptions. Its not really that astonishing that you are picking the beginning of this century as the starting point, when the great global recession began in 2008. Maybe we just hang in there and wait for saner less strident times. Its just an optimistic hope, but there's nothing inherently wrong in a little optimistic hope.

 

I've yet to see a liberal step up to the plate- there's always some kind of justification for the incivility, for bias, for immaturity, for evasion of responsibility. "Strawmen" is just one more of the same.

 

Yeah. Can you imagine a candidate for President actually claiming that his campaign was being surveilled by a sitting President of the opposing party? Despicable liar he is. I tell ya. Next thing he's going to claim is that the 100% Hillary voter Grand Jury is stacked against him or that the 13 angry Hillary voters prosecuting people involved in his campaign aren't totally objective.

 

We've been seeing a lot of the "Man of the cloth" defense from the left side, for a long time. As in, "How dare you accuse a man of the cloth?" How dare you question my integrity?
It's easy, and it is always appropriate. Honor is not the norm or consistent characteristic of politics and politicians, nor of people like Mueller and Comey- deception, deceit, hypocrisy and corruption are. Such people so familiar with the law know how to do dishonest things legally and illegal things in ways that make them appear legal.

Of course- Trump was never a politician, he came to the office with a much different set of standards... and that scares hell out of the people who have depended on the old rules all their careers.

 

It appears that your purpose and goal is to attack me and you'll take whatever you can find to do it. Your previous post was a surreptitious yet personal assault on me disguised as a "critique" of my OP. You didn't come here to discuss the subject, but rather to oppose and attack. I was going to ignore you but your underhanded style of feigned superiority demands some sort of reply. And yet I found nothing in your posts thus far that seemed to even remotely address anything in the OP. You instead represent the perspective that the OP identifies as the problem that must be eliminated.

 

Sadly- I have yet to see a liberal step up the plate. Such people are not what I make them, but what they make themselves. I speak to your opinion or motives- I don't know anything about you but what you present yourself to be. I did address your post- but not in the way you thought I should. Your reaction, your perception of what I said is your problem, not a personal attack. If you take being shown faults in your case as an attack- nothing I can do about that.

Everyday, we see liberals in the news viciously attacking others and then taking the "how dare you" position to defend their actions against anyone who question it.
Nothing new.

 

You work to deepen and maintain the divisions and intolerance by attacking liberals again. And you assert that I have a "problem" and present yourself as the one who is capable of seeing and revealing it. But you also make the fundamental error of believing I'm a liberal. If your ability to identify your subject is that poor, the remainder of your attack is equally worthless. As such, you in all your superior self-assessment, represent what the OP seeks to eliminate. That's a pretty solid list of failures. And now to that list we can add your trolling, which is what this has become.

 

You can't 'heal' ignorance. Most Americans today are self-serving...thinking ONLY of themselves...with zero interest in what's in the best interest of the USA in the long term. We can blame it on political division but the root cause is voter ignorance and self-serving behavior. For example, why would a voter support Trump in creating $1.5 trillion in tax cuts when every year we have a minimum of $500 billion deficits and $22 trillion debt? Why do so many support tax cuts when this year the deficit is projected to exceed $1 trillion? Ignorance and selfish ways cannot be 'healed' so perhaps we're just seeing the beginning of the total failure of the US in which we've become so stupid and self-serving that we are now incapable of 'properly' solving complex issues that face the nation today. We are now too stupid to clearly and concisely define the problems, therefore, it becomes highly unlikely we can solve ill-defined problems. Referencing the above example, if we refuse to define deficits and debt as potential problems, then obviously there won't be any actions to remedy. This same scenario applies to all issues today. IMO there is no form of 'healing' that will change our current projection...

 

TBH, as I posted previously, your OP is an example of why political divisions aren't healing.

 

I disagree. While this used to be the case - I can barely make it through a day without hearing some demonstrably false nonsense or false narrative coming out of the MSM - in particular when it comes to anything related to foreign policy.

What is worse is the disingenuous omission of conflicting information to the Establishment narrative.

Examples: Iran is the #1 state sponsor of Terrorism. Obama's "moderate rebel lie" in relation to Syria. "Assad did the chemical weapons attack in Douma" "Russia used a chemical weapon novochek in Britain" "White Helmets" Trump holding hands with El Saud. The war in Yemen. Failure to report the fact that we were supporting Al Qaeda in Syria and that the people fighting for Assad were the "good guys".

At home we have Mueller - a guy with a proven track record of going after innocents and violating the rules of justice somehow managing to obtain a high position of power. Proof of how corrupt our system is.

Failure to educate citizens on the definition of "Islamist" vs Islamic.

Support for the "Patriot Act" now known as the "Freedom Act"

Support for the use of fallacious utilitarian justification for law - this is an epidemic of plague proportions.

and on and on. We live in a propaganda state.

 

Like those who scream the US is fascist or socialist, most who claim "we live in a propaganda state" have never lived in a propaganda state.

 

How do we heal the political divisions in America?

The last time this country was this divided, the bigots got their arse kicked. History repeats when the lessons are not learned.

 

Would the bigots in this case be those who believe in "special rules for special people"?

 

1) one does not have to have lived in a propaganda state to know what propaganda is.
2) If those claiming "propaganda state" live in the USA - they know what living in a propaganda state is.

The fact that you do not hear the canaries in the coal mine of totalitarianism screeching - does not mean that others do not.

That you would put the bar at such an extreme "Russia, China and so on" is an exercise in denial and avoidance of reality.

 

While not wanting to get too far into the weeds on this subject, I figured I would choose one of your assertions to illustrate my position. I would argue that the failure to educate on the definition of Islamic versus Islamist is not an example of misrepresenting an irrefutable point of fact. Rather I would call that an omission that is rooted in spin and the desire to not expose any information that is contrary to the narrative that they want to push. I am not arguing that the media spin doesnt constitute propaganda, because it most certainly does. What I am arguing is that absolute misrepresentations of irrefutable fact are the exception rather than the rule. It happens, but it is rare. Typically, these mainstream news organizations are smart enough to always leave themselves a little wiggle room in terms of points of actual verifiable fact. They spin by virtue of the gray area contained in almost all things political.

 

Because the Left has labeled the Right "Nazis" anytime they disagreed with them, the actual horror of the Third Reich has lost its meaning. Same for the LW habit of labeling those on the Right "racist" anytime they disagree over something even tangentially related to race also has watered down the meaning of racism to the point it's meaningless.

Now we come to labeling the US authoritarian, totalitarian, tyrannical or a propaganda state. The same applies. Sure, some laws are authoritarian and some politicians blather crap that is totalitarian. For the most part, people who label the US as such either don't know what they are talking about or, especially these days, are Russian trolls who want to make the US equal to Russia. LWers on this forum regularly compare Trump to Putin. As noted above, all that does is water down the fact Putin is a dictatorial asshat and Trump is a joke in comparison.