Capitol Hill Blue Forums Political Issues The Legal Forum Let's check in on the cattle abusers, deadbeat grazers, wildlife squatter Bundys

the federal government is the evil empire ... is there any other message?

Now that it's run by Trump? Must be confusing for some folks...

I do not think so, President Donald (Ego Maniacal Narcissist) Trump is the light and the true way. It is the Deep State that is the issue for the Trump/Republican base now.

The Deep State of Delusion?

Hilarious!
In my youth I visited an amusement park. They had a "Maze of Mirrors". Those mirrors gave all sorts of illusions, misdirecting, skewing, etcetera.
The way the most frequent commenters on this forum reveal their view of the world, it makes me think they do it from inside such a maze.

Sad, really.

Ahhh, Bigswede, see your on the inside trying to look out. It is a shame those pesky mirrors keep getting in the way. So, how is the self view.

I'm fine, thank you! A bit taken aback being on the outside watching you guys running around inside the maze, trapped like flies inside a window.

This may well be America's greatest contemporary problem, even the world's. The dichotomized views splitting people and nations into two separate paradigms unable to communicate or find common ground for intelligent mutual decision making.

Instead of informed thoughts, presented and received in a long term durable pace, there are fast jabs and stabs at the other side. Putting more value on mindless laughs from the own crowd, rather than appreciating well intended and intelligently reasoned replies from those with other views and ideas, living in other circumstances, environments, even realities.

Swede, you've said something I agree with. Let's go with that!

The Bundy standoff and the Maheur takeover were prompted by a mindset that is foreign to many of us. It's that foreignness that makes it so hard for many of us to process - mostly because it doesn't conform to the reality that most of us inhabit. Similarly, the life experience of people of color is foreign to most of us, even those who have lived and worked in minority communities. We've not lived their reality.

I've lived in rural America, and urban America. The differences are vast - but the desires are the same: a decent home, work that has meaning and pays decently, community, the prospect of giving our children a world and existence better than we had. If we focus on that commonality, communication and compromise are possible. Facts, of course, are necessary to reach agreement. What makes it impossible is refusal to engage.

Take, for example, the current health care debacle. GOP leadership has not sought to engage - even their own membership! Ideological and political considerations, deliberately divorced from empirical data, control the agenda. The majority of Americans, and maybe even the majority of legislators, understand the realities most Americans face and support a compromise. Not so, leadership.

So, what facts do we agree on? Let us start there.

I kind of thought you would agree, NWP!
But this would be matter for a new thread, don't you think?

If I may phrase the opening question.
How do we overcome the divide?
This pertains to the views and experiences people hold, that makes it difficult to agree on perspective as well as remedies.

How do we secure freedom and liberties in times when a lot of people ask for legislation against anything they don't like, even if it ought to be none of their business?

Where do we draw the line between matters allowed to be settled by majority vote and matters that must be reserved for the individuals to decide themselves?

To keep this non-political.

If majority vote settled matters, we would not have the predicament we currently do. But the Founding Fathers set up the system we have as flawed as it is.

"We secure freedom and liberties" by understanding everybody, regardless of Race, Sex, Color, Religion, Sexual Orientation, Political views, Nationality, or what ever discriminator we come up with, have the right to Life, Liberty, Pursuit of Happiness a right to "Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defense, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessing of Liberty" to themselves and to their Posterity.

"How do we overcome the divide?" I'll let the more philosophical and knowledgeable people answer this.