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The civil war was cut and dried. You had an opponent you could concentrate on.
I've had no problem identifying the enemy. The Republican Party.
But they got voted in. Which means your enemy is 47% of all of the people around you, distributed at random. If you can find a way to manage that, I am all ears.
But they got voted in. Which means your enemy is 47% of all of the people around you, distributed at random. If you can find a way to manage that, I am all ears.
For the most part, we are able to coexist. Like Gator fans and Seminole fans. Like Methodists and Baptists. The primary difference is that every two years we cast votes for different candidates. And those candidates aren't all that different.
This conclusion from Gallup's article above: "Months of reporting and testimony on impeachment seem to have largely crystalized preexisting opinions of Trump. Views among Republicans (overwhelmingly positive, anti-impeachment) and Democrats (almost exclusively negative, pro-impeachment) hardly change, while political independents tend to be the real drivers behind minor variations in overall national sentiments. Independents have become slightly more positive toward both the president and Congress, while they are slightly less in favor of impeachment."
I don't find most of that extremely reliable, except the point that most surveyed have already made up their minds. The reality is that the variations in the polling have largely been within the margins of error of polling for months. FiveThirtyEight. There doesn't appear to be much of any "trend" - just an opportunity for pollsters to get newsprint. I found the ABC poll more indicative: 70% of Americans say Trump’s actions tied to Ukraine were wrong: POLL. Not that it will sway the results on impeachment in any way ("nearly 1 in 3, 32%, say they made up their minds about impeaching the president before the news broke about Trump’s July phone call with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy") - those have been essentially unchanged for years. But, I suspect it is more indicative of where the country really is about Trump re-election, and explains more of the 2018 results.
I think Senators and Reps are stuck in a dilemma. Most of their constituents recognize that what Trump did was wrong, but they have to stick with the "base" - which represents the biggest chunk of their constituency - and will support "their" president no matter what. They know their positions are untenable - trying to straddle the opinions of party faithful and independents - but they have no choice if they want to be re-elected. A similar dilemma faces Dems.
But the hardcore Trump true believers are still a mystery to me. There seems to be an actual cult mentality of worship for the man. He apparently has a dark and highly attractive charisma for a class of people that is surreal. For many of us he is plainly a blatant con man - I would challenge anyone to present factual evidence to the contrary. In fact, a salient characteristic of the Zombies is that they despise facts and refuse to even acknowledge them. The easiest proof of this is their adamant insistence that Trump never lies.
I post this not just to counter Perotista’s casual expressions of an implied equivalence between opposing “partisans”, it is also a self reality check to assess if I am just as crazy as the hardcore Trumpers as their polar opposite.
I have mentioned before canvassing hardcore Trumpers on a righty blog and I can report this - they absolutely will not allow a discussion of these issues into their bubble. Among them there is zero introspection happening. They are cultists. The question is why?
I, too, have been puzzling over this. I think the key is the Amygdala and fear conditioning.
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Fear conditioning is a behavioral paradigm in which organisms learn to predict aversive events.[1] It is a form of learning in which an aversive stimulus (e.g. an electrical shock) is associated with a particular neutral context (e.g., a room) or neutral stimulus (e.g., a tone), resulting in the expression of fear responses to the originally neutral stimulus or context. This can be done by pairing the neutral stimulus with an aversive stimulus (e.g., a shock, loud noise, or unpleasant odor[2]). Eventually, the neutral stimulus alone can elicit the state of fear. In the vocabulary of classical conditioning, the neutral stimulus or context is the "conditional stimulus" (CS), the aversive stimulus is the "unconditional stimulus" (US), and the fear is the "conditional response" (CR).
As it turns out, most people can be susceptible to cult influence under the right conditions. Research has shown that the people who are the most susceptible to recruitment are stressed, emotionally vulnerable, have tenuous or no family connections, or are living in adverse socioeconomic conditions.
I dunno, prob'ly a lot of people felt that way during the civil war.
The civil war was cut and dried. You had an opponent you could concentrate on.
This is just a homogenized disintegration of the republic. If we threw Trump out this afternoon, the whole thing would still be rotten to the core.
I personally don't think it was as cut and dried as you posit. Think of it this way: the causes of the Civil War existed at the time of our foundation, and it took 87 years for it to break out in a full-fledged war. And, the strife didn't end with the war and reconstruction - it was carried forward for over a century (Jim Crow, Civil Rights Acts...) and the scars are still readily apparent. I do agree it is generally more homogenized, but the same dividing lines between urban/industrialized and rural/agricultural still exist in virtually every State of the union.
We need a "coming together" as Americans and a re-dedication to the principles and values that informed our creation - Life, Liberty, the Pursuit of Happiness
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to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defence, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity
I dunno, prob'ly a lot of people felt that way during the civil war.
The civil war was cut and dried. You had an opponent you could concentrate on.
This is just a homogenized disintegration of the republic. If we threw Trump out this afternoon, the whole thing would still be rotten to the core.
I personally don't think it was as cut and dried as you posit. Think of it this way: the causes of the Civil War existed at the time of our foundation, and it took 87 years for it to break out in a full-fledged war. And, the strife didn't end with the war and reconstruction - it was carried forward for over a century (Jim Crow, Civil Rights Acts...) and the scars are still readily apparent. I do agree it is generally more homogenized, but the same dividing lines between urban/industrialized and rural/agricultural still exist in virtually every State of the union.
We need a "coming together" as Americans and a re-dedication to the principles and values that informed our creation - Life, Liberty, the Pursuit of Happiness
Quote
to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defence, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity
as it were.
1. This particular mess has been brewing since 1968. So 51 years. That's plenty of time.
2. Okay, but the right wing has to come together first.
Does somebody have Old Flattop's number? We should call an expert in for help...
You never change things by fighting the existing reality. To change something, build a new model that makes the old model obsolete. R. Buckminster Fuller
The House has voted to impeach Trump. It’s once again time to look at the Public’s response since the impeachment hearings began. We’ll do this by comparing Trump’s approval ratings, percentage of those who want Trump impeached and removed along with those who don’t. Trump’s approval rating hasn’t really changed, he has gained a half of a point since the Judiciary Committee took up impeachment. Then there is the party break down. Democrats totally for impeachment and removal, Republicans totally against. Independents opposed by a 5-point margin. What we have seen is each party’s hardening of their views on the impeachment of Trump. Independents moving from being against impeachment and removal by a single point to a 5 point margin opposing impeachment and removal. Impeachment hearings began on 13 Nov 2019 vs. 18 Dec 2019 Trump’s approval 13 Nov 43.9%, 18 Dec 44.5%
13 Nov Democrats for impeachment and removal 82%, 18 Dec Democrats for impeachment and removal 84%. 13 Nov Republicans for impeachment and removal 12%, 18 Dec Republicans for impeachment and removal 9%. 13 Nov Independents for impeachment and removal 38%, 18 Dec Independents for impeachment and removal 41%. 13 Nov Democrats against impeachment and removal 6%, 18 Dec Democrats against impeachment and removal 10%. 13 Nov Republicans against impeachment and removal 80%, 18 Dec Republicans against impeachment and removal 88%. 13 Nov Independents against impeachment and removal 39%, 18 Dec Independents against impeachment and removal 46%.
It's high past time that we start electing Americans to congress and the presidency who put America first instead of their political party. For way too long we have been electing Republicans and Democrats who happen to be Americans instead of Americans who happen to be Republicans and Democrats.
You never change things by fighting the existing reality. To change something, build a new model that makes the old model obsolete. R. Buckminster Fuller
