-snip-
More and more over the past three years I think it's absolutely imperative that every sensible person start trying to understand this relatively straightforward analysis of how such a shocking and deep epistemic divide has split the USA (and increasingly other countries too):
> Two parties serving a billionaire class
> Wedge issue politics as diversion from more serious issues
> Everyone's use of various simplifying heuristics to help us 'understand' our incredibly complex world
> Heuristic mechanisms co-opted and cyclically reinforced in service to one 'side' of those divisive/diversionary wedge issues
Dismissing the 'other side' as simply evil is not only inhumane and a little unfair - not to mention doing exactly the same thing as they are claiming against you - but most importantly it is actively playing into the hands of the divide-and-rule strategy which is probably the biggest cause of all of these symptoms to begin with. And that's truly sad, because if there were any faint glimmer of hope over the past decade it's that Trump's "drain the swamp" rhetoric - however cynically self-serving - actually appealed to people... conservatives who on some level are just as sick of the billionaire dog and pony show as many on the left.
Sorry, you lost my the support from "snip" down, in your post. You choose the, "it's both sides," propaganda that is counterproductive to
the actual history of progress and what little potential for continued improvement we actually have available.
Politics of resentment, white people are the "true victims" = G.O.P. "special sauce".
The True Story of Chicago's “Welfare Queen”
https://www.chicagomag.com › city-life › may-2019 › t...
May 16, 2019 — Ronald
Reagan infamously caricatured Linda Taylor as a welfare bogeyman. ... about "a
strapping young
buck" buying steak with food stamps.
Gore Vidal
summed it up, but he wasn't saying what you're saying. IOW, a center right major party is not similar to a RWE party.
As bad as G.O.P. seems, it is always even worse. Racist, sexist, scapegoating the least powerful. Portraying themselves as victims. Doing nothing for anyone except their wealthiest RWE political donors and the clergy they sponsor to further their political agenda.
"..This lesson was first learned back in 1964 when Barry Goldwater, the Republican nominee for President, expressed his blanket opposition to social security programs and Medicare.
Two months before the November 1964 election, Goldwater flew back to Washington, D.C., to vote against Medicare legislation. But when Lyndon B. Johnson won by a landslide and Democrats gained large majorities in both houses of Congress, liberal pundits declared the death of conservatism with undisguised glee. ...
The lesson was not lost on Republican leaders and strategists who took Social Security and Medicare off the table for nearly half a century...Our study proved prophetic in one major respect: LBJ’s landslide did not signify “the death of conservatism.” Far from it. Beginning with the election of Richard Nixon in 1968, Republicans won five of the next six presidential elections and seven of the next ten. They did so by steering clear of “the third rail.” To be sure, from Ronald Reagan to Barack Obama, presidents have proposed cutbacks in Social Security and Medicare, but not until the Ryan Plan was there any attempt to challenge the basic structure of these programs.."
"I Will Not Promise the Moon": Alf Landon Opposes the Social ...
http://historymatters.gmu.edu › ...
Alf Landon, the Republican candidate for President in 1936, offered strong opposition to
Social Security based on its burden on employers and employees as ...
G.O.P. POTUS cynically appointed two "erasers" to the SCOTUS seats of Justices Thurgood Marshall and Ruth Bader Ginsberg.
en.wikipedia.org
en.wikipedia.org
Versus the bio pages of these two, "stink bombs",
en.wikipedia.org
en.wikipedia.org
