News Flash! The last 50 years of Culture War has polarized the United States.
To the truly absurd point where the two sides of this polarization have come to the point of literally having their own facts. Each side takes any and all new information and pushes it through the sausage grinder of their own political and cultural leans and viewpoint. What emerges, unsurprisingly, is one ‘fact’ interpreted two different, exactly opposite, ways. Each side then uses this ‘fact’ to bolster it’s own viewpoint. If you can’t agree on the facts, and we can’t, if you can’t agree on what is true, and we can’t, you can never achieve a consensus.
If you can’t reach a consensus, all you can reach is a half baked ‘agreement’ that nobody likes. Since nobody likes it it probably won’t work. Since no one likes it, both sides will attack it….and the divide continues, as both sides blame each other for ‘it’ not working.
Obama, the poor fool, is trying to heal this divide. Despite the fact that the divide has grown so wide that most of the participants that are on the firing line, the media, pundits, politicians…and bloggers are so immersed in the process and so entrenched in their positions that they haven lost the ability to think in any other terms.
Including me. Because, hey, The Republicans are after all lying shit stains who will lie cheat steal torture and kill to advance their power and agenda of hate. So….when any concession or compromise occurs…It pisses me off to no end. I hate it. And I condemn who ever did it. Bastards.
Obama is trying to end that, end it enough at least, to achieve some sort, any sort of national consensus. He is not trying, ultimately, to achieve political bi-partisanship to achieve the change he envisions. He is trying to achieve enough of a consensus, enough bi-partisanship among citizens to allow him to change the way that politics works in the US. That means rejecting ALL ideologies and sides and producing a series of minor changes that eventually translate into weakening both ‘sides’ and building the middle….the only place that consensus can occur.
To do that…..he has to piss everybody off.
It is working!
No matter what he does, both sides will play out their part in the partisan play. Both sides will use the same tactics that they have been using for so very, very long. The only advantage he has is that everything sucks SO bad that it is obvious that the way we have been doing things doesn’t work. If he can prove to the ‘middle’ that he can make things work even marginally better, the middle will untie to defeat both sides….and THAT will be the Change.
That will take time. Time to produce results….and time for both sides to ‘recover’ from the extreme bloodletting on both sides that The Republicans thrive on and the Democrats suck at to calm down a bit.
Which sux, because dammit we are right! Even though being right hasn’t gotten us jack shit for a very long time. They are wrong and we are right. our facts prove that. But until we can regain enough of a national consensus to once again agree on what even the word fact actually means, we will never win.
As usual, Obama is fighting the bigger war, while we wrangle over the small ones. As we must. His ultimate goal is VERY large. I hope he wins. But until he does, I will keep fighting those lying assholes.
And keep trying not to hate him for cooperating with them, as he tries his best to destroy the power of both the Left and the Right and build a national consensus more powerful than both…that actually makes our government work.
Damn, being a grownup is hard!
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But we have to get out of the rabbit hole somehow, before we can prove that we are indeed right.
The interim between now and then is going to hurt. The only comfort is that it is obvious Obama knows we are right too. Even if he has to in effect deny that, as he works to get us out of the swamp.
they are not acted in good faith.
You cannot negotiate with people who are acting in bad faith and laughing at you behind their backs. And have an ulterior purpose and motive that would end up destroying you.
We are in the age of Norquisition. Now the only question is what we are going to do about it.
cards dealt to them. The situation is much worse now, getting a new deal from the same rigged deck of cards isn’t going to help much, we need a whole new deck of cards.
And it’s hard being a grown-up when the other side (y’all know who they are) is so obstinate and obstructionist, and is throwing childish tantrums on the floor of the Senate–and in front of every camera that will focus on them…
But, I’ve known from the start that there was no way, no how, that I’d get everything I wanted. Not in the next four years. Not in the next eight years. Maybe never. But, I do realize (though I don’t like to admit it) that whatever progressive gains are made, they will be far more than I’d ever be seeing under a McCain/ Palin administration. (Just typing “McCain/ Palin Administration” makes me shudder!!)
Buhdy, you are right: People on the right are whining that Obama’s not “listening to them”–no matter how many times he goes to Congress or has them to the WH–they complain they’re not getting enough of their “ideas” into the Stimulus Bill, even though they’re getting 45% tax cuts. OTOH, the progressives are enraged with every non-tax cut item eliminated from the Bill.
As for me, I’ve decided to try to look at it a different way–I’m grateful for every item left in the Stimulus Bill that will benefit the poor, the unemployed, the rebuilding of the infrastructure, etc.–because I know that’s 100% more than we’d be seeing under McCain/Palin.
BTW, the Stimulus Bill is not the yearly budget Bill. There will be opportunities for items cut from the Stimulus bill to be submitted again into the FY2010 budget bill. Of course, they won’t all pass either, but some will. And, the Stimulus Bill is just the first hurdle the GOP’ers have thrown at the Dems and the new Administration; it won’t be the last.
Illuminati paradigm PRS. Problem, reaction, solution.
I consider both sides as lying shack of shit stains while globalist interests always win. Yes they banter back and forth and for a time give enough of us a glimmer of hope that things will get better.
We need not stimulate anything other than sending a large contingent of these financial weasels to Gitmo. Problem is it is now institutionalized and in that case the institution ends. See human history.
So I was at work and it was getting close to closing time so I took a gander around at some sites and ended up reading this: http://www.trotsky.net/trotsky…
Then I came to DD almost right after and read Buhdy’s entry!
Ah…well, at least the way I read it, serendipity!
i’ll bring the love. balance and all that. @;-) LOLOLOL
…at the least, it is answering the question “is such a consensus even possible?” My intuitive answer is “only if things get much, much worse”…and even then, not too sure. The country is, as you say, deeply split. But it’s also…an incredibly self referential empire, in hideous debt, and engaged in fiscally ruinous wars.
If what you describe comes to pass…even at the level of common feeling (and it may be happening already, as people who were alienated by Bush decide things are basically OK and going in an ok direction)…the liberal edge gets shaved off, hard. Unfortunately that means my whole frickin’ life. The middle, I’m pretty sure, doesn’t have any of those insane tranny freaks in it. Or, to extend to those who aren’t me but are also marginalized…prisoners, or brown people who get blown up by military operations Americans are basically OK with, or sex workers, or anyone else who growups all know is no good.
it is the same one that has been fought for the last 200+ years….the right to an aristocracy that exploits/controls the serfs…..The idea that some people deserve to be in charge and the rest of us should be thankful for their divine right to be in control! Actually, this war has been waged for the last 10,000 years! Maybe longer…sheesh!