Look, I know I shouldn't rant, but I have sort-of lost hope of this country and it's people. Whatever you guys can say about this, post away.
I hope that I can help you find an optimistic outlook again. I'll start with the basics: we live in literally the best time period known to man. We have amazing things like the internet, advanced health care, the ability to travel across the world in a matter of hours. Today the question is no longer "what can we do?" in regards to things like creating change or saving lives, but rather "what should we do?" and "who is going to pay for it?" This is the problem with my party - the Republican party - is that most of my fellow republicans don't want to pay for anything. They argue that no one is entitled to the fruits of their labor, and for the most part, I agree with them. What I think we as a party need to recognize is that often we benefit from others' labor, through everything from smartphone communications, grocery stores, vehicle transportation, to advanced mining techniques and beyond. I think this is where the impetus for people who voted for Trump came from - not some sort of racist homophobic hatred, but a desire for the government to take less of their stuff. This applies to the rich and the poor - the poor who are struggling to get by need the government to take less of their stuff, and the rich who are creating new things with their business and wealth want the returns on investment they feel they deserve, since, after all, they pay for their smartphones and cars and investments and the other infrastructure they use. They disagree with the liberals who want to make them pay for other people's healthcare, because while of course everyone deserves healthcare, but they don't deserve to pay for it from my pocket.
In my personal opinion, this is not a binary issue but a spectrum. As a republican I will always lean towards lower-taxes, less government interference and such, but I cannot deny that so many things would not even be possible if it were not for the labor of the other folks in my country. Though I have paid my fair price to own my Samsung smartphone, my $800 would be otherwise useless if thousands of people had not done thousands of hours of work to make it possible, work that other people paid for and other people deserve compensation for. So I get called a moderate, for seeing both sides of the issue. The problem with moderates like me of course, is that as long as the law lies somewhere in the middle path, I'm OK with it. Maybe I think a 40% tax is a little too low or a little too high, but chances are good that no one's going to win my vote with a 2% tax raise/cut.
A political extremist, in contrast, is likely to be galvanized by such an idea, however small. If a moderate proposes 2%, they propose 20% so that maybe they can walk away with 7%. The extremists are what I believe to be the cause of the real evil in our political system. The extremists will be motivated by any small injustice, by a 2% change that went opposite to what they believe, and they will be satisfied by any small, however meaningless change, in the direction they desire. For a politician, these people are the tools to running the campaigns. Someone like Trump can say "Build a wall" and set these folks into a frenzy. The good news is that these people are relatively sparse compared to the general population.
The bad news is that we are not responsible internet users. The same self-centeredness which I believe characterizes many of my fellow republican's stances on monetary issues was widely prevalent in democratic supporters this election. With millions of Americans interconnected via sites like facebook, and of course more traditional television news sources, any mention of a republican position was immediately turned into flame war by oppositional democrats. The problem here is not merely that democrats opposed the ideas, but that they opposed the ideas for no reason besides the identity of the person who spoke it, and they opposed the people behind the ideas. And when you sink from arguing against an idea to arguing against a person, you create an extremist, no matter how moderate that person was to begin with. Moderate republicans felt threatened to even speak about supporting Trump - and when your reaction is based in fear, there is no hope of cooperation. The resentment will fester and grow, and there is no longer any room for changing viewpoints. While of course, it would be great if all of my fellow republicans could have "risen above" the vitriol and opened their minds to the needs of their democratic brothers and sisters, I believe a healthy portion of the blame for Trump's election rests on the shoulders of the democrats. At a time when all they had to do was sympathize with the moderate republicans who actively disliked Trump, (especially this election since there was a huge republican backlash against Trump), they instead chose to attack the people who could have handed them the election. Note that I'm not giving my republican party a free pass here, I'm just saying two wrongs don't make a right.
So all this is mostly human nature. We need more moderates in politics, the extremists are crazy, yadda yadda, etc. The good news, is that this is not the worst election in history. Trump is not the craziest president we've ever had (does anyone even remember Nixon?). Trump couldn't give less of a shit about social issues, though it's true that the republican congress does. The other good news is that human nature is the same now as it was 200 years ago when the U.S. constitution was drafted. The system is designed to be slow. Create consensus over a 10-15 year period, and we can have change pretty easily. But while Trump & Co are trying to pass Obamacare repeal, there are good folks out there working on exactly the opposite, and in 2 years Trump might lose his Republican congress. It's true that it would do some damage - maybe we lose 2, 4, or even 8 years of progress while Trump is in office, but you can sure expect that that will galvanize the other side into action, and when the tide flips back in favor of the Democrats we will have a resurgence of opposite policy.
So what can be done in the meantime? Well if we are to learn anything from this election, I think it's that we have to learn to educate each other, and resist the temptation to fight. Calling someone a racist because they don't believe affirmative action is helping the country is not productive. Equally unproductive are positions many Republicans hold which fail to recognize the spectrum of interdependence in our society. Making political memes which oversimplify, create straw-man arguments, and are based in angry reactionism is not the way to go. However, the internet, which I feel was vastly abused this election, can also be our most powerful tool for progressive change. The internet is all about widespread information dissemination. Anyone with access to the internet can learn the real information if they choose. Strict religious parents will have their narrow worldviews undermined when their children discover wikipedia. Liberals who try to cultivate the expression of choice before reality will be undermined by facts as well.
The system will force change to be slow, so that we have enough time to educate each other. Because of that I have hope. We can stop comparing Trump to Hitler, and maybe the Republicans will reform Obamacare for the better. As long as we can acknowledge that our political opponents also want what is best for the country, even if we disagree on how to achieve it, there is hope.
"So feel bad racist SJWs. Feel bad."
I also believe this idea deserves special mention, as it is a prime example of the creation of an extremist position. Your justification is inconsistent, as making a morally poor choice is separate from making a bad choice. A morally poor choice invites the idea that the chooser is fully aware that what they are doing is wrong and still desires that action. Generalizing this property to the entire group of "racist SJWs" is inconsistent with your statement that "I believe in morality", as no one who is moral would attempt to generalize such negative attributes to people who unintentionally cause harm with the intention of doing good. Note that I do believe you are moral, or are trying to be, so your inconsistency here is obviously the result of a bad choice, not a moral choice. Having been served this notice, I expect that in good conscience you will from here on attempt to improve upon your previous inconsistencies in order to better uphold the standard of morality.
Post has been edited 1 time(s), last time on Feb 14 2017, 6:06 pm by Vrael.
None.