ACA Repeal/Replace: Progressives Face Moral Dilemma

[Bob Butler 54]

Kinser

Well, I did consider the source of the charts.  I consider both you and Eric to be extreme partisans of very different flavors.  Your two sets of charts are to me much better as illustrations of how you two view the world than as illustrations of the world.

The Tea Party / Palin / Trump faction coming to cleanly dominate the GOP is a plausible result.  Perhaps the most likely.  I don’t know how many politicians out there, though, that can effectively sell the Palin / Trump style of intuitive fey thinking.  I’m not sure how long before the three groups come back to two.

I’m not interested in replaying the Clinton - Trump election.  I just think her style of dedicated persistent negotiation would have strung out much longer than his brief effort.  She kept pushing on health care for well over a year as her Husband’s health care point person, as did Obama when he finally pushed his plan through.  I’ve got a notion that if anyone wants to get anywhere with an issue as complex and partisan as health care, they should be ready to spend a lot longer than a few months on it.  I suspect Trump will have more issues as complex and partisan.  Among his other personality problems, does he have the patience and dedication?

Hmm.  I definitely agree humans can be tribal, are tribal by nature.  However, there doesn’t seem to be a limit on the size of the tribe.  Humans are also symbolic, and shared world views are part of the tribal bond.  Part of the loyalty mechanism that unites the tribe can be the woo.  People who share political world views on how the world works tend to get caught up in the intense emotional tribal bonds.  One’s own woo seems solid, logical, True, sane, fact based, etc.  The other guy’s woo has less pleasant words associated with it.  I mean, when I call your father’s approach intuitive and fey, that’s polite by the standards of dissing hostile values.  There are certainly others on the forum ready to use harsher language for it.  The tribal bond mechanism is part of the stubborn inability to perceive the sense behind the other guy’s world view.

But, yes, a lot of the issues on the table are not yet perceived as existential threats.  Woo aside, I don’t know that we will have a regeneracy and true crisis until they are perceived as existential threats.  Somehow, when that happens, a Jefferson, a Lincoln or a Churchill will suddenly show up with the language skills needed for some really great woo.  If the problems aren’t perceived as existential yet, their language skills aren’t yet recognized and appreciated.  

I suspect the new inclusive economy and global warming are going to develop into such threats.  In the meantime, it is still possible to keeps one’s eyes closed and pretend nothing needs to be done yet.

I’ll just play at being Cassandra, gifted by the gods, perhaps, to see something of the future.  Cursed by the gods in that no one believed her.

Asimov.  Spell my name with just one ’S’.  

I’m not in a position to complain about hodgepodge mixed theories.  My own are spliced together as well.