10-22-2018, 11:55 AM
(This post was last modified: 10-22-2018, 12:19 PM by Eric the Green.)
(10-20-2018, 06:41 AM)Bob Butler 54 Wrote: CNN reports on there being an "Exhausted Majority" that is as sick of the extremes as I am.
CNN Wrote:Cable news depicts a divided country, with talking heads fighting from the left and right on deeply polarizing political issues. But according to a new study, the United States might not be as split as the media portrays.
More in Common, an initiative dedicated to understanding political polarization, recently released the results of their project called "The Hidden Tribes of America." They found that 67% of the country is what the organization calls the "Exhausted Majority," a group that is displeased by America's polarization and would like for people to find a common ground.
"There's a tremendous anxiety about the division and a sense with the majority of people that their voice isn't being heard," Tim Dixon, co-founder of More in Common, told Brian Stelter in the latest Reliable Sources podcast. "That it's these strident, hateful, often uncompromising us versus them voices" that are receiving attention.
Dixon cited the Brett Kavanaugh hearings as an example of the majority's distress. Their research found that 70% of people said they blame both the left and the right for the conflict over his nomination.
Now if that could be the center of a regeneracy, I could get enthusiastic. We will see if any politicians push it, or whether the extremists remain dominant. The conclusion is too late for the mid terms, but not for 2020.
My worry is that More in Common found what they hoped that they would find in their poll. You can manipulate a poll result by wording the question in a biased way.
My concern is also that this has become an extremist web site, that the Industrial Age crises were centered on violence and partisanship, and the S&H perspective has got carried away as extremist as a result.
Opposition to Kavanaugh was not "extremism." If the American people think that it is, then this so-called "exhausted majority" is a right-wing majority.
Kavanaugh was shoved onto the people in order to take away our rights and suppress the vote. The advent of the Kavanaugh kangeroo court is the decisive end of our democracy. Now the courts cannot stop districting that is intended to gerrymander away the votes of Democrats, or voter purges that are unfair to them. What's happening in Georgia and North Dakota now can continue with impunity. The National Park Service has been asked to stop any protests outside the white house, so this is the beginning of Trump's promise to have demonstrators carried out on stretchers like in the good old days.
Those who supported Kavanaugh were wrong, and those who opposed him were right. We do not have a conflict between extremists here. There are virtually no left wing extremists in the United States. What we have is a growing division between center-leftists and an extreme fascist right-wing. It is going to be up to the people to fight this descent into tyranny, which is a worldwide trend now. What is happening in Turkey, Central America, Brazil, China, Southeast Asia, and the Middle East in the wake of the Arab Spring, is happening here too under Trump and the Republicans. The only "left extremism" today is, as Goldwater might have said, in defense of our liberty.
The advent of the Kavanaugh kangeroo court might well mean that voting for Democrats is suppressed, so that those on the center-left have no alternative but civil disobedience or violent resistance. This center-left resistance suits the right-wing authorities just fine, as they can be accused of being "uncivil" as Ted Cruz and the other Republican senators on the committee say, or simply labelled as terrorists and communists, and that way they can get a solid majority of folks in red states to agree with them, and that's all they need to repress them and maybe put them away.
The only regeneracy possible today in the USA is a rising up of the center-left to resist this trend toward the tyranny of the oligarchic right-wing. A regeneracy in a 4T is NEVER a mamby-pamby call for compromise and civility. A 4T means that our country is in danger, and the people must rise up to save it. That's where we are. The regeneracy is happening, but it's not a call for civility per se. It is a call for truth, liberty and justice. How "civil" it is depends on how much it is resisted by tyranny. The more the regeneracy is suppressed by the Republicans, the less "civil" the regeneracy will be.
If we are to have a government of the people, by the people and for the people, then we must now give our last full measure of devotion, and resolve that our efforts shall not be in vain.