11-24-2016, 06:27 AM
(11-23-2016, 08:24 PM)pbrower2a Wrote: I figure that the Trump Administration, both Houses of Congress, and most state legislatures will do everything possible to make liberalism permanently irrelevant to American politics. Such opens America to extremism, both of the extreme Left and Right.
Both parties, after winning any sort of majority, no matter how thin and tenuous, have interpreted it as a mandate, have tried to push their culture on the other half of the country. Health care! Transgender bathrooms! Gay weddings! Pushing a mandate when one doesn't really have one is a good way of losing power. Thus, through the duration of the unravelling neither party has been able to truly push their values in a sustained way. There is the partisan notion that one's own values are correct, the other guy's wrong, that the other culture must be entirely defeated and suppressed. Attempting to do this results in political backlash. The wannabe suppressor becomes the suppressed.
Perhaps forcing one's values on other people isn't always a great and wonderful idea?
At the moment the pendulum is swinging red. Not so long ago the progressives were talking about demographics, that the blue leaning segments of the population are growing, the red shrinking, so progressive victory was inevitable. I see values and cultures as incredibly stubborn. Is it possible that trying to move either immovable object might not be the wisest of moves?
I think the talk of the country falling apart is premature. Trump talked an extreme red game through the campaign. The harder he pushes that agenda in office, the greater the backlash I'd expect. Thing is, he is shifting blue rather quickly, backing off many of the ideas that won him the angry red votes. I don't think he is shifting far enough to avoid a backlash, and I don't know if the angry red voters will feel as betrayed by Trump as they felt about the establishment Republicans he defeated. We'll have to see.
My magic eight ball keeps coming up 'Answer hazy, try again later.'
That this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom, and that government of the people, by the people, for the people shall not perish from the earth.