What can be done to defuse America?

[wonkehcheetah]

Personally, I think the issue is the whole bi-partisan system. The fact that there is only republican or democrat, it breeds a very toxic "if you're not with us, then you're against us" mentality. Sure there is the independent party, but considering how small it is, it's practically just an illusion of choice. With only two players in the system, one simply has to hold the majority, they don't need to compromise, work with the other party, or even talk to them. I feel that if we had smaller, but more numerous and specific parties, that would be too small to hold the majority, perhaps even set up some sort of party limit (a party can only hold 33% of congress seats or something), it would force the parties to work together to accomplish their goals, rather than simply trying to dominate the political spectrum.

[HeyYou]

Personally, I think the issue is the whole bi-partisan system. The fact that there is only republican or democrat, it breeds a very toxic "if you're not with us, then you're against us" mentality. Sure there is the independent party, but considering how small it is, it's practically just an illusion of choice. With only two players in the system, one simply has to hold the majority, they don't need to compromise, work with the other party, or even talk to them. I feel that if we had smaller, but more numerous and specific parties, that would be too small to hold the majority, perhaps even set up some sort of party limit (a party can only hold 33% of congress seats or something), it would force the parties to work together to accomplish their goals, rather than simply trying to dominate the political spectrum.

It didn't used to be that way. At one time, both parties could come together, and come up with a compromise that would benefit most. (certainly not "all") That died completely when Obama was elected, and it became more important to make sure the 'other guy' doesn't do anything useful, than it was to do the business of the country. To me, that is one of THE most important reasons congress needs term limits.

[Rabbit1251]

I propose taking a B-52 bomber and dropping Donald Trump on North Korea. At the same time, and with mutual agreement, North Korea should drop Kim Jung Un on America. This would solve both our problems. Oh! the bliss!!

 

 

The Rabbit

[TheMastersSon]

 

 

Personally, I think the issue is the whole bi-partisan system. The fact that there is only republican or democrat, it breeds a very toxic "if you're not with us, then you're against us" mentality. Sure there is the independent party, but considering how small it is, it's practically just an illusion of choice. With only two players in the system, one simply has to hold the majority, they don't need to compromise, work with the other party, or even talk to them. I feel that if we had smaller, but more numerous and specific parties, that would be too small to hold the majority, perhaps even set up some sort of party limit (a party can only hold 33% of congress seats or something), it would force the parties to work together to accomplish their goals, rather than simply trying to dominate the political spectrum.

It didn't used to be that way. At one time, both parties could come together, and come up with a compromise that would benefit most. (certainly not "all") That died completely when Obama was elected, and it became more important to make sure the 'other guy' doesn't do anything useful, than it was to do the business of the country. To me, that is one of THE most important reasons congress needs term limits.

It died completely when the multinational (aka "supply-side") mafia responsible for Nixon and Reagan (and still in charge of both the RNC and DNC) started to gain control of our Congress, especially our House. Moderates have been leaving Congress in droves ever since.

[wonkehcheetah]

 

It didn't used to be that way. At one time, both parties could come together, and come up with a compromise that would benefit most. (certainly not "all") That died completely when Obama was elected, and it became more important to make sure the 'other guy' doesn't do anything useful, than it was to do the business of the country. To me, that is one of THE most important reasons congress needs term limits.

 

I understand my idea would probably do little to "drain the swamp" in the higher ups, for that the term limits sounds like something worth doing. I was thinking about the effects my idea might have on the american culture as a whole. I feel that the average American is exposed to a "one way or the other" culture that shuns ideas of mature political debates, moderates in general, and compromise. My theory is if there are more smaller parties with smaller differences between each, there would still be sides, however the lines would be more blurred, and it would be harder to pit people against one another, if the people aren't at each others throats, they would be more inclined to see the big issues.

[TexMex477]

 

My dad used to tell me that people voted Conservative (in the UK) because of their old fashioned faith in passing responsibility to their social "betters." It's quite frightening to see the poorer end of society (which is, technically, most of society) vote for things that hurt them financially, socially or personally.

 

Would you rather live poor on welfare the rest of your life or to get a good career supporting yourself?

 

In United States the supposed actual concept is of political differences is as follows

(At least at its core but democrat and republicans is less so of core values now days)

Democrats support giving the man a fish.

Republicans support teaching the man to fish.

 

Democrats thought that owning slaves was good because slaves could not take care of themselves.

Republicans thought that owning slaves was bad because not only did it take away human rights it hurt the average worker with low wages.

 

Democrats support open borders for larger voting base.

Republicans do not support open borders because mass low wage workers lowers the already low wages.

 

What is true is Democrats support large amount of programs and entitlements for the poor where republicans do not.

This is what makes people think Republicans do not care about the poor.

 

Which could not be further from the truth.

The Republican treats the illness while the democrat covers up the symptoms.

You only have so many resources would you rather cure the disease or just make it so you don't know your dying?

 

Here is a old little story.

 

A young woman was about to finish her first year of college. Like so

many others her age, she considered herself to be a very liberal

Democrat, and was very much in favor of the redistribution of wealth.

 

She was deeply ashamed that her father was a rather staunch Republican,

a feeling she openly expressed. Based on the lectures that she had

participated in, and the occasional chat with a professor, she felt that

her father had for years harbored an evil, selfish desire to keep what

he thought should be his.

 

One day she was challenging her father on his opposition to higher taxes

on the rich and the addition of more government welfare programs. The

self-professed objectivity proclaimed by her professors had to be the

truth and she indicated so to her father. He responded by asking how she

was doing in school.

 

Taken aback, she answered rather haughtily that she had a 4.0 GPA, and

let him know that it was tough to maintain, insisting that she was

taking a very difficult course load and was constantly studying, which

left her no time to go out and party like other people she knew. She

didn't even have time for a boyfriend, and didn't really have many

college friends because she spent all her time studying.

 

Her father listened and then asked, "How is your friend Audrey doing ?"

 

She replied, "Audrey is barely getting by. All she takes are easy

classes, she never studies, and she barely has a 2.0 GPA. She is so

popular on campus; college for her is a blast. She's always invited to

all the parties, and lots of times she doesn't even show up for classes

because she's too hung over."

 

Her wise father asked his daughter, "Why don't you go to the Dean's

office and ask him to deduct a 1.0 off your GPA and give it to your

friend who only has a 2.0. That way you will both have a 3.0 GPA and

certainly that would be a fair and equal distribution of GPA."

 

The daughter, visibly shocked by her father's suggestion, angrily fired

back, "That wouldn't be fair! I have worked really hard for my grades!

I've invested a lot of time, and a lot of hard work! Audrey has done

next to nothing toward her degree. She played while I worked my tail off!"

 

The father slowly smiled, winked and said gently, " Welcome to the

Republican party."

[HeyYou]

Both major parties have some serious issues.. The dems want to take care of everyone, and think everything should be free. The repubbies don't want to take care of anyone, and think everyone should pay for what they get. The latter position being far more reasonable to me. Of course, the repubbies also want to legislate your morality. They say "no" to abortion, and also birth control. They even say no to education about birth control. They are of the opinion that if you get pregnant, no matter how that comes about, you are REQUIRED to carry to term. Of course, once the child is born, the repubbies pretty much wash their hands of the issue.

 

The dems, on the other hand..... ALSO want to legislate morality. They want to tell you how you should feel about other races/sexual orientations/etc, even though what they want to dictate is in direct violation of your beliefs. (and thus, violating your constitutional right to freely practice your religion.) They want to deprive us of the ability to protect ourselves. (violating the 2nd amendment) They seem to be under the impression that everyone has the right to NOT be offended by anything, and move to dispose of/remove/destroy anything that someone finds offensive, and as a consequence, pretty much re-writing our history.

 

ALL of them seem to think that they know better than the rest of us, how we should live our lives, even though their views are pretty much polar opposites..... Both sides, while touting "smaller government", or "less intrusive government", inflict yet more regulations, government agencies, etc, on the population at large. We have folks making laws about subjects they know absolutely nothing about. (gasohol anyone?) And they STILL claim to have 'the best interests of the country' at heart. That hasn't been true for decades. They ALL have their OWN best interests at heart. Passing laws that would be good for the average american would be BAD for their wallets, therefore, those laws don't get passed. A potential law that would make them wealthier, on the other hand, is pretty much guaranteed to pass.

 

And the american people seem to be too stupid to realize what is going on. We continue to put the same criminals back into office year after year. We scream about 'government needs to change', but, when the opportunity to implement any sort of change (election cycles....) comes along, we STILL vote along party lines, and the whole fiasco continues without anything changing at all.

 

Trump make a lot of promises to 'clean up the swamp'. Trouble is, the president isn't in any position to do so. he cannot make law, he can only approve/disapprove of what comes across his desk, from the very people he is attempting to rein in.

 

So, what we have is, the perfect storm of circumstances, that pretty much assure us that absolutely nothing is going to change. We will continue down the current course, right up to the economic meltdown that is most certainly coming.

[vixsyn]

 

 

My dad used to tell me that people voted Conservative (in the UK) because of their old fashioned faith in passing responsibility to their social "betters." It's quite frightening to see the poorer end of society (which is, technically, most of society) vote for things that hurt them financially, socially or personally.

 

Would you rather live poor on welfare the rest of your life or to get a good career supporting yourself?

 

 

I'm responding to your whole post but not quoting the whole thing because that would take up a whole lot of space :tongue:

 

I understand the core concept you're highlighting here, but it's oversimplified isn't it? The generalisations of "Democrat" and "Republican" are also dated, as nowadays you'll have your conservative leaning individuals voting Republican, your liberal leaning individuals voting Democrat.

 

There is an extremely warped vision of what being liberal is. Sure, there are extremes, and people do love to fall back on history of "democrats" to highlight where the ideology has been wrong (your point about slavery is a good example). But that's not what modern liberalism represents at all. The core of liberalism is equality. Women, LBTQ+, varied races etc, should have the same rights and the same pay as white men. A true liberal does not want to tell you how to feel because actually, your thoughts are your own and you're free to think them. On the other hand, we/they would like it if you didn't go around telling other people how they should behave or perform acts of violence against them because their religion is not the same as yours, or they're a woman who likes women (or a woman who thinks she should be paid as much as a man for doing the same job), or their forefathers were from Zimbabwe.

 

Everyone should be able to go to a hospital when they're sick and not worry about being evicted because that hospital trip cost them the rent money. They should be able to be treated so that they're not just left to die. The poorest of society should be given aid to tide them over - and yes, some people WILL take advantage of that "help," but it's a skewed perception that it's the system that's the problem - the problem is with the people who don't want to make more of their lives. That's a social and educational issue, not an issue with trying to help people who can't afford food. It's not always a person's fault that they've been fired or made redundant - life throws spanners into the works sometimes, and just because you've been unlucky, why should you lose everything you've worked for until that point?

 

The grades story, whilst entertaining, is also fairly irrelevant to the larger ideology. Can I point out here that many nurses work 12+ hour days, many went to college/university, and they get paid extremely poorly. A banker, on the other hand, can do a nine to five and earn upwards of ten times as much. Is that fair?

 

No, I wouldn't say most liberal thinkers would say that EVERYTHING a person has worked for should be taken from them and redistributed (although in a truly functional communist society such a thing could happen, and potentially in a way that would benefit everyone - redistribution of a large amount of personal wealth to support health care, police services, fire services, education etc, to help everyone have the same opportunities). But this story also assumes that person A has worked hard and person B has not. What if person A got better grades because they had a loving and supportive family who could afford to put them into private education and get them tutors to support an area they were struggling in, whilst person B grew up in a foster home with six other children, no support, not parental guidance, and had to do everything themselves? Why should a child like person B know how to self study or work hard? Who taught them how to do that? Who helped them when things were going wrong? They're a child. It's their fault that they're not prepared for life?

 

When I was younger I worked in a Job Centre (UK thing - people out of work report in every week or every other week dependant on how long they've been on benefits, give a statement on what they've done to look for work and then a Job Centre worker will authorise the release of their out of work benefit if their statement is satisfactory). I saw people who really didn't care if they found work, but those people represented less than half of my clients. Most people were trying, even if they felt hopeless - this was in 2009, when we were entrenched in the global recession. The ones who stuck with me were the ones who were utterly humiliated that they had to be in a Job Centre at all. They were angry with me (yes, with me apparently) that they were stuck in this situation, that they had to be in a room with what they saw as the dregs of society, that they didn't have jobs. I often managed to calm them down by pointing out that actually, I didn't want to be working there, I had a degree and had worked hard at my education, but this was the only job I'd managed to get after dozens of interviews and hundreds of applications. When they realised they were talking to "an equal" they'd tell me what happened to them, what they hoped to do in the future, and sometimes I could help them with further information or by demonstrating how to get through the JC tedium as efficiently as possible.

 

And here's another fun life time story. I grew up in an academically minded house. My dad got a first in pure mathematics after he was crippled in a car accident (someone drove into him at traffic lights - not his fault - broke his spine). I was lucky to an extent as this meant I had a parent at home a lot of the time, and I had a lot of encouragement in my studies. My little sister became seriously ill as I entered my teens and I helped care for her and for my dad. I was bullied at school. But I still did well, and got a scholarship to a private sixth form (senior high?) based on my academic ability. From there I went to university, graduated in 2008 into the aforementioned recession, and struggled getting a job. And then, after I'd been at my job for a while, the pain condition I'd had most of my life (the one that affected my sister very badly) started to get worse. It got to a point where I couldn't stand, let alone walk. I got very depressed and became suicidal, at which point I quit my job. Fastforward a few years of worsening pain and physical limitations, I now can't get out of the house to work and besides that, I get tired and unfocused if I have to sit for too long (I need to lie down). So... am I employable? If I can't get out of bed due to pain, how can I work? I live with someone, but that person is also ill, so where's my support system? How do I get out of the house to socialise, let alone work? And how could I afford food if it wasn't for the social system that gives me a little money?

 

When one of our politicians decided he was going to make the disability benefits system "better" by increasing the hoops we had to jump through (ha!) to claim them, as well as increase the number of claims turned down, almost thirty thousand disabled people, who had had their benefits sanctioned, died within a year. I'm sure they'd have been glad of being given a fish, as teaching them how to fish led to them being eaten by a metaphorical shark.

 

My anecdotal evidence in this post is just a highlight to be honest, because I actually think my life is ok, and I'm glad I'm educated and had the opportunities I did. On the other hand, I'm sad that I'll never have my own children (I don't have the money, and with my health the way it is it would be irresponsible to potentially inflict the same illnesses on a child), it's a shame I won't get to travel, and above all else it's disappointing that I'll always feel guilty that I'm "living off the state" when I'd love to work.

 

But there are hundreds of thousands of people who are like me. Insisting that we're bone idle and just don't want jobs is not only extremely hurtful but also untrue. But rather than have industries create more home based jobs or trying to ensure health services are not only available but affordable, those on the right seem more inclined to brand us as lazy lost causes who should be left to die.

 

Healthcare is clearly a big issue in America given the number of people who want to abolish Obamacare - even though not everyone knows what it is. I remember a great post on Twitter where a guy posted a pic of congress debating the healthcare bill when it was in the early stages of potentially being repealed, saying how great it was that they were "finally" getting rid of Obamacare. When he was questioned on this, asked how he could be so callous, he said it was great that "millions of Americans" like him were already covered by the American Care Act. He fell strangely silent when it was pointed out to him that the ACA WAS Obamacare.

 

There seems to be a lot of that sort of confusion in the Rep. vs. Dem., "them vs. us" stuff going on in America. It's not just a two sided argument. Not every Republican wants to be likened to a member of the KKK, but in the currently "alt-right" climate not everyone is seeing the difference between a conservative American and an automatic weapon wielding white supremacist maniac. And not every Liberal wants to be thought of as an anarchist. There's a middle ground, and I'd be tempted to say most humans at least circle that middle ground, but the extremism is what's always highlighted, and the greater the fear of this extremism gets, the more likely people are to not want to talk, which makes it less likely anything will be peacefully resolved.

 

Also, Donald Trump in charge when North Korea are messing about with missiles? f***ing terrifying.

[kvnchrist]

Politicans are a sideshow, They are Vaudeville acts advertised by the media to represent the values those who place them into office fantasize about. The politicians get away with what we allow them to get away with, because we have a mental image of who the opposition is and it is that image we delude ourselves in believing that these politicians are getting back at.

 

It's short and simple. If we wanted to defuse the situation America would be able to. We are just so addicted to this self centered feeling of sanctimonious benevolence that we are blind to the reality that we are just being asses to each other.

[TheMastersSon]

"Also, Donald Trump in charge when North Korea are messing about with missiles? f***ing terrifying."

IMO logically only two eventualities exist: a global ban on nuclear weapons, or something close to all countries developing them. It's simple logic, and a question nobody has credibly answered in over a half century is, which angel of the lord descended and decreed that certain countries have a right to global nuclear terror and all the rest do not? At least according to today's earthquake maps, the era of trying to keep them only in the hands of "good guys" around the world is officially over.

 

I think Trump is working overtime to either generate this conflict, or at a minimum, milk it as a wedge issue with China. I doubt he will, even once, acknowledge that the entirety of our China problem is the fault of nobody other than Richard Nixon and Henry Kissinger, and Reagan and every U.S. president and Congress since 1971. It's wholesale treason imo to force free market capitalism to compete with totalitarian Communism, because competition is not even within the realm of possibility.

Edited September 3, 2017 by TheMastersSon