Quote of the Day
After several years of watching Biden destroy America, I asked my smart Democrat friend if he had changed his views since 2016.
He advised me to read the New York Times to get real news and stop falling for all the Republican hoaxes.
You can’t even talk to Democrats these days. Not enough common assumptions to even get started.
Scott Adams @ScottAdamsSays
Posted on X February 4, 2024
I’m not sure “common assumptions” is the best phrase here. I’m not sure there is even enough common vocabulary. For example, what does “gender”, “democracy”, and “racism” mean to the major political divisions?
And above that are phrases such as “civil rights”, “gun law reform”, and “fair share”.
And there are common phrases used by one group where the one side says the referenced thing does not even exist such as “illegal alien” (there is no such thing as an illegal person), “assault weapon” (made up phrase to scare people), and “gun show loophole” (the law doesn’t change whether at a gun show or not).
I just want to crawl into my underground bunker in Idaho and wait until the hostilities are resolved.
The question for me is: when does one emulate Dagny Taggart, and do everything possible to keep the system running even as it is collapsing? And when does one emulate John Galt, and resign from that system… or even work to cause it to collapse faster?
For me, I am not set up to survive the collapse of the system into barbarism. I will therefore prop up the system, as best I can, for as long as I can.
I thought you have hit on a key issue. The two sides have opposing world views where there is little or no common ground. I see no good end to this. We either have some sort of external threat come about that unites us (and I doubt that is even possible), or it will devolve into violence. And, I do not see the violence as being group of states versus group of states. The truth is, it will be urban versus rural. All you have to do is look at the breakdown how counties voted nationwide for the past several election cycles.
That’s Thomas Sowell’s ‘Conflict of Visions’ with almost 40 more years of the sides growing further apart.
I have a good friend who lives in NYC and worked for the No Body Cares television network. He was big on mentioning what was in the New York Times.
So I asked him, What isn’t in the New York Times?
He looked confused
I said what stories are important to the rest of the country that are never printed in the NYT? Like local unemployment, business closing , cost of groceries, upticks in crime, scandals in DC?
He just shut up.
“Illegal alien” (there is no such thing as an illegal person). True, they should be called “criminal aliens.”
It seems to me that there is a lack of intellectual curiosity? Remember when we wanted to know everything about everything in this country? And would have rousing discussions about whatever was offered to discuss?
Having an honest discussion these days is synonymous to trying to explain the term “oxymoron”, to a hoard of drunk rednecks.
Or the latest group of inbreds, “public schoolers”, for that matter. Or the before mentioned “criminal alien” crowd.
Was it self-esteem training? The lack of impulse control? It’s almost like something is being put in our food.
Anyway, it’s strange watching society pass that point. It never ends well. But it will end.
Maybe your more Christian than you think Joe? Your desire to hide away in a bunker matches the passage from Revelations. “Come out her my children, till the indignation be passed.”
No matter, interesting, and evil times indeed. See you on the beach!
As others have noticed — but using slightly different terminology — the issue is that both sides hold wildly different First Principles. The very foundations of our belief systems are so divergent that there is literally zero common ground.
We frequently talk about the Overton Window (the range of political discourse seen as “acceptable” to most people) shifting Left or Right, but with these two sets of First Principles, we effectively have two Overton Windows — one for the Left and one for the Right, each covering what’s “acceptable” for half the population — and the most centrist edges don’t touch each other.
Compromise will be very difficult with no common ground. There’s no “meeting in the middle” on any given issue, so “compromise” will be more about giving concessions on one issue to gain concessions on something else unrelated. What it’s really going to show is where the REAL “no-compromise” issues are for each party; those will be the ones in which they demand concessions instead of offering them.
And what worries me about that is how wishy-washy much of the GOP has historically been about preserving 2A rights vs. how adamant the Democrats have been on curtailing them. The cynical side of me expects that “gun rights vs. gun control” is one area the Dems will hold to “no-compromise” and the GOP will cave.
I hope that does not happen, but history doesn’t exactly give me warm fuzzy feelings.
“When in the course of human events…”
I talked to somebody recently online who insisted that everybody except Fox was unbiased and that Republicans were the violent ones. When I brought up specific examples of violence by Democrats, he insisted they were lies and projections by Republicans.
He and others have shown that evidence, logic, and reality don’t matter and despite their claims to the contrary science doesn’t either – unfortunately, I don’t see how compromise or rapprochement is possible when there are no common grounds or beliefs. This doesn’t bode well for our future.