But will ad that when one group is waaay outside of reality, how can you meet in the middle? I agree with you, but it seems that ideology has come and gone
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I'm a moderate, neither right nor left. I vote for the best person for the job, not for any specific party. Each party is always trying to manipulate us into voting along party lines. That doesn't work for me, I chose to try to maintain a mind of my own and resist division. Unfortunately, being a moderate is rare in this polarized and divided country today, and I don't expect many people to think like me. But, as a moderate, I can give you a perspective that you may not ordinarily hear.
As someone in the middle, striving to have no bias and wanting only the truth, I've carefully heard and considered all sides of the arguments from both sides. Both sides can make excellent sense at times and both can be equally way outside of reality. It all depends upon who you listen to and which side you're biased to.
If you're heavily biased or radicalized right or left, you won't be able to easily see this and that's part of the problem we all face. There have always been differences in the past between both sides for the entire history of America. This is normal. Like I said it's natural for people to think differently. There's nothing anyone can do to change how we're built. We survive throughout human history only as well as we can get along.
The big difference is that today, with mass media press coverage and editorial opinions now leaning heavily right or left, you're naturally going to pick which coverage you want to hear and believe, that's just human. However, once you go down this slippery slope, you're then only going to hear what each press organization thinks you want to hear to keep your business and make billions. Gone is any semblance of neutrality in the press, if it ever existed. We're all being sold the product we want to buy with little to no hope of ever hearing the actual unbiased truth. Many politicians are now taking full advantage of this for their own profit and power. It's an age-old tactic called divide and conquer. Party, power, and career over Country. Surely all of you can see this, or maybe you can't...
When I listen to the same coverage on CNN and Fox, it's black and white. You have Don Lemon demonizing Republicans as hysterical hypocrites, and Sean Hannity demonizing Democrats as mindless elitist fools. Both make untold millions telling you exactly what you want to hear, truth be damned. Neither has any real morals or conscience. Money and power will easily do that to a person. I don't blame anyone sucked into this for thinking the other side is bat crap crazy. I would too if I only listened to only one heavily biased network day after day, year after year until I was hopelessly brainwashed and maybe even radicalized. We're all human, this can happen to almost anyone. This then propagates to individuals who repeat what they hear and become thoroughly convinced that the other side is completely wrong and wacko. Once you believe this, you know it's been done to you. Such extreme thinking is usually always wrong, we should know that instinctively, but truth and reality fade with extremism. It's strange and sad that we can easily see and ridicule this with other people such as the Shiites and Sunnis or the Irish Catholics and Protestants, but we can't see it happening to us. These respective people have a lot in common but they hate each other over relatively small differences to the point of killing each other and greatly harming their countries.
Most Americans, right or left, are not wacko. Republicans are not all heartless SOB's and Democrats are not all tree-hugging snowflakes. The reality of the world tells us that this just can't be true. Hardly anyone fits one of two molds. Most Americans, right and left, are simply ordinary, decent people with some differences but even more similarities. We all love our family and freedom. We all care about our country. We all want to live peacefully. We like to have fun. I have friends, family, and colleagues who are both right and left. I like and respect most of them. Most are really good people. Ruling out the ones who have become heavily radicalized to either side, most of them are simply ordinary people, not "snowflakes" or "repubtards" as they're often called. Each side takes the worst examples they can find and then tries to convince the other side that this is your ordinary Democrat or Republican to demonize them. Your fellow countrymen are not demons, most are just ordinary, decent people, not the worst examples from either side.
Most ordinary Americans have their opinions but they're not flaming extreme rightists or leftists. Most simply just want to live their life peacefully and practically, not be drawn into politics by politicians and news organizations hell-bent on twisting them to one side or the other for their own profit and pitting them against their own family, friends, and colleagues. These are the people you should hate, not your fellow countrymen. Why do we let these people take advantage of what we are passionate about to manipulate and control our behavior simply for their own profit and power? Are we really that manipulable? Can't we see what's happening here? Are these politicians and news organizations laughing at us all the way to the bank? They get vast amounts of wealth and power while we get stress, division, and hatred. Anyone happy about this arrangement? Is this the country you want to leave your children?
Where does this all end? Every free country will have ideological differences, that's what makes them free. In fact, it's the very heart of freedom. We can't all go around hating on each other simply because we don't agree on some political issues. We can't survive that as a country. We need to respect each other despite our differences and find the middle ground as we used to for most of this country's 245-year history. The last time we didn't was in 1861 during the Civil War and over 618,000 Americans ended up killing each other with untold more maimed, and nearly destroying the country in the process. By far the greatest toll of any war in American history. All much to the delight of our real enemies. Anyone looking forward to Civil War II?
We've all read dystopic novels and/or seen dystopic movies where society falls apart because of people becoming manipulated by the powers that be and losing sight of reality and the truth. None end well. Are we now living that? We've all seen what happens to countries that fight civil wars over ideology, dogma, and autocracy such as in the Middle East. Is that who and what we want to become? We've all always been highly skeptical of powerful politicians and the media giants leading us into this hell. Yet here we are we're letting them manipulate us for their own profit and power at the very risk of ruining the country that both the right and left alike call home.
I refuse to be a part of that. Ideological differences aside, we're all Americans and countrymen and we all have the sacred responsibility of taking care of our country and each other just as every generation before us did throughout revolutionary wars, two world wars, terrorism, and untold hardships and calamities. Democracy, decency, and freedom are what unites us. No corrupt politicians, industries, or foreign entities have yet to defeat us, although they try. Cooperation, tolerance, and compromise build countries, hate, greed, and division destroys them. Don't let yourself be a part of that. Learn from history, don't repeat it.
, one side considers me a terrorist and wants me in prison for believing in The Constitution
