Posts Tagged → reason
Does “dialogue” work?
The words “bipartisanship” and “dialogue” are emphasized as being part and parcel of America’s success, political, financial, cultural.
But have you had, or tried to have, a political dialogue recently? If yes, was it successful?
I have been struck between the eyes by what seems odd, to me, about the dialogues and conversations I have had recently, in person and online.
Americans saying they intend to vote for Hillary Clinton are completely unmoved by her crimes, her private actions, her bullying of her husband’s many rape and sexual harassment victims. There really is nothing Hillary Clinton can do that her supporters won’t overlook.
And there really is nothing that her opponent, Donald Trump, can do that is acceptable to them.
I find this odd, strange, illogical, because objectively weighing out one candidate versus the other leads to a pretty obvious conclusion: Both candidates are flawed, but one is desperately flawed, far more flawed than the other. Why a middle-income, law-abiding American will vote for someone so deeply flawed and unqualified is mysterious to me.
It appears that reason, logic, facts, quantifiable substance are all utterly of no consequence to about fifty percent of the voters.
They are utterly unmoved by the Wikileaks revelations, that one particular political party has a core culture of stealing votes, rigging elections, engaging in the worst sort of voter fraud that undermines the entire premise of representative government. Wikileaks has revealed a group of people in love with power and control, at any cost to the nation, to innocent people, to anyone in their way.
“I hope Hillary did kill Vince Foster. That is totally badass” writes a top, paid, political party functionary whose name is frequently in the news.
This person was revealing this sentiment in a private email that was not supposed to end up in the public view, but public it now is, and so is that person’s mindset. This mindset is quite literally insane, and yet none of Hillary’s supporters seem phased at all by it. It is all OK, apparently, among Hillary’s supporters.
And so on, in like mind, in like words, among the people closest to Hillary Clinton’s lust for power.
The list of crimes against Donald Trump and his supporters grows longer every day, as more and more Wikileaks evidence is revealed.
George Soros and his favored political party paid people to go to Trump rallies and wreak violence, to punch and hurt innocent people, to cause destruction, to stir things up, so that their allies in the establishment press could then accuse the Trump supporters of the misdeeds.
And yet none of this bothers any of the people I have dialogued with in recent weeks and days. They simply do not care, and they are simply going to vote for Hillary Clinton, period, because.
America is premised on dialogue, on reason, on voters making educated decisions that are in the best interest of the polity, which we all share. When so many voters are presented with damning evidence that their candidate is pure evil, and fatally flawed, and they still support that person, then they have abandoned the very foundation of what makes America work.
And this is what is most problematic about Hillary Clinton’s support: It means that end of democracy, the end of our Republic, because Clinton is ready to employ the same illegal, unconstitutional actions that Obama has gotten away with. And once she is president and acting that way, America is headed for a constitutional crisis. Her actions as candidate say everything about her as president.
Every human civilization comes to an end at some point. America is not too big to fail. It is only as strong as the voters who run it. If America presently has fifty percent of its voters lusting after domination over their fellow citizens, and well-reasoned dialogue with them is unpersuasive, then our nation is headed for serious problems.
I hope America dodges this bullet, and gets back on track.
p.s. someone accused me of being a Republican, and therefore naturally supporting Donald Trump. First, Trump is no Republican. Second, I cannot stand the commie Republican Party and I am only a registered Republican because I live in a state with closed primaries and I must hang my hat somewhere; I would be most satisfied as a registered Independent. Third, Trump is running against a political establishment controlled by BOTH political parties. He is an outsider who has no allegiance to any party, but only to the American People, which I and many others find refreshing, even if he is a blathering big mouth. Dialogue provides the means by which we come to well-reasoned conclusions. But not one Hillary Clinton supporter I have met seems interested in a dialogue. Rather, they seem to have utopian dreams of control, domination, and “correct” behavior we all must follow once they are in power. No thanks.
Garden as metaphor, Part 3…or 4
Can anyone think of a better metaphor for life as a human than a garden?
All the planning, selecting, planting, nurturing, stoking, prodding, coaxing, frustration, re-planting, and finally, after all the work and with some luck, the harvesting of fresh food…this is all just like the bigger things in our lives.
Lately it has been difficult to ignore some generational changes afoot that simply cannot bode well for our nation, now or in the future.
Where debate historically involved logic, facts, and reasoning, a great deal of what is represented as debate is simple ridicule, mockery, dismissiveness.
Few things demonstrate the weakness of an argument more than the use of ridicule and mockery, or name-calling. Yet the Internet is full of this waste of time. Because of my own passion for and involvement in tough policy issues, I am really interested to hear separate points of view from people, and spirited debate, give-and-take, is part of that process. This process is what makes Western Civilization so unique and so precious.
Dismissiveness assumes all will be well, no matter what, irrespective of actions or behaviors across the landscape.
In my observation, the younger generations are much more inclined to forgo logic and facts, and are more inclined to leap into name calling and ridicule in their online debates. This just cannot bode well for American democracy, which is based on the use of logic, reason, and facts. How our citizens expect to hold on to their Constitutional rights and liberties, and yet allow debate to be dominated by juvenile behavior is not wild speculation. Already we have witnessed the erosion of individual liberties at the hands of judges who don’t care what the US Constitution says, or what their particular state constitution says; their basis for decisions making is purely personal, or political.
So go grow a garden, fellow citizens. Tending even a small garden helps us work physical and mental muscles that atrophy easily. It builds small but important personal traits that are needed on a much bigger scale. Tending, cultivating, and nurturing all build basic skills necessary for us to function well as individuals and for our civilization to succeed on the whole.
The alternative – relying on everyone else for everything else we need, and ridiculing the rest – is a recipe for disaster.