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It would be nice if they would stop attacking each other and talk about issues.
That's the problem... they can't! They each have 2-3 "big ideas" with a few details to back them up, and that's it. Build a wall, I've lived in the white house before, make America great again, America is already great, stop illegal immigration, America is ready for a woman president, war on all Muslims, I'm most experienced, we need an outsider, etc. All empty rhetoric to stir up their respective extremist and polarized bases.
Both have so much baggage, so many controversies, and so many generally horrid problems that neither would have even the slimmest chance in a normal election. There is a running joke that Clinton and Trump are both running against the only person they have a chance to beat.
So since they can't run on their own accolades, they both spend all their time trying to make the other candidate look worse than they are. I subscribe to both Clinton and Trump's Facebook feeds just to see what they are saying, and this is it... one attack after another.
Again, this is what the country gets for being so polarized. We need a voice of reason from the center, but the press just isn't giving him the air time.
America's greatest promise/premise is also more likely than not the seed of it's eventual undoing. What many people around the world don't understand is America's appeal to those here and those wishing to be here is *I* "Shizzles" is only required to care about "Shizzles". Our entire cultural and spiritual ethos is one of independence, freedom and for better or for worse: self. People came here because they wanted to make a name for themselves, to live beyond the bounds of their home society's social norms, to not have to "give and take", but to live the promise of doing what you want, how you want, when you want to.
Of course, this leads us to the word none of us wants to confront in ourselves: Selfishness. At the end of the day we all need to come clean and admit that I, you, we all do for what's best for ourselves. Absent any widespread moral conviction, we're heading for a society that grows colder, meaner, and more suspicious everyday. We shoot each other over parking spaces, sue each other because our coffee was too hot, and hate each other because you're not exactly like me.
Trump just took out 16 top gop contenders and at the same time won the most gop primary votes in party history. All without ever holding public office or taking special interest pac $$$. Under-estimate him if you want.
Well, to maintaine that circus TV show called election campaign, you sort of must have at least two to chose from. it's rather hard to do with one party. So no, they will always have two clowns to point at. You are intelligent person, OP, you should know better than seriously treat this show.
Regarding the statement by Churchill. I think that he is correct more often than not on this.
Polarization and diversity go hand in hand. You see it in every multi-ethnic society and the reason is both obvious and immutable: different groups want to and do live differently. The paralyzation of the EU is a prime example.
If you look at individual European countries, smaller Asian countries, it is much rarer: undetectable in Japan because all are Japanese or in Holland because all are Dutch. Go to India, China, Russia, etc., and the US and you have it in spades. England with its Scots and Welsh is in there, too.
I think the current polarization will get worse, but as far as outcomes (such as political) it will become more lopsided, not divided.
Demographics are swiftly shifting in this country with the old power blocks disappearing pretty rapidly. The right will be forced to moderate, in my opinion, or they will simply become the crazy Uncle in the family and left alone at family BBQ's...
The inertia of the vast percentage of the American public will stabilize things in the long run. I've seen this kind of polarization before, specifically 1939-1941. We survived that, we'll get through this, it's much less of a crisis.
I think the current polarization will get worse, but as far as outcomes (such as political) it will become more lopsided, not divided.
Demographics are swiftly shifting in this country with the old power blocks disappearing pretty rapidly. The right will be forced to moderate, in my opinion, or they will simply become the crazy Uncle in the family and left alone at family BBQ's...
The problem I have with this is that "the right" is usually broadly (and vaguely) defined as anything the general consensus among the Politically Correct doesn't agree with.
The conservative movement in America has been divided ever since the late Sixties, when libertarian values grew rapidly among campus conservatives -- often fueled by the Objectivist writings of the completely secular and agnostic Ayn Rand, and many of her followers (Paul Ryan among them). This trend drew a negative response from the emerging Christian Right, who demonstrated their larger numbers and flexed their muscles via the election of Ronald Reagan in 1980.
Meanwhile, after the official founding of the Libertarian Party in 1972, those who followed an economic conservative / social liberal agenda quietly began building a base via the intellectually-oriented candidates John Hospers in 1972 and Roger McBride in 1976. That process culminated with the production of Milton Friedman's Free to Choose in the early 1980's
The episodes of Friedman's series were always concluded with a "debate" in which a continuously-changing cast of opponents were invited to present their alternatives -- and in most cases, the discussion would boil down to some supposed abridgement of human rights by a popular Leftist target, such as Pinochet in Chile, But the central tenet of the Libertarian approach; the concept that political and economic freedom are unitary and indivisible, was seldom challenged.
At this point in time, the libertarian component of the conservative opposition to the populism offered by the Democratic mainstream seems stronger and more unified than ever, but the behavior of Kim Davis and other "ugly conservatives" continue to impede progress; ditto for the failure of the Trumpsters to acknowledge that the workings of an open, globalizing economy can't be stopped -- only held answerable to a truly level playing field.
And in the absence of the emergence of a majority of voters who recognize that true democracy is concerned more with the loss of basic freedoms than the use of the ballot box for short-term gains for the short-sighted, basic individual rights will continue to erode under the idiocy called Political Correctness.
Watch for the coming of the technological singularity. About 2045. Workers and conventional civilizations no longer needed. The uneducated masses will not be pleased.
If Americans are not taking note you can bet somebody is...
"Divide & Conquer"... anyone?
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