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I am not sure I care anymore where the direction of the country is going. Crap on the news, crap on the internet, loonies on C-D who cannot have a conversation without flinging partisan BS in the nastiest possible way, and the list goes on. Frankly I am glad I am older and not in my twenties with many more decades in front of me. Good thing I love where I live and am married to my best friend. I am blessed and feel like I have the right to tune it out until it is time to vote. Besides, your local government is much more likely to impact your day to day life than what happens in Washington. Get involved in that.
Why we are swinging back to the center, in my opinion, is American's core beliefs of family, marriage, freedom of speech, and Christianity/Judaism religions have been under attack by the Democrats and most Americans support these core values. I think the swing back to the political center is a very good thing.
First, Democrats do not attack any of the above. We marry, have kids, believe in freedom of speech, we are Christians and Jews. So that is a bunch of baloney!
My opinion is that the country went too far left and too fast. People were not ready for same sex marriage and trans bathrooms and the such. It got shoved down everyone's throats, ready or not. Should have waited and debated.
I think there's a current rebellion against going too far left, too fast. And it's too extreme and wants to take everything away but it will die off because it's way too extreme. Then we will find a happy medium if this country is to survive.
It's hard to say where people are going on the left to right scale, but I don't think that matters as much as where they're moving on the up and down scale (authoritarian vs libertarian).
Doesn't matter whether they're left, right, or center if their goal is to use the power of the state to control everyone. I prefer anyone who leans toward letting others live in peace.
Keeping in mind that only about a quarter of the country voted for Trump, and there is a major revulsion toward Trump that is daily increasing, it's possible that the country may react with a leftward pull.
By the way, Christianity/Judaism have never been under attack by the left, and the fact that you'd say that only shows your own bias. The left simply believes in the classic separation of church and state, and doesn't think any religion should be in everyone's face.
Oh, it's less than a quarter.
I think it was about a quarter, probably a bit less, of registered voters who voted for him. If you look at this by population, less than 1/5 of the country voted for Trump. Which, by the way, is roughly how much support Clinton got. I think it comes down to ~19% and ~20% respectively.
This is why I can't stand when people say "Trump was elected by the American people." Firstly, literally no president has ever been elected by the people, and even if that were the case, technically only 1/5 of them actually did. If it were by the people, Clinton would be president, who won by roughly 1%. This why the president isn't the leader of the country, but rather the leader of the federal government. No single president can be guaranteed a level of popular support great enough for any reasonable person to consistently feel the president agenda should be shoved though.
I say consistent because a lot of people will believe that when the guy they voted for is in office.
The country has been moving left since the Baby Boomer generation started to come of age in the 1960s', but certainly very quickly far left since the 1970's. It has been fueled by a more, and more biased media, education system, government sustaining, and growing itself, and the Democrat Party which is now unrecognizable.
I'm gave my opinion. I feel like religion has been under attack by the Left and one reason why the country is moving more to the center. If you feel differently that is part of the discussion, but please don't tell me my opinion is wrong.
You may "feel" religion is under attack, but that doesn't mean it's a correct opinion.
I know of no organized moves to shut down churches, to fire Christians from jobs, to force Christians to work on Sunday if they prefer to go to church, or anything else. That some people think it's wrong to have a Christmas tree on public property, or that some people prefer to say "Happy holidays," is not an attack.
It doesn't really matter where the country is going when you have a broken political system. The problem is one of political representation of where the country is at, not the fact that the country is heading in one direction or another.
Nobody is moving. The people at the extreme ends are just getting louder.
I think more accurately, the extremely have infiltrated mainstream politics, which allows them airtime and opportunities for growth.
I'll use the Republican party and the alt-right because the example is way easier to follow, but there is a problem with the Democrats and the far left as well.
The alt-right has been around for a while, the term first being used nearly a decade ago. It started being more definably when Richard Spencer described his views as alt-right. The alt-right was protectionist and isolationist, as well as vehemently racist. Now, both the Democratic party and Republican party are significantly less intone with the average person, which means people are more inclined to vote for outsiders, i.e., Bernie Sanders and Donald Trump.
The alt-right loves Trump and there pretty much everywhere now. The thing is, if you work at a factory and you're afraid it's going to be closed down and moved to Mexico, protectionism is going to be pretty damn attractive to you. So there's this crowd that's gaining a bit of traction that supports protectionism. So this person who gets on the alt-right bandwagon with good intentions suddenly finds himself among company that believes non-whites are inferior.
This is why we need more than two parties. This sort of problem is inevitable when the political establishment doesn't care what the average person thinks. A way to avoid it is to have more than two parties. The likelihood that two parties will not give a damn about the average American is significantly higher than the likelihood that six parties would do this. If you have one or two parties suddenly go full on elitism, the parties that listen to the people will start winning election as people become aware and then the elitist parties will need to change.
The problem is that people become aware of it rather slowly. And if you have two parties doing this in a two party state, by the time the people are aware, changing that trend becomes extremely difficult... except by infiltration. And who does the infiltrating can be hard to control.
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