Back in the day, Democrats and Republicans agreed on the facts and goals and argued about how to get there.
That's gone now; Democrats think Republicans are fascists and Republicans think Democrats are communists. And the longer this goes on, the more American politics becomes trench warfare -- with the country in the crossfire.
If I ask conservatives about why their facts and my facts are so different, I get nowhere. A promising email exchange collapsed when I asked my correspondent the question, and since he's bed-ridden, I doubt he's just been swamped with chores.
My guess: They think I'm calling them idiots or fools.
Well, they're not. Many conservatives I know are intelligent, civilized, educated people interested in ideas, and we can have enjoyable conversations -- as long as we avoid politics: Because then we find ourselves talking to somebody from another planet. Even when we agree on a premise, we come to completely different conclusions.
Why? My own guess is their source for facts is the right wing media, a more or less alternate reality filled with alternate facts. And they're proud of it, because they believe that everything the mainstream media says is a lie -- Rush Limbaugh even calls it the "state-run media" -- and they know the truth.
Of course, it's called the mainstream media because it reports the agreed-upon facts from a mainstream perspective -- the place both Democrats and Republicans used to come from.
The right wing media, on the other hand, takes its readers and listeners through the looking glass to another place -- very subtly, and in ways that most people wouldn't notice and are hard to uncover or explain. But it can be done.
Full Article
Source: Huffington
That's gone now; Democrats think Republicans are fascists and Republicans think Democrats are communists. And the longer this goes on, the more American politics becomes trench warfare -- with the country in the crossfire.
If I ask conservatives about why their facts and my facts are so different, I get nowhere. A promising email exchange collapsed when I asked my correspondent the question, and since he's bed-ridden, I doubt he's just been swamped with chores.
My guess: They think I'm calling them idiots or fools.
Well, they're not. Many conservatives I know are intelligent, civilized, educated people interested in ideas, and we can have enjoyable conversations -- as long as we avoid politics: Because then we find ourselves talking to somebody from another planet. Even when we agree on a premise, we come to completely different conclusions.
Why? My own guess is their source for facts is the right wing media, a more or less alternate reality filled with alternate facts. And they're proud of it, because they believe that everything the mainstream media says is a lie -- Rush Limbaugh even calls it the "state-run media" -- and they know the truth.
Of course, it's called the mainstream media because it reports the agreed-upon facts from a mainstream perspective -- the place both Democrats and Republicans used to come from.
The right wing media, on the other hand, takes its readers and listeners through the looking glass to another place -- very subtly, and in ways that most people wouldn't notice and are hard to uncover or explain. But it can be done.
Full Article
Source: Huffington
No comments:
Post a Comment