THE LIBERAL CONUNDRUM

     I'm not an educated man. I was able to eke out a couple years of higher education, before THC and LSD introduced me to an even higher education. But I am not stupid, nor am I poorly informed. A lifetime of reading of all kinds has helped to hone my thinking. Exposure to intelligent, funny, and thoughtful people, through what is now called "fake media", has also shaped my thinking. A conservative would dismissively call this a recipe for liberalism. And, in this way, they would be right! Though I am viscerally contemptious of Foxnews and its kind.
     I do not know too many conservatives, and those I know well, seem to lack a grounding in this cultural exposure. Those I communicate with do not seem to be able, or maybe don't care, to have a capacity to exhibit  basic spelling and word usage. They have a long history of using, perhaps unconsciously, hyperbolic speech and threats. Our current president is the end result of that hyperbole. The concept of nuance is beyond his linguistic reach. This is the troubling issue. This alarmist speech creates a movement of even less-informed people. They take to social media and try to Express themselves beyond their semantic reach or their cognitive abilities. 
     Many of us have resisted telling these people how mistaken they are. We waited too long. Had we had a leftwing radio host more articulate than Rush Limbaugh in 1988, when Reagan dissolved the fairness Doctrine, we could have slowed the spread of this toxic atmosphere. We did not get that until Air America went on the air in 2004. It lasted till 2010, not because of lack of listeners, but because of broadcasting companies making it difficult to find stations. Time on the stations that carried Air Amerca was bought up by Christian talk and sports talk radio. And thus intelligent, witty radio, and freedom of thought, was crushed by capitalism. 
     Republicans for years have told us not to trust science. Their most effective technique was to cast doubt on the science supporting such things as the smoking/cancer connection, or climate change, or even effective governance. Ronald Reagan joked that, " The most frightening sentence in the English language is, I'm from the government and I'm here to help you." Doubters would ask Reagan, " I'm from a multi-national corporation and I'm here to help you. How would that work?" But it never got asked by enough people to see the truth. The end result is that the GOP has been filled by laughably stupid people, who are unsurprisingly racist and incompetent. Because they were successful in appointing judges from the Federalist Society, who helped to weaken voting protections, we now have an election process in battleground states that is weighted in favor of those stupid, racist, and incompetent people. 
    Perhaps that will change, simply because people are beginning to see the Republican party for what it is, and the stupidity it represents. Not that I wish to offer Republicans some sound advice that would help them, they won't take it, but for those who might wonder: what makes a democracy effective is a thorough examination of legislation and the people who make it effective. Or those who threaten it. A good part of that is discussion, argument, really. Not just against the other party, where republicans excel and democrats lag behind, but within the party structure. In this way Democrats excel. Republicans have been trained to keep their internecine thoughts to themselves, for fear of being primaried. The talking points are handed down, and they say thank you, licking the boots of the corporate sponsors as they slink out of the room. 
     That was not always the case in the GOP. There used to be a moderate wing, and even a left wing in this party within my political memory. Now there is only the hard right, and the far right. And thus, we get Louie Gohmert, Steve King, Mat Gaetz, Devin Nunes, and a host of others at all levels of Republicandom. Or is it Republican dumb? The concept that the panel that examined the mistakes made in not seeing 9-11 arrive, was called "stove-piping".  Defined as, transmitting information up a hierarchical chain of command. We know how that worked out. We Democrats have legislators representing the range of ideological stances. Sometimes those people back a rogue candidate to run in the general. It has not gone well for us. But that is a sign of a healthy party, and from this party new ideas are adopted. We are faced with that in this, the most crucial presidential election I've experienced since Nixon-Humphrey. Because of what I believe is an existential threat to our country, our climate, and every noble piece of legislation we have passed in 75 years, we must ask ourselves, "must we vote for the lesser of two evils? I believe we should. We have lost too much already, and more is threatened.

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