Reasonable people are willing to have a conversation.
Most of the non-Democrats I know are willing to have a conversation about their views. Most of the leftists and Democrats I know are not.
When you’re willing to have a conversation, you can say (and mean) things like, “Here’s why I think the government should or should not be involved in something. Here’s what I think the definition of a ‘right’ is. Here’s why I support socialism over capitalism”. You will make your case and listen to the responses.
When you’re unwilling to have a conversation, you say things like, “You’re a fascist. You’re a racist.” Those labels are deliberate conversation-stoppers. The implication is clearly, “You cannot be reasoned with. I will not reason with you, because you are a bad person”. End of conversation.
This did not start with the election of Donald Trump as President. The election of Trump gave people unwilling to have conversations an excuse … NOT to have conversations.
Those of us who don’t agree with leftism have been called racists and other horrible things — in the absence of any evidence — for years; even decades. None of it is new. It’s the magnitude of the irrationality and injustice that’s new.
What happened with Donald Trump: conservatives/non-leftists finally got a leader who fights back. Someone who REALLY fights back. Leftists are not used to this. They have controlled academia, government-run schools, the media and most of the culture for generations. They still do. They are horrified, outraged and indignant that anyone would challenge them like President Trump does every single day. It gave them the green light to start unleashing the unbridled hatred and intolerance for dissension that must have been there all along.
They say it’s because of Trump. The real truth? It’s because they hate anyone who doesn’t agree with them.
Is there erroneous thinking on both sides? At times. But I honestly do not know of a single leftist in hiding about his views. I know of dozens, if not hundreds, of people personally on the right who ARE in hiding over their views. They come to me and tell me, “I really respect and like your posts. But I can never tell anyone. I’d be out of business”. I am carrying more secrets from being a non-leftist than I carry from being a therapist bound by confidentiality. If you had told me this 10 or even 5 years ago, I would have said, “That’s nuts”. Now it’s reality.
It tells you something about the psychological and social climate we’re living in. It also tells you who created it: the leftists. Even though not all leftists are evil, and some are worse than others, the general problem was started by the left. The left DID start the fire.
In any context — whether it’s a personal relationship or anything else — you have to be willing to have a conversation. Our entire Constitutional system of government depends on this sort of rationality and reason. When reason and rationality exit the culture — as I now see happening — there’s no way that a Constitutional system of government can sustain itself.
Our Bill of Rights and system of government, elections and so forth mean nothing once half the population regards the other as evil. Based on years of reading history, the only other times America was ever like this, since its founding, were in the years leading up to the Civil War. I don’t like to say it, but it’s true.
Democracy is not enough. Any political hack can gather up 50.5 percent of the vote to do whatever he wishes to the other 49.5 percent of the population. Especially when that hack promises something for nothing. And even if he can’t get 50.5 percent of the vote, he can use election fraud, as Democrats now routinely do in places like California.
Democracy can be just as bad a dictatorship as a one-man dictatorship. Even worse. Only a republic can protect the rights of the individual from the tyranny of the majority. And only a rational, reasonable population willing to have rational conversations — and accept the outcome of elections they don’t agree with — has any hope of survival.
Donald Trump will continue to get ALL the blame for everything falling apart in our society and system of government. But the problem is ultimately with the people. That’s most of us. And it’s the left more than the right. They are the ones with the microphone. They are the ones with the biggest mouths. They are the ones who dominate Hollywood, sports, corporate culture, schools and universities. They bear the greatest responsibility for what has happened. President Trump is merely the response to it … the manifestation of the entirely justified emotion:
“We have had enough. And we are not taking it anymore”.
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