We Want Neither Peace Nor Unity

originally posted by: loam

originally posted by: jtma508
If you don't like it, leave. You are the minority go live elsewhere if this country is so screwed. We don't need you.

Thank you for illustrating my point.

When you offer people as their only option self-imposed eviction from their home, it's only a matter of time before someone takes yours away from you.

I am 100% sure that the words you are responding to are the exact same thing that has been repeated by Trump supporters on this very website for the past four years. If you don't like it, leave.

originally posted by: DoubleDNH

originally posted by: loam

originally posted by: jtma508
If you don't like it, leave. You are the minority go live elsewhere if this country is so screwed. We don't need you.

Thank you for illustrating my point.

When you offer people as their only option self-imposed eviction from their home, it's only a matter of time before someone takes yours away from you.

I am 100% sure that the words you are responding to are the exact same thing that has been repeated by Trump supporters on this very website for the past four years. If you don't like it, leave.

So in other words, this is your favorite part:

We allowed the hypocrisy of our political opponents to justify our own escalating injustices.

Roger.

a reply to: Cobaltic1978

Ive thought about divide and conquer and really its just a idea that does on the surface appear to work
but then I remember we are made of the same stuff as the rest of the universe
and we are all one

how do you divide the indivisible

our ego's are divided , but our souls are not
why are we all so easily fooled

originally posted by: ketsuko


I never felt contempt or pity, rather I felt fear of what you all would get up to when you finally had what you wanted. The reason for that? I thought you would be more relaxed and happy when you all had exactly what you wanted during Obama's terms, but instead you just got angrier and more hateful toward anyone you perceived as your opponents as though we were keeping you from being happy.

You don't get it. We want to live our lives the way we want to live.

I don't get it?

What makes you think I supported Obama? What makes you think I'm angry and hateful then or now?

Let me spell this out in simple words in capital letters - NOT EVERYONE WHO MISTRUSTS TRUMP IS A DEMOCRAT

They're not all leftists, Marxists, Leninists, anarchists, socialists, communists or any other kind of ist. They simply mistrust Trump.

I don't speak for anyone but myself. I feel sad for you and the rest of the Cultists who are not only estranged from reality but permanently angry. The only way you can make sense of the world now is to divide it into two camps and rage against the enemy. I've known lots of people over the years who were locked into similar toxic feedback cycles and most of them grew out of it. I'm not talking politics now, I'm talking about that twisted emotional need to be simultaneously the oppressed and the winner. Unlike them, you've been groomed to be in this dark place.

To reflect your phrasing, we are not the enemy. We are not stopping you from living your lives the way you want to live them.

We are the majority and we're getting on with our lives.

originally posted by: Flyingclaydisk

Obama sent this country backwards lightyears in areas such as racism and hatred. He may have been a great orator, but behind the scenes his entire administration was built around hate and division.

The rest of your post is predicated on everyone who mistrusts Trump being a leftist and I've already addressed that.

This point, however, bears unpicking.

Obama didn't send the country backwards any more than a fever makes you ill. What Obama, and the whole cultural current around him, did was bring the poison to the surface. It was always there, festering, a cancer at the heart of American society.

The only way his administration was built on hate and division is if you see social change as a zero sum game, if others can only gain rights if you lose yours. Let's take gay marriage as a (hopefully) uncontroversial example. My wife and I are not bothered that the gay couple up the road got married. Why should we be? It doesn't take away from our relationship or from the public commitment we made of our love for each other. One of my oldest friends, on the other hand, believes it diminishes the value of his own marriage. Same situation, different perspectives.

I'm white, straight, middle class and middle aged. I seriously misspent a lot of my youth. Like most people, I'm left on some issues, liberal on some, conservative on others. I'm the sort of person who is supposed to be oppressed by #MeToo and BLM and all the LGBTQWERTYUIOP variations. So why don't I feel threatened or oppressed? Because I'm confident and proud of who I am, how I live and what I've achieved. Double anonymised job applications don't bother me because my CV is strong. A woman angry about the way men treat her doesn't bother me because I treat women with the due respect (for the last couple of decades). Spending some of my tax money on food aid for poor kids doesn't bother me because it's a more effective way of helping them than my personal intervention - and one of those kids might be wiping my butt when I'm in a nursing home. And so on.

I stopped blaming other people for my own shortcomings and failures in my mid twenties. I took responsibility for my own life and my own success. I learned to trust, like the Boy Scouts, instead of fear. I learned that life is a non-zero sum game.

Ironically, TPTB expect us to believe that the economy, based on finite resources, is non-zero sum but our social relationships, which are infinite, are zero sum. Anyone would think they stood to profit from it.