Tulsi Gabbard: I’m leaving the Democratic Party

[hollodero]

(11-07-2022, 10:44 PM)Dill Wrote: Your #7, social media, is already subsumed under my #4, where one would find Fox, Newsmax and Infowars. Your #6 is covered by my 1-3, I think. 

It's your #5 that we don't agree on. You seem to regard it as an important driver of division. But your "evidence," the "atmosphere where hateful messages an rise and truth isn't important," --which evokes horror in us equally--still looks to me attributable to the causes I've already enumerated.

You say "the two sides." But I don't think the division is driven by both sides. There is a Gingrich memo, but no Tip O'Neill memo.
https://able2know.org/topic/122842-1

And the point was to use abusive and distortive language to define Dem "enemies" REGARDLESS of the issue. Dems were ALWAYS to be described as "hypocrites" "corrupt" "traitors" and against "flag, family, child, jobs" be the issue debt limit, workplace equity, or a treaty with Mexico. Rush Limbaugh was already doing this on his radio program, but Gingrich embedded it in the party from top down, Washington outward. It metastasized in the Republican party, while Democrats who thought "We're now forced to do the same" were never able to attract Dem voters that way. 

Looks to me like the division arises elsewhere, but plays out in a two party system. 

And we disputed this previously, perhaps obliquely, when we disputed the degree to which "liberal" or MSM media are a mirror image of Fox/Newsmax et al. This was, if I remember, question of degree between us, but the center of my argument was that the right wing media are structurally different from the MSM. They generate and mass circulate untruth. 

The parties themselves reflect this decision. There is no Dem counterpart to the Big Lie. Because the Big lie raises tempers and creates argument still does not mean "both sides" are equally unable to listen to one another and only about shooting holes in someone else's opinion.

So that is one issue, the way you seem to make the GOP side more responsible than the Dem side. And to a degree, I see it the same way. It's of course irrelevant to evaluate the dangers of a two-party system, one side taking advantage of its eternal flaw is sufficient. I understand what Limbaugh et al. did, I just claim that they could do so in an already simplistic, strictly dualistic system, where whatever outrageous thing anyone says is trumped by the fact that he fights for the right team. But of course I also give the liberal side, including the media, plenty of blame for the division too. I know I can never convince you of that though, not even in the slightest actually. A fact I attribute to you also being beholden to one side in the two-sided affair, in the end for you it's about blaming Republicans. As I said, fair enough, they're the ones with Trump, that are fine with him asking for overturning results and storming capitols and talking about fraud or stop the count when he's ahead and all that. They're actually trying the coup (or are idly standing by and having no issue with it), sure, while blaming the other side of doing so. Which they do all the time actually, Goebbels playbook. So I get that. But to me that's all symptoms, not the underlying issue. And it doesn't mean the other side is blameless in their own extremes and their own demand of loyalty to their own no matter what.

For this is the typical liberal, he says what's true and righteous and whoever disagrees gets laughed at, called uninformed or a bigot or indeed often a racist or at the very least someone who is very wrong and needs to be educated (that would be your thing). And it's not always fair. In short, your side tends to be overly condescending and again there's no way to convince you of that, I am aware, even though pretty much any debate here or anywhere looks like clear evidence of that to me. Both sides carry this extreme black and white worldview around and are more concerned with scoring points for their own side than to actually have a meaningful exchange. Yeah Americans from different aisles do not really talk to each other any longer, you just fight with each other, with extreme rhetoric that kills all chance of any convergence and is in fact designed to do so. You don't have a nuanced debate about anything, but plenty of talking points and rhetorical tricks - and constantly fed disdain. And often the conservative side is just more open about the latter. For one, it's the most attractive quality Trump has, he makes liberal heads explode and that's great. It's a toxic climate where the hatred for the other side, the domestic enemy of sorts, is more important than democracy. I can't point to any clear evidence that this is a result of the two-party system, it just makes sense to me that it is.