06-07-2020, 06:18 PM
(06-07-2020, 05:42 PM)Nately120 Wrote: People say the right wing is racist the way they say the left wing is anti-whites, males, straight people, the wealthy and so on. Liberals are quite often labeled as people who are angry with, or out to get specific demographics of people.
This.
IMHO, one of the biggest problems we have in this country is that we let the extremes of each political side come to define the vast majority of people who actually lie somewhere in between.
Most "liberals" are not left-wing nuts who support groups like Antifa, or subscribe to the use of 185 preferred pronouns. Converserly, most conservatives aren't bible thumpers who don't believe in things like evolution, and who are secretly huge racists.
I truly believe, even still, that the overwhelming majority of Americans are good people. Good people, regardless of individual political stances.
A lot of the divide these days is media driven, where it's hyper-political 24/7 news streams designed to draw ratings. If you view this channel or read this publication, it slants in a way where it becomes an echo-chamber. And the same is true for the alternative.
Then you when couple the above with social media it becomes even more slanted. People align themselves "socially" online the same way they do to source their news. They surround themselves with a hive-think, my "side" is right. This is that side, this is this side. But that's not at all reality.
I read a stat once that 90% of the posts on Twitter are made up by only 10% of it's users. To me that's pretty damn crazy. And it becomes even more so when you consider, I'm guessing, that only about 50% of our population even had account. So the political divide and crazy trends you're seeing on a site like Twitter represent about 6% of our population. What's trending on the right or left side on Twitter is not at all an accurate representation of actual debate.
People really need to just go out and more, and experience real life. Social media is not real life. Embrace interaction and discussion. Share your politics when asked if you want, and conversely keep them to youself if you'd like. I think they'll find the majority of us have way more in common then what the media and social media leads us to believe.
Intelligent and rational Americans aren't a check-list of ideologies that you can cross off just by who they voted for. A person can be Pro-Choice and support the 2nd Ammendment. A person can support LGBT rights and be fiscally conservative. People need to stop painting everyone into a corner, and convinces themselves they know everything about someone just because they disagree on a single issue.
Sorry for the rant, and to Nately as I'm not sure I really needed to veer of here. But what he says here is so true, and it really gets on my nerves. Not all "conservatives" are racists and not all "liberals" are "It's Ma'am" dude from Gamestop incarnate. Most people are completely normal and share little with the extremes of their respective political parties.
