Post
by sophie » Thu Oct 25, 2018 9:47 am
I used to think of the left as being kinder to individuals, while Republicans were cold-hearted corporate shills. The Left recognized that people can have misfortunes e.g. they can get sick or get into accidents, and that the measure of a person is not the extent to which they can avoid these things. They also advocated treating people fairly regardless of social class or physical characteristics. Like, treat women with basic respect in the workplace, don't beat up gay people for being gay, and don't lynch black people or treat them as if they were cattle. Republicans, on the other hand, seemed to be about letting people starve and throwing Grandma into the snow headfirst, in order to preserve corporate profits. Onto this was added a layer of religious fundamentalism entwined with an overtone of bigotry that I found scary not to mention a major threat to the Constitution's religious liberty guarantee.
Maybe this was wrong-headed, but it was a fairly widespread perception. Now, those admirable liberal positions have morphed into something that feels completely sinister to me. Now it's about elevating certain groups to the level of hero-worship and from this, having carte blanche to destroy people, careers, and public institutions. Even worse is the idea of legislating or discriminating based on thoughts and opinions. Maybe it was always this way and it's just gotten harder core so that I finally noticed this dark side.
The extreme quality of this platform as it is now is bound to create serious divides. I don't think it's a civil war "between Constitutions" so much as an outright attack on society and government that you are either going to be for (if you are still living with the perception of the Democratic Party that I used to have) or against (if you've picked up on that dark side). Not picking up on the dark side is rather understandable given the role of the press in pushing that extreme agenda. If it weren't for that, I suspect there would be a lot more people in the "against" column.