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+--- Thread: (Long) Is there any PB&J left in our modern political sandwich? (/showthread.php?tid=286352)
(Long) Is there any PB&J left in our modern political sandwich? - sekker - 04-13-2024
I found this analogy relevant, and I posted 'Long' in the subject line. But I am not apologizing for the length, as I will explain.
When I started to vote in the early 80s, I truly feel that most of the country was focused on the middle of a sandwich. What flavor jelly, creamy or crunchy? Issues like how best to support democracy, financial responsibility (remember Mr Perot?), where under the Clinton years we actually caught up on our annual deficit. But BOTH sides are just burning cash and giving ALL of us a new mortgage we will hand off to our kids.
We could discuss major policy issues with civility.
The extremes as represented by the toasted bread were largely marginalized as not determinative.
Nowadays, I feel like I'm one of the few left worried about the middle. And indeed, the data says that true independents are almost gone. But I refuse to believe that I am one of the last that prefers to discuss about grape vs strawberry.
For example, I think the 1A defends the rights for people to SAY the moon is made of cheese. But I also think it's wrong that King Z can make money off using software to amplify this message because the speaker has some sort of charisma. If ANYONE makes $$, then they should be financially responsible when their computer algorithms cause damage to society. Again, I am not infringing on 1A rights. But that's because 1A doesn't protect you from the consequences of what you say, just that the government cannot suppress what you want to say. This nuanced view is not aligned with either bread slice extremes, and so we do not even have the discussion.
2A: again, I am not trying to repeal this piece of the bill of rights. But we are Alice in the Looking Glass. Sorry, but 'a well regulated militia' is not someone's random garage. And the more guns we have, the more gun deaths. The interpretation of the existing text in the Bill of Rights has evolved without a new Constitutional Amendment. We can undo that, too. So stop telling me 'we cannot change this without a new Amendment' because that argument is DESIGNED to shut down discussion as it's practically impossible to do today. But also remember that the NRA has been found guilty in courts of nefarious behaviors AND accepted major $$ from our foreign adversaries. So MAYBE, MAYBE those that worship the 2A, you should consider the provenance of your data you cite.
RvW: Not even going to say anything except the fight is NOT about abortion but ALL about attempts to control women. The last 30+ years has been a massive shift of power from men to women.
Lest you think I am picking on the right, here are some others:
Children: sorry, but the planet is NOT going to be destroyed if you have 2-4 (or more) kids. Do it. The world needs a new generation raised in a loving family. Note: I am also deeply supportive of parental leave, support of childcare etc to enable full participation of women in their professions. We need ALL of you smart folk working together.
Gaza/Israel/Palestine/Religion: I cannot think of anyone I personally know that thinks we are in a good place. We are not. There is a terrible tragedy ongoing in the Middle East. It could get worse if Iran attacks Israel. No, Mr Biden is NOT supporting terrorists when he does not like what the Israeli military are doing killing civilians. He's just trying to draw some sort of line in the sand to prevent what will be called barbarism by the history books. College students on campuses, you literally cannot look at ANY nuance. You do NOT have 1A rights to yell at a Dean while a guest at their personal residence. What's a real shame is they were supposed to be studying law. A political problem that's been generations in the making will not be tamed by 280 character or 3 min vertical video shorts posted on social media.
Immigration: we functionally have an open Southern border. Do we need more people who want to be Americans? And are immigrants often better citizens? Yes to both overall based on history. But we should be doing this in orderly way. Ignoring this is not going to fix it. Refusing to allow a vote on a bipartisan bill is ALSO not going to fix it. The extremes are making an important problem worse. We cannot seem to even have a discussion.
This is one of my longest posts in years. What conclusion do I want to make? I am hoping we can PLEASE try to have MRF be a place where nuanced discussion can be held. Note that I am NOT saying we should exclude the bread slices. I think having all four components makes a full sandwich. But we seem to just be chewing on dry and crusty bread. Let's add the PB&J flavor back to our political meals.
But it might be that this post will just be my last attempt at resurrecting a full and nuanced discussion here at MRF.
in the meantime, please pass the chips! I like cheesy Sun Chips with my PB&J.
Thanks for listening, for those that clicked.
Re: (Long) Is there any PB&J left in our modern political sandwich? - Ombligo - 04-13-2024
Sekker, this is one of the better posts I have seen on MRF in a long time. I hope it does lead to some thought-out replies. I'm not going to respond at present as I want some time to reflect on what you have written and gather my thoughts.
I will say I agree with most of your basic premises. To further your PBJ analogy, we have the sandwich, except it is now using banana nut bread instead of good old Wonder.
Re: (Long) Is there any PB&J left in our modern political sandwich? - pdq - 04-13-2024
While I appreciate your thoughtful comment, I think in some aspects you have slid into both-sides-ism.
Take immigration. Biden sent a proposed immigration reform to Congress the first day of his presidency. Republicans vowed to stop it. More recently, we had a tripartisan compromise immigration reform bill hammered out between Republicans, Dems, and Independents in the Senate. Trump decreed it had to be killed (for pure political advantage), and it was.
Trump issued some executive orders during his presidency that single-handedly, unilaterally affected immigration policy, against our long-standing treaty obligations but which were accepted in the context of a deadly worldwide viral pandemic. When that pandemic waned, private groups sued to stop the policy and a district court agreed with them. The SCOTUS overturned that. When Red states sued to continue Title 42, the same SCOTUS wouldn’t take that case. :dunno:
Ignoring it is the last thing Biden and the left are doing. They’ve tried, again and again, for that “orderly approach” that you - that all people of good faith desire. And they’ve run into a stiff arm of the Right, whose position is Close the border, period. Practically, this could never happen - it would shut down one of our top international trading partners/markets, which Republicans would never allow. Nor will they agree to more resources for enforcement. They’d rather just grandstand.
Many of your other points are well made; some are head-scratchers. (Literally no American politician of either side is proposing dictating family size - American families are, on average, freely choosing to have fewer children, which may well lead to a demographic crisis if we were to shut down immigration).
But what you imagine as a unyielding crust on both sides of your PB+J is almost entirely on the Right. Their side is so full of rigid, unyielding ideologues that they literally can’t govern. They’re tied into knots. They can’t even agree on a Speaker (other than a de-facto one who is objectively a serial liar, law-breaker, adulterer and sexual assaulter). There are leftist politicians as well, yet somehow when the Dems had a slight majority in the House, normal business got done. And anyone calling Biden a leftist is just drinking MAGA kool-aid.
One of these crusts is not like the other.
Re: (Long) Is there any PB&J left in our modern political sandwich? - Ted King - 04-13-2024
My views are pretty far from the political middle of the U.S. so the best I can do is empathize for those who value the middle ground. For those valuing the middle ground I will say that I am amenable to compromise that ends up in middle ground as long as it doesn't compromise something really central in my value "system".
I think it's obvious that the reason the middle has "shrunk" is because the Republicans have been accelerating away from the middle and are less and less willing to compromise. Essentially, Trumplugicans keep forcing us into accepting their preferences or they'll break things. You are either for them or against them. There is no ground for middle to conservative "Republicans" (RINOs!!!!).
I basically agree with your view on the 1A issues you addressed.
Sorry, but I am very reticent about talking about 2A issues because it has been done do beyond death here (at least it feels like that to me) and I've shared my beliefs many times in much earlier threads.
Roe v. Wade - I do think many men wanting to control women is a central impulse driving "conservative" abortion policy preferences. But I do think that many abortion opponents have genuine feelings that abortion is killing an innocent person. (I think for many of them it comes from a misguided sense of mysticism but that doesn't mean that their feelings aren't genuine.) If you meld those together, you get some misogynistic politicians using the anti-abortion sympathies of a large block of voters to get the power to "keep" women in their place.
Population - I think we definitely need to quit expanding the overall population load on the planet. I worry about economic dislocations due to quick and large shifts in populations but I also worry about the consequences on the environment if we don't reduce the load fairly expeditiously.
Gaza - don't want to talk about this much because the personal temperature is pretty hot here on that. I know that some of my views would likely just exacerbate the hostile feelings in those discussions.
Immigration - opening up the borders completely is a bad and politically untenable (not saying that is what you are advocating). So there has to be at least a reasonable amount of control of who comes into the country. To me, the number one group we need to let in is genuine asylum seekers. We need more officials to handle those much more expeditiously. I'm less clear on what criteria we should have for deciding what non-asylum seekers should be allowed to enter with legal sanction.
As far as getting people here more engaged in more nuanced discussions - I get it. I try on occasion and when I first started I would often get frustrated that there wasn't more engagement. For myself, anymore I tend to look at it as occasionally throwing a line out and seeing if I can get some nibbles. If not, I figure the fish aren't in the mood for biting on nuances or maybe there isn't an appetite for that particular topic.
Re: (Long) Is there any PB&J left in our modern political sandwich? - sekker - 04-13-2024
Thank you for your thoughtful responses. I encourage you to challenge what I wrote, and I am open to learning and changing my mind.
I’ll add one item around families. I posted a thread to several Ezra Klein episodes. Rather than pushing back, I will ask that for those interested that you listen to those very thoughtful discussions. They changed my mind in meaningful ways on this topic as I used to be in the smaller family size camp.
I also doubt this thread will garner many deep comments around 2A. But I felt it important to list, if nothing else to show how people are self-sensoring being afraid to be cancelled or squashed by their views. And I believe that is a one-sided phenomena.
EDIT Apologizing in advance if I don’t get back on your comments quickly. That’s not a reflection on you. I have a very busy professional time coming up, I might not be as responsive as is the tradition here at MRF. However, I will be checking in here as my first stop when I can!
Re: (Long) Is there any PB&J left in our modern political sandwich? - SDGuy - 04-13-2024
sekker wrote:
...We could discuss major policy issues with civility...
At times, that is all too missing on this forum - which makes me deeply disappointed in this place; thoughtful discussion used to predominate, but now all too many posters here like to post one-line zingers, or refuse to participate in reasoned debate when faced with a viewpoint that makes them uncomfortable or challenges their beliefs.
I think this Teacher-Student interaction best illustrates how thoughtful discussion should take place; no screaming, no posting of one-line zingers and then walking away, and, most importantly, listening to another viewpoint and thinking through what is being discussed.
Re: (Long) Is there any PB&J left in our modern political sandwich? - sekker - 04-14-2024
SDGuy wrote:
[quote=sekker]
...We could discuss major policy issues with civility...
At times, that is all too missing on this forum - which makes me deeply disappointed in this place; thoughtful discussion used to predominate, but now all too many posters here like to post one-line zingers, or refuse to participate in reasoned debate when faced with a viewpoint that makes them uncomfortable or challenges their beliefs.
I think this Teacher-Student interaction best illustrates how thoughtful discussion should take place; no screaming, no posting of one-line zingers and then walking away, and, most importantly, listening to another viewpoint and thinking through what is being discussed.
That is an awesome ~5min video. Thanks for posting! And I concur - quite a teacher.
Re: (Long) Is there any PB&J left in our modern political sandwich? - Lemon Drop - 04-14-2024
When was this magical time on the MRF when political discussions were mostly civil?
I've been here 14 years. There were very interesting, lively, mostly civil discussions in 2010, and they happen now too.
The main difference I see is that the trolling and abusive behavior was far worse then. The worst offenders were blocked and things got better.
Many posters offer new and interesting insights, others comic relief, while a few just want to trigger the usual suspects ans exchange insults. You're reading that stuff by choice.
It's all good.
Re: (Long) Is there any PB&J left in our modern political sandwich? - PeterB - 04-14-2024
sekker wrote:
[quote=SDGuy]
[quote=sekker]
...We could discuss major policy issues with civility...
At times, that is all too missing on this forum - which makes me deeply disappointed in this place; thoughtful discussion used to predominate, but now all too many posters here like to post one-line zingers, or refuse to participate in reasoned debate when faced with a viewpoint that makes them uncomfortable or challenges their beliefs.
I think this Teacher-Student interaction best illustrates how thoughtful discussion should take place; no screaming, no posting of one-line zingers and then walking away, and, most importantly, listening to another viewpoint and thinking through what is being discussed.
That is an awesome ~5min video. Thanks for posting! And I concur - quite a teacher.
I agree -- he's basically doing Socratic-interactive, while trying his best to stay neutral... very tricky. And at one point, he risks the student being humiliated (he did admit to feeling stupid) when he discovered his own error in logic. For obvious reasons, this approach would not be feasible or acceptable in all teaching contexts...
Re: (Long) Is there any PB&J left in our modern political sandwich? - SDGuy - 04-14-2024
Lemon Drop wrote:
When was this magical time on the MRF when political discussions were mostly civil?...
Maybe I'm remembering the past through rose-colored glasses, but I don't recall this place being as rancorous previously as it can be at times now.