Losing respect for Rand Paul

[Thumpalumpacus]

I wasn't aware that anyone here was a member of congress.

Well it's a good thing I didn't say that!

 

There's no evacuated middle..that shits crowded as hell, that's where the dems live..and the middle keeps moving right trying to poach voters that will never vote for them.

The Leftist Kenyan Who Came to Destroy America with his soviet style communism was only barely left of center, and that..only in the peculiar beast of -american- politics..... and only when he wasn't busy being a full blown right wing nutjob in an attempt to "compromise".  The drone warlord and deporter in chief who massively extended the surveillance state while privatizing profits and socializing losses.  That's as left as we get it, here in the US of A....

If you're talking about politicians, perhaps.

I'm talking about real human beings. And it's a pretty deep divide.

At some point a person has to conceded that they cannot reason with the unreasonable, or compromise with people who are not interested in compromise.

Yeah, that sounds like a great way to run a railroad. A nation? Not so much. And when the vast polity is as uneducated as Americans seem to be (cf. so many Minimalist threads), expecting compromise seems like a long shot. After all, dumb horse-traders go broke.

 

We passed that point a long time ago, but people keep trying to convince themselves and others that we need to keep trying, and so we keep drifting, and the lunatic fringe is laughing all the way to the bank.

Dude, they own the bank already, you know that. They ain't laughing their way there -- they're having their minions lug the heavy suitcases to the vaults. They're actually on vacation, occasionally sending texts to the lobbyist who puts the screws on the politician.

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Yet another issue that people on the right and left both agree on, Thump..none of us are happy with bought politicians..but..hey, we all get to pound sand.  I'm not sure how we're "allowing" something we have absolutely no say in.  The system is set up so that we're presented with a choice between bought politician a and bought politician b..meanwhile money buys across the aisles, they're not dummies, they win either way.  One side screams "we are the 99%" and the other chants "drain the swamp"......neither gets so much as a crumb..not even from a "populist" candidate.

-and then, since it's at least appropriate for the thread..we have people tossing their votes to the ideology that states that giving money more direct access to power is the solution to the problem.

You know I've got *zero* argument with you on this score.

My point is that within the polity, the intolerance of other views -- and the concomitant line-of-battle broadsides -- means that the moneyed and political classes get the free run of DC.

Sometimes I think DC stands for Divide/Conquer. <shrugs>