The Right and the Left need each other - debate

[DrYouth]

OK...

Once the enemy is identified, the solution is rooting out the other side and destroying them.

With this kind of polarization there can be no dialogue, no compromise, no negotiation.

It leads to a poverty of ideas and essentially gridlock and defeatism... this mentality would rather shut down the system entirely than to be seen giving the other side any credit at all.

I'll engage with Smitty when he talks sense which he often does...
But when he is Bolshie witch hunting...

Nice try, Daffy...

I'm trying to make sense of Smitty's parting volley in this "debate"...

I think Elmer Fudd is Smitty... and I guess I'm supposed to be Daffy?

Elmer is clearly hunting Bolshie's and he's not falling for my efforts to get him to cease and desist...

OK - but it looks like I have a good segment of the board convinced that polarizing efforts to root out right and left-wing boogiemen are less than constructive.
I hear a lot of votes for rigorous debate... but a lot of consensus that this should include good faith dialogue.

But I believe a majority of the forum gets tired of arguments where there is an unwillingness to dialogue or find common ground.

I agree with Bjorn that the extremes that seek to villainize are unneeded... but that those willing to find common ground on both sides of the aisle are the heart of a functioning forum and state.

[TheReal_ND]

Common ground. That's shrinking. Those that don't pick a side are going to be left out to dry soon.

I guess if you were looking for some from me, I think protectionism and conservatism aren't mutually exclusive. In fact conserving is something "conservatives" forgot how to do.

[DrYouth]

Those that don't pick a side are going to be left out to dry soon.

I dispute this...

What sides?

Pro and anti Trump?

How does picking sides help things?
Picking sides only makes you naively accepting of your sides ideas and obtusely opposed to the other sides.

There should be lots of common ground. People shouldn't pick sides they should weigh Trump's proposals on their merits.
They should accept his (and the Republican's) good ideas and reject their bad ones.
Sadly this rarely happens... because it is more work.

[TheReal_ND]

I'm all for criticisms of Trump as soon as the forum jelly brains quit getting worked up when the media tells them to be.

[DrYouth]

I'm all for criticisms of Trump as soon as the forum jelly brains quit getting worked up when the media tells them to be.

A reasonable request... of the jelly brains.

All criticisms should be taken at their own value... the behaviour of third party jelly brains shouldn't enter the equation.

[TheReal_ND]

It absolutely should if one of the things you've been fighting for over a year is bs media narrative.

[Okeefenokee]

And not many people have even admitted that they were listening to the wrong people.

Leading up to the election, there were a lot of people so convinced by the media of her majesty's impending ascendance that they were calling anyone else who didn't agree mentally ill. That's how sold they were on the b.s. media, and yet they haven't yet looked back and considered what it might mean that they were wrong.

[TheReal_ND]

Rush, for all his faults, really suns this narrative up well. He's been fighting the liberal media for twenty years. He gets it. He gets all of that.

[DrYouth]

Bump

DB?

Yes/No

[SuburbanFarmer]

I think we've decided to stay broken up. Sorry, doc.