I'm curious what people think before attempting to post on material that I know is important but it is also complex, big and not going to be easily digestible. Especially not by those who are polarized already and think that they have their finger on the target.
And I include myself in the polarization camp. The only difference is that over the decades I have been fortunate enough to pull back for a second look when I suspect a reexamination is due.
It is like the old onion argument. You get through some layers, think you are at the core only to later figure out that well shit, bunch of more layers to go.
I take issue with point one.
We put ourselves in the red or the blue camp either because of or in defiance of our upbringing.
I was raised in a conservative household of Eastern European immigrants who fled Stalin and so throughout my high school years and slightly beyond I spent all my time trying to understand my gut feeling: they were wrong and stupid and bigoted and unenlightened and my hippie ethos was right and true and part of a movement that would usher in a Paradise on Earth, if only everyone would drop enough acid and study Buddhism.
As I read more and read my way through a lengthy college experience as both student and teacher, I arrived at my current mostly Right/Libertarian outlook.
Number 2 I agree with, and I have decided that, when discussing politics no rational approach is possible with true believers of any stripe, especially the Red stripe.