How as a Country are we going to EVER come together?

[a kennedy]

Is it even possible? What has to happen? What type of situation would possibly make it happen? I am not aware enough or smart enough to even fathom that ever happening.

[elleng]

1. With the help of the kids.

[democratisphere]

2. We are not going to ever come together. The US needs to be divided up

into at least six and perhaps more different countries. Our divisiveness is killing US.

[regnaD kciN]

9. Sad to say, I agree. And I'm not even sure if that will help.

The problem I see, to be frank, is that we aren't simply divided into "conservatives" and "liberals." That's the status-quo virtually everywhere in the world. It's that I see us broken into even smaller chunks on the left. (I don't keep much connection with the right, but I wouldn't be surprised to find similar fracture lines eventually develop over there) There's the centrist liberals, the economic progressives, identity-politics devotees for every possible group, anarchists...and, the fact is, most people in each group hate at least some of the others every bit as much as they hate those on the other side of the spectrum.

I've been saying for some time that one of the big issues we've been going through for years now is the sense that all of our problems are insoluble, or at the very least that no answers seem clear. When no solutions are possible, all that's left in politics is figuring out who (in "the other&quot is to blame, and devoting one's political aspirations to gaining revenge on them. That way lies madness.

[Initech]

3. For one, we need to tell Fox News where they can shove it.

They're fueling about 99% of the division in this country, and they have since the Bush years. And now that they have a direct bullshit to bullshit pipeline with Trump, it's time for them to go.

[appalachiablue]

15. For quite some time I've had concerns about why so many

on the left and Dems. seem largely indifferent to the 30-year power and influence of prolific, free Fox TV Stations and RW Hate Radio. Hardly a month passes that the topic doesn't come up in posts, but still nothing happens.

Consolidated extreme right news media controls 96% of the Radio market, 1,500 Stations with 300 Talkers going at it night and day, as one DUer on top of the issue wrote again today.
These ultra conservative radio stations and Fox television are aired all over, easily accessible to millions of Americans in their cars, at hotels, airports, businesses, even dentist offices and on college campuses.

Americans throughout the US now have very few other broadcast news choices, especially in the last five years. Millions of people have been profoundly affected by the lies and hate, many of them for decades. In the last 20 years the internet has also become an outlet including newer venues that promote Alt Right views especially designed to attract young males.

Why has there been no serious effort lately to counter the behemoth which is effective but clearly divisive and dangerous for democracy? Interested individuals and groups with the resources to create alternative, truthful media venues, esp. in broadcast must exist, somewhere. Claims that 'Air America failed' and Nothing can be done, 'wingers don't read' are often heard and unsatisfactory. Similar to comments Re freedom of speech, the FCC, ignoring the Sherman Anti-Trust Act since Reagan, the 1996 Telecom Act.

There must be a way, this can't be insurmountable but what's the obstacle? I really must be missing something significant. Anyway, the entire subject remains puzzling. Thanks and Signing off!

[Skittles]

4. I don't WANT to come together with racist, sexist, homophobic, xenophobic gun humpers

FUCK THEM

[ooky]

5. As long as we find a way to bring enough of the good people together to vote out enough of the bad

people, that will be sufficient for me.

[PatrickforO]

6. With the help of these kids, as a poster above me says, AND

with us showing up in record numbers at the polls this November, AND

with us insisting, INSISTING, on a reinstatement of net neutrality and a new Fairness Doctrine for the 21st Century.

That's how. Because when people all operate from the same set of facts, then we have policies that make sense. Oh, they might not be exactly what we want - our founders structured our government to allow for the vigorous debate and compromise that keep our republic alive. But they SHOULD be things we can all live with.

You know, maybe we needed this Trump presidency to unmask how crooked, unethical, ugly, dishonest and corrupt the Republican party has become. Lots of people whom, I suspect, sat out the last election, are wide awake now.

[BlueStater]

7. I don't WANT to come to together with them.

A national tragedy three times the size of 9/11 couldn't get me behind that digusting human being with the completely unworthy title of "President" or his racist, ass-brained followers.

[k2qb3]

8. Been thinking about this subject a lot.

The radical right and illiberal left are not a natural state of affairs.

Liberal and conservative are actually personality traits, and we actually need each other to keep us centered in the tao and have a functioning civilization. Liberal and conservative are not coherent political philosophies, and our political institutions are maladaptive.

It is not reasonable to believe that political disagreements are the result of moral failings, stupidity, or mental illness on the part of whoever disagrees with us. They may be in a specific individual, but if your worldview demands that you generalize that kind of thinking to say half of the population, you're probably missing something.

What is the purpose of a conservative political party other than obstruction? What outcome can there be besides incremental failure and compromised positions until the status quo becomes something you had no hand in shaping and no interest in conserving? What do conservatives become when they stop being conservative? Donald Trump apparently.

Progressivism is just as bad, for the same reasons, a century or so of beating your collective head against a wall isn't really conducive to the kind of thoughtful, peer-reviewed marketplace of ideas or selection pressures that result in progress.

Fundamentalism and post-modernism are two sides of the same pathology, they feed on each other, they turn people against evidence, truth, the scientific method itself and thereby their own values. That's how you end up with "conservatives" against nature, institutions and culture and "liberals" against civil rights, civil discourse, diversity and equality, and a complete inability to communicate effectively across paradigms.

We'd better stitch our culture together pretty soon, we're living in a critical moment in history and history is moving incredibly fast. Things could get away from us in a way that will make us wonder how we were so caught up in our differences we couldn't avoid it.

[Straw Man]

11. That might be ...

... the most cogent, eloquent, and enlightened thing I've read here (or anywhere) in a long, long, time. Thanks.

[sprinkleeninow]

19. I concur. Thoughtful post.

Only thing, it's been developing (devolving) for decades to the present. Undoing of it will not be 'microwave' quick. Ten mins. and done.

I'm still banking on Mueller and Team. After that, I dunno.

I will not voice some of my apprehensions aloud and so possibly speak them into a prophetical negative outcome.

[Exotica]

13. The Double Threat To Liberal Democracy

https://www.socialeurope.eu/double-threat-liberal-democracy

The crisis of liberal democracy is roundly decried today. Donald Trump’s presidency, the Brexit vote in the United Kingdom, and the electoral rise of other populists in Europe have underscored the threat posed by “illiberal democracy” – a kind of authoritarian politics featuring popular elections but little respect for the rule of law or the rights of minorities.

But fewer analysts have noted that illiberal democracy – or populism – is not the only political threat. Liberal democracy is also being undermined by a tendency to emphasize “liberal” at the expense of “democracy.” In this kind of politics, rulers are insulated from democratic accountability by a panoply of restraints that limit the range of policies they can deliver. Bureaucratic bodies, autonomous regulators, and independent courts set policies, or they are imposed from outside by the rules of the global economy.

In his new and important book The People vs. Democracy, the political theorist Yascha Mounk calls this type of regime – in apt symmetry with illiberal democracy – “undemocratic liberalism”. He notes that our political regimes have long stopped functioning like liberal democracies and increasingly look like undemocratic liberalism.

The European Union perhaps represents the apogee of this tendency. The establishment of a single market and monetary unification in the absence of political integration has required delegation of policy to technocratic bodies such as the European Commission, the European Central Bank, and the European Court of Justice. Decision-making increasingly takes place at considerable distance from the public. Even though Britain is not a member of the eurozone, the Brexiteers’ call to “take back control” captured the frustration many European voters feel.

snip

[Yupster]

10. I worry that we may end up looking like

Austria=Hungary 50 years from now.

It seems we are getting more tribal. In fact even saying "melting pot" is considered racist today. How do we :E-Plurabus Unum" then?

[Exotica]

12. We will not come together until an alien invasion

Even then I dont think it would last long.
The Republicans would cut a deal and become kapos

[struggle4progress]

14. Our side will accomplish it by having more friends and more fun than our enemies

[Kablooie]

16. Only if we are physically attacked by an outside force.

That's always been the greatest unifying force.

[BigmanPigman]

17. After I read a DU post a few weeks ago I realized that coming

together is almost impossible. I sent the article to my family and friends and they agreed. The differences are ingrained in then people for generations and will never be swayed. It is long but worth the read.
https://www.rawstory.com/2018/02/insider-explains-rural-christian-white-america-dark-terrifying-underbelly/

[CentralMass]

18. I have no optimism that things will get better.

[TreasonousBastard]

20. Somebody was asking that in 1861...

The answer wasn't pretty, but it worked.

[rainy]

21. When we have public funded elections

Take back our air waves and have short election periods and paper ballots. Money out of politics. No ad buys by pacs.

Most Americans agree with liberals but our politicians vote with their donors.

It’s all about MONEY.