A nation that elects a party or politician based on their dislike of the other side isn’t going to support a positive vision for a new America, they’re going to support whoever can whip them up in the greatest frenzy. All this dueling dualism does is create a perpetual tug-of-war between two sets of demagogues as we’ve seen in the last few decades of american politics.
This is the nature of demagoguery. It is a way of thinking designed only to tear down that which it considers evil and embraces any willing to join in the attack. No understanding, no mutual respect, no viewing your enemy as another human being who also wants to see a better world. No demagoguery is not debate or deliberative discourse. It is an angry mob looking for more torches and more victims.
The horrible thing about the Two Minutes Hate was not that one was obliged to act a part, but that it was impossible to avoid joining in. Within thirty seconds any pretence was always unnecessary. A hideous ecstasy of fear and vindictiveness, a desire to kill, to torture, to smash faces in with a sledge [...]
So knowing this and knowing that politics is serious business it seems almost self-evident that a great deal of political discussion will be not only unproductive but absurd.
July of last year a man named Jim Adkisson saw that a local Unitarian Universalist church had begun welcoming Gay, Lesbian, Bisexual, and Transgendered members of the community to come worship with them. He believed that homosexuality was an abomination and the tolerance of which was responsible for all manor of ills from floods to [...]
