A different notion of Democracy

[Mythsaje]

I once heard/read a story about the first contact between Americans and Hopi people where democracy was discussed, as practiced by the Americans, and as practiced by the Hopi. Upon hearing of the American way, the Hopi asked "but what about the minority views? What do they get from society for participating? Would not a functioning democracy need to hear and take into consideration all points of view so that no one is left out of the decision-making process?"

It actually speaks well of Obama and the Democrats in Congress for wanting the minority Republican view to have a voice and a vote in the nation we're building. It's not, as we can all recall, anything they considered worthy of consideration when THEY were the "majority" party.

We--Liberals, Democrats, etc...--practice a more inclusive brand of Democracy than they do. We're willing to allow concessions to people who not only don't look like us, worship like us, talk like us, but also those who don't think like us, so that everyone might get something out of the process.

Republicans--not so much.

We can embrace ideas different than our own, take them into us and try to figure out if they have any merit, and, if not, we reject them. This is not a weakness. We can see things from the perspective of other people. This is also not a weakness.

If we have a weakness, it's too much of a tendency to give people like them the benefit of the doubt. We like to see the best in things, but ignore the patterns of behavior that suggest trouble to come. We may give a few too many chances.

How many times does the G.O.P. and its lackeys need to stab us, and the American people, in the back before we let it be known we're not going to take it any longer. If their leadership is actually talking about violent revolt, and it sounds like they are, they have to know what will come of it. What is it they'll think they'll gain if one of their followers does something unthinkable? Again?

For eight years a man we all despised held the highest office in the land and, despite the seriousness of two wars, torture, and so many other grievances we held against him and his administration, no one here seriously talked about armed revolt. Remarks were made about defense, but let's not pretend that it's the same thing at all. The "bullet box" folks aren't talking about defense, they're talking about the thing often called "the best defense."

The irony is that a revolt on the left would involve our best and brightest, for they would be the ones that best understood the necessity. On the right, however, it would involve their worst and dimmest, for only they would be stupid enough to kill in a war against people who set out to save them.

It's been posted her many times how a Conservative's brain chemistry is so different than ours. Maybe we should stop treating them as though we believe our arguments will do any good. The only thing they're capable of understanding is force and the threat of force. That's their language.

We speak nuance, they speak dichotomy--black and white, good and evil, us vs. them.

We, unfortunately, understand that us = them in another context and its really just us vs. us. The "them" are the people holding the strings, the ones who treat us all like pawns on a chessboard. And they're a different breed altogether. They don't believe health care reform is evil and "socialism." They just believe that it'll cost them money.

And they can convince enough of our representatives to give us a great deal of grief in the process. They're fighting a war--we're just trying to make the country work.

How's that for a failure to communicate?

[vadawg]

1. not sure what you are advocating here, i dont see any differences between the sides that we dont see

in other areas of life, whether you are a dog person or cat person, religious or non, makes no difference we are all different in our views and sometimes those views are strong enough that people will act on them and fight, not sure how you envisage stopping half the country from disagreeing with you.

[Mythsaje]

2. The only way I've found to reach them

is one on one. By first getting them to see you as a person rather than as a dreaded "liberal." And then by introducing ideas slowly over time. Getting them to agree to small things and then helping them realize there are larger issues attached to those small things.

It's not often successful, but considering that a lot of people vote Repug out of reflex, out of belief in their "personal responsibility" and "family values" crap, just talking with people can move more folks than one might think. You just have to find their lever and move it.

On the large scale, the democrats in congress need to counter them effectively where they can be heard. And that counts also for countering the "blue dogs" and their nonsense too. The way to counter speech is with more speech. Or so I've heard.

[zeemike]

3. It is kind of like Pavlov's dogs.

you ring a bell and the dogs salivate.
And they have been trained to do that by the media that feeds them.
Now all they have to do is ring the bell and call something or someone communist, socialist or anti American and the response is predictable.