You misunderstand my stance Squig , I'm all for letting it collapse of it's own abusive weight and rebuilding from the rubble.
Your stance within the above is great in theory , but I have zero confidence in it ever happening until the entire Lobby system is removed and our elected representatives once again serve *the people* instead of their pet corporate interests and their own bottom line.
I say that confidence is everything, and that the republican party (and christians) have every confidence that they will be successful and are on the side of right (no pun intended). This is a more powerful thing than I think you are giving credit to. America will not collapse under its own weight for some time.
I TOTALLY AGREE with you idea that representatives should represent the people--and that they don't now. I think, in fact, that is the biggest problem we have. It used to be a public service to be a politician--men who did that had made their fortunes and run their races. They really did do it for the people, for a LONG time in this country--and that's how we became so great.
I don't think we'll get back there by saying fuck it.
I think the dems have a better record on:
1. Intents to reduce lobbying (and many support destroying the practice in its entirety--find me a republican with this position who would
actually VOTE YES on a bill that ended it. You won't have any problem finding a few who claim they would).
2. Restoring politics as a public service (something I don't think I've ever even heard a republican mention--they essentially turned politics into a career to begin with.
3. Thinking about things critically--even when they get it wrong, at least it's not coming from some ideology driven by a thousands of years old book written by what we would see as fucking cavemen today if they walked among us.
Number 3 is the most important to me, because I believe it leads to 1 and 2. Republicans are driven by fear of hell, democrats tend to think in larger pictures than this--and there is actually a plethora of
science to back this up. The results of all these studies are clear. Liberals have as much as 25% more brain mass in the area of the brain which controls complex thinking and understanding, and as much as 25% less brain mass in the area of the brain controlling responses to fear and threats (firmly settled in the "emotional center" of the brain).
This was something that I had
long believed without any type of proof. It was clear to me that people don't just come by these feelings merely by experience. If they did I'd be calling Obama O'bummer myself and waving a Mitt Romney flag around. I can't name a person in my family (over 90 people who I actually know and see) that isn't a hardcore right wing republican.
When I read this study (the actual thing, not the shitty news reports of it by non-scientists)--I was literally jumping around my apartment.
I printed out 500 copies and "leafleted" my entire campus.
Was a day of great realization for me.
These people aren't just wrong, they're actually
different. By some societal standards, depending on how you look at it, you might even say they are crazy. The difference in a schizophrenic's brain is not much bigger than the differences here.
Of course this makes a ton of sense to me, because I actually find them crazy.
A question I come upon more and more, though, is what the fuck does a person like you's brain look like by comparison. Now that'd be an interesting study. I'd expect to find you pretty much a hybrid. The best and worst of both.
The lack of direction the democrats have, and the absolute certainty of a perceived threat that republicans have. The intelligence and capability to parse complex things, and reason well--but the predisposition to seeing threats where none exist. Of course I have no idea, but this is just what I'd expect as the behavior seems to model what a brain like this would suggest might happen.
All guessing, but I think it'd be a cool hypothesis to test. Feel like jumping in an fMRI?
