| These fringe groups are always going to be looking for things to get upset about. What we have to be careful with is lumping 40% of the country in with these groups and pushing the divide further. We can't make generalizations and say that anyone who downloaded Parler to see what a right wing platform was like is a white supremacist any more than we can say anyone who downloads Reddit to hear a left wing perspective is only there for /r/fatpeoplehate. There are very few ideas that can be invented and spread by a media personality without that idea already having a foothold. Unless you truly believe that 40% of the voting population are dumb mindless automatons. It's pretty condescending to anyone who considers themselves center right to be generalized like that. Due to the realities of the two party system most people are going to "fall in line" with the party that is closest to their fundamental principles. For center right this means small government, lower taxes, merit based incentives, law enforcement, etc. You're asking a lot to ask a conservative to switch sides when the other side is so far from these fundamentals. The same goes for republicans trying to convert democrats. Hard line ssues such as anti-abortion and "taxation is theft" are too much for center left people to handle. They're going to fall in line with whatever the Democrats are into at the time in order to make sure their fundamentals are upheld. Trump was a symptom. The seeds were already planted. Once that weed began to grow it was inconceivable to the left and center left that anyone who called themselves human could look past the rhetoric and the character defects in order to support their deeper fundamental principles. The left began to see these people as less than human and showed their opinion with every newsreel, tweet, and post. It was, understandably, their moral duty. The only choice for someone on the right is to abandon their principles or dig deeper. He can't be THAT bad right? The conservatives are locked in and the other side isn't offering any olive branches to non-humans. Both sides are then locked in a moral dilemma and the media is just fanning the flames. And then to top it all off during the reelection cycle we're forced to isolate and have our window to the world altered by bias confirming algorithms. There's no hope for unification under those conditions. So many differences can be overcome by two people sitting face to face and seeing each other as two humans with different ideas experiencing the exact same stimuli. I just hope we can get back there some day. |