Does anyone here REALLY believe the rift will heal?

Don't get me wrong here, I'll still work for Democratic Party Candidates and for Peace/Antiwar issues, but I am firmly convinced that the LEFT WING/RIGHT WING rift will never heal in the current incarnation of the country.

I lived through the travesty of Reagan and Bush 1, followed by the permanent sworn enmity of the Right because the Country didn't re-elect GHW Bush. The distance between us has become a chasm the size of the Grand Canyon, and it seems that no truce can be made.

I believe more strongly than ever that the country is on the verge of political suicide via factionalism, and there is not much of anything that will stop it. In fact, I think it's exactly what the NEOCONS want: if they can't have it all, they'll see it go up in flames.

but I think the neocons will be discredited and eight years from now 2/3 of the country will agree with Democratic positions on most issues.

Whether that means a new Democratic majority or a shift in party platforms to maintain a 50-50 split is another matter.

the NeoCons did push too far.

This is what happened in 1800... that led to the end of one political party

But yuo are right, you and I may be seeing 1858 as well... the dawn of the Civil War

That is the fork on the road we are at.

We will have one within the next 100 years, perhaps much sooner.

The Busheviks have already cast the die by embracing Nazi-style propaganda and demonization tactics.

They are Nazi Monsters. I once thought it possible that they were Americans of the Old Republic.

They have convinced me that they are Totalitarian MONSTERS and, yes, that will be the END of the American Experiment, if the Imperial Family and Fat Tony haven;t killed it yet and we just don;t know it because the corpse is still a little warm.

sentences say what will probably happen. And I lived through Reagan and Bush I and before. I've never seen it this bad. And, it's in my own family and among my friends. There are just things in politics that we can't talk about because the divide is so great. The country is torn apart and there's no commonality that gives a relief from the media and the Limbaugh type rhetoric. Scandals everywhere. Joe McCarthy's ghost riding the country. No, I've never seen it like this.

Quote from you:

I believe more strongly than ever that the country is on the verge of political suicide via factionalism, and there is not much of anything that will stop it. In fact, I think it's exactly what the NEOCONS want: if they can't have it all, they'll see it go up in flames.

The rift isn't just political. It's multidimensional - economic, race, religion, among them. Each of these have proved sufficient to cause wars. Together...well, I regard them as a dangerous mixture.

Still worse, there isn't any real interest in working out some mutually acceptable solution. Groups are truly, deeply angry. Moreover, more people feel alienated from the government at every level.

I'm not sure what will happen, or when - but I question whether we can continue along this path without very serious consequences.

I don't want to associate with them, I look at them and I WANT to help them, feel sorry for them. But I can't.

IT JUST DOESN'T WORK. Not anymore.

I look at them like they have a disease; not one that isn't their fault, like a psychological/psychiatric type illness: I see them like junkies. Buzzed on their own egos, hurting us all with the results of their dementia. Moral leprosy.

I don't care anymore if they reform; I'd rather they just went away. That's about the nicest way I can put it.

I resent them for making me feel this way: it goes against all I hold sacred. I hate them for making me hate.

"I hate them for making me hate"

That about sums it up for me too. I place most of it at the door of Limbaugh though. The relentless hate that has eminated from the radio for the last 12 years or so is what poisoned the country beyond repair.

they are too pathetic in their transparency. They hope they can do like last time around when the Dems decided to "let bygones be bygones" re the Attack clinton machine and the stolen election.

Later, they saw they were bamboozled borne out by Norquists' tasty quote that bipartisanship is date rape.

No...I don't see this rift healing under this president. Possibly under a unity ticket for Kerry. But still unlikely given the media's interest in keepint she shit stirred.

that the US would splinter as you fear. But Nixon was booted and things mellowed out. If Bush is not booted and the BFEE destroyed, I think civil war of some kind will result. Since I don't beleive for a minute that Bush will relinquish power then he will either rule as a veritable dictator or go down in flames. There is no way that this country could hold together under a dictatorship.

Not in Vietnam, but demonstrating against the war.

It wasn't the same at all. We never felt the Revolution was at hand.

I do now.

On edit: and I don't think we will hold together long anyway. Maybe it's our time.

and other prominent anti-war people and a number of them indicated they thought the US was going to degenerate into a nasty class struggle. Of course there was the Civil Rights movement that compounded the problem.

of those criminals is in prison for the rest of their
natural lives. Their supporters and appeasers have to
be thrown out of Washington with nothing but their shirts.
We have to take away everything they ever gained.
The whole structure has to be destroyed. The RW media
machine, the talk radio gnats, the liar pundits, the whole
damn thing has to be crushed.

Then the braindead numbskulls will have no one to feed
them their red meat, and they'll degenerate to
nothingness.

would go down in flames. Otherwise we might as well divide the states up now.

So far, not one person on this thread has less than 1000 posts.

I am somewhere near 5000, but that's not the point.

We are seasoned. We aren't acting out of hysteria. We have stood many charges against the concept of freedom. They have all been repelled.

But we seem to feel this could be it. That is something to really fear.

hmmmmm ?/?///

Just kidding.

I think that even if, as has been suggested, the Democratic Party achieves some sort of ascendancy in the coming decades, there will be enough folks "slighted" that the wound(s) will always be open ("The Freeps will rise again!" type of nonsense).

I don't think there will ever be any kind of unity because there is such hate on both sides.

I've heard comments like "the Clinton attack was payback for what the Dems did to Nixon". I have no idea if that's true or not, but it sounds like (forgive me if I'm making lite of this) the Hatfields and the McCoys. After many years, no one knew why they hated each other, they just did.

I have no idea what could ever fix this mess. Scary as it is, it usually takes a great tragedy to make people realize the things they were fighting over really aren't very important. As bad as 9/11 was, I think the people who live far from NY still look at it as something that couldn't happen where they live. I don't mean they don't care for the people of NY, it's just not their problem.

I truly hope I'm wrong, because I don't want to see a disaster anywhere in the US, but I guess we all have to ask ourselves, "What would it take for me to give up my hate?"

He HAD his uniting moment. He leveraged that to avenge his daddy.

between right wingers, who are working toward a fascist totalitarian country and are supporting an insane, unelected, lying, warmongering tyrant, and Americans that desire a free democracy.

It's kind of like Germany in the 1930's, when the the right wingers supported Hitler and his policies, and the social democrats opposed Hitler and his policies.

Those two groups couldn't get along either.

I doubt it, but Mitch is not part of Shrubs administration. He is however a very RW Pub.

Don't you see what I mean? It's hate for what the opposition stands for on both sides.

But if McConnel and other republicans agree with the Bu$h fascist agenda, then yes, I see what you mean.

I really do hate fascism. It is an imminent physical threat to me, my family, my friends, and my country.

Is there something wrong with that?

I would prefer to divide up the US and let the republicans have their own little police state.

The rest of us could then at least have a peaceful, sane, free country with a workable democracy, a publically owned free media, publically financed elections, an adequate health care and educational system, and a healthy environment. The only thing holding the US back from achieving this right now are republicans.

I think the moderates are DESPARATE for new leadership. But it is a silent desparation. They need 2 things, in my view:

1) A graceful way out from the guilt they feel about supporting this heinous administration. I think if they understand that there is no shame in being fooled, they can come out of this.

2) A BOLD leader. Kerry needs to talk tough, and lead the country out of this mess. The middle will not leave Bush for a weaker leader.

My two cents...

In Latin American countries this happens too...RW gets in power, closes down leftists newspapers. LW gets in power, arrests RW leaders. RW gets in power, kills LW leaders. LW gets in power, kills more and suspends elections. Civil war. Thousands dead. Needless death. Feel free to interchange LW for RW any time.

This is what I fear will happen to the US.

See: Chile, Argentina, Uruguay, Paraguay, Guatemala...the list goes on.

the only way for the rift to heal is for the ones who caused the rift to decide they want it healed.

The dissolution of the fairness doctrine in broadcasting opened up a whole can of worms, allowing RW hate radio to open up full bore on the American public. Now here we are, 15-16 years later with a large segment of the population that has been inundated by non-stop hate speech and propaganda to the point where they can't recognize the truth when it is laid bare before them.

They have been brainwashed by the korporate pravda hate machine to believe that we are awful monsters that hate America and want to turn their children into sexual deviants.

I can't see any healing of this rift until something changes in what the people on the rabid right choose to believe. As long as they are told we are their enemies, they will continue to believe it

And the forces that have pulled this party to the right of Nixon.

and i don't think it's as deep as many here think.

most people in america are not as "into politics" as those here at DU, or for that matter, those over at the free republic.

be honest, how many people that you know either smile politely when you get into your political ranting, or roll their eyes "here she goes..." happens to me all the time! ;-)

most people are not extreme. many people belong to one political party or another. at the end of the day, voters tend to base their vote on personal situation. life sucked for many during the reagan bush years. clinton got elected. life improved for many - clinton got re-elected. things were going well for many - gore got elected...so, then we got fucked, but i think you can see the voting trend.

if you just listen to people - not political obssessives, but people in general - they're not happy. i know of many who voted for bush that will absolutely not vote for him again. i've yet to hear someone who voted for gore say that they will vote for bush this time around. even the "get behind the -resident" after 9/11 never said they'd vote for him.

we're just bitter because we know too much, and they are just bitter... but neither of the sides, the left, or the right, as they are presented these days, represents most of the people in america.

There will be no compromise, no surrender. The right wing, as it is known today, will be destroyed.

It will be the end of a whole series of failed memes. It is already happening, they are destroying themselves - their ideology is being shown as corrupt and empty.

Fuck them. It is impossible to "heal" with an out-of-control criminal ideology. They will surrender. They will relent of their power. And then history will roll the fuck over them...

If Kerry gets in office the Republicans will attack him twice as hard as Clinton. They really want to drive the political divide, for some reason.

C'mon, man. There never has been some ideal golden era where we all got along without respect to our political differences. Look at our history, this is an era of relative calm! What we are dealing with today is nothing, especially with tools such as the internet available to everyone, allowing instant dissemination of information and opinion. If anything, the danger of national dissolution over political disagreement was greater in the past when information traveled slowly and foolish ideas couldn't be easily blasted away by the firehose of knowledge available to anyone with a modem.

We've had politicians kill each other in duels. Our media pretty much invented and precipitated the Spanish-American War. We had a Civil War that killed hundereds of thousands over a single issue. We survived the Great Depression, Vietnam, and the Civil Rights era. Not only did we survive, we thrived. Just because Uncle Bob won't come eat Thanksgiving at your house because he can't stand that you're a "damn hippie" doesn't mean that the "End of Life as we Know it" is bearing down on our fair nation. It means that Uncle Bob is a stubborn knucklehead, nothing more.

I think Patton hit on something when he said "All real Americans love to fight." He was only mistaken in his idea of the "fight," we really do like conflict, just not necessarily violent conflict. If we don't have something to struggle with one another about, we invent something. Europeans often complain about this. When they discuss things, they seek a consensus. When an American discusses an issue, we want to WIN. This aspect of our national character is part of why we have done as well as we have with respect to traditional indicators of growth, I think. We don't give up. OTOH, it gets on people's nerves sometimes and makes us seem more confronational and hostile than we really are. Politics is a natural avenue for these attributes to express themselves.

The political troubles we see today are simply an unusually powerful manifestation of this trend that has marked the people of the US since our foundation. It'll blow over. Being hard headed and loud mouthed is just our way.

This is all JMHO, o'course. :)