Should we just embrace the divide?

Uh…perhaps we could embrace a shrug…

There are more “average” people than elite. In a democracy the number of votes matters. I’m not sure Roseanne is average, but she represents a large percentage anyway.

I think if you want to change minds you need to understand the people you are trying to sway. If you don’t give a shit, and just want to do your life, that’s fine with me, but don’t bitch and don’t be mean.

@JLeslie: That was sort of my reaction. At first, I agreed with and identified with his point of view — but then I was immediately bothered by the way he expressed it.

I find myself coming round to this point of view

@cookieman I am quite disgusted with how mean people are of late. The people who want power purposely scare the crap out of their followers to control them. We should not let fear manipulate us! I don’t mean people like the elitist described in the original post who just don’t want to be bothered, I mean the political and religious leaders. It’s like the dark ages and Salem witch trials all over again. Good God it’s just unbelievable to me.

I have always tried to understand the other side or at least not disrespect their right to believe what they want. I always tried to stay neutral because I hate conflict.

I can’t do that anymore. It’s exhausting. I won’t tolerate their intolerance and I won’t allow their ignorance to fill space in my head. I have a child to worry about. The beliefs from the side I don’t agree with want to harm my child, as well as other marginalized groups. I have been around enough of these people the past 8 years living in a very rural community and it has brought me down. It’s depressing.

I am happy to embrace the divide. These people aren’t changing.

I strongly disagree. Coastal elites are joined at the hip to those suffering inland and incessantly voting against their own interests.

Recently, I became friendly with someone in a dance class who I found out lives around the corner from me. She generously offered to hem a pair of pants for me, which she did. I’ve been taking her to Zumba with me, giving her a lift to class.

As I’ve been talking to her to get to know each other I’ve found out she’s a conservative, and rah rah for Trump. She even started babbling about Mexicans being criminals. Lol. She didn’t know yet my husband was Mexican. Now, she knows. She’s covered more than one topic: education, immigration, but just quickly skated over them.

I agreed with her where we have common ground, and I disagreed gently where we don’t agree, and I just listened at other times, and neither of us dwelled on politics in any of the conversations, moving on to other subjects.

Last time we were together she asked some general questions about immigration and paperwork. Maybe I have her thinking?

This Q seems targeted to whether the elites, let’s even say if the liberals, are over it and want to just go ahead and embrace the divide. What I’m wondering is how many of the right wingers feel the same way.

I’m hoping this new acquaintance of mine is confused right now, even if it’s just a little. She liked me, she assumed I thought like her, she even did me a favor, and she also said things I could have easily taken offense to (and I’ll add she is very religious, and I would think she was raised to keep quiet if she doesn’t have something nice to say) and now she has to reconcile perceiving me as a nice person with me not agreeing with her politically, and her even being sloppy about indirectly calling people with my husband’s national background criminals. Let her be confused. Maybe she will move a few inches in the right direction.

The author of that article is not a “coastal elite” but actually a pompous ass. The divide is a sickness because there is little practicality or truth in the extremes. It’s a disease caused when people do not think for themselves. I’m average, white and live in the heart of a southern red state. I see that same thing on the other side of the political spectrum. The extremes are talking the loudest and crowding out the majority who are in the center. I feel the divide worsens when young people get involved with politics that are already already polarized into “teams.” Playing on your own team is not something you see much with teenagers or twenty somethings.
I’m perfectly happy living a politically moderate, average life in the suburban south. Pretty damn good place to be, I’m thankfull to be so lucky to be honest.
I hope I never meet the jackass who wrote that

I’ve given up trying to learn what it’s like to live in the head of someone who doesn’t care whether sick people live or die, think gay and trans people are trash, think all the black folks getting shot by police got what was coming to them, think poor people are all just lazy and deserve their situation, think immigrants are evil/terrorists/job thieves, etc.

If you’re not that extreme I will still try to empathize with you and understand where you’re coming from. I will engage you in a good faith debate if you’re willing. But if you’re like what I described above, I basically consider you human garbage and do not care about your point of view. To be frank.

A friend went to a reunion in Dallas with three other high school friends this spring. They were four women who went to school together forty plus years ago and have gotten together every couple of years since then. They all grew up in a Texas town that had a population of 20,000 in the mid 70’s. One, my friend, still lives in town, two moved to the Dallas area and the fourth lives near Houston.
The topic eventually came around to Trump and all but my friend were ardent Trump supporters, even now. Voted for Trump, will continue to vote for him. According to my friend, they know he is not, in their words, “perfect” but he is pushing a socially conservative agenda so has their full support. Evidently the ends justify the means.
The conversation came to an abrupt end when my friend says she expressed her disbelief that her three friends could support (in her words) such a “total scumbag”. They moved onto less controversial topics.
I asked my friend what she though was the big difference between her and them. She said she had thought about it for a time afterwards wondering the same thing. Her conclusions were that because two were on their original marriage, the third was on her second, as is my friend, this was not a defining factor but all three were housewives, two had never worked outside the home, the third had for a time but no longer did, All three considered themselves very religious, followed a protestant faith and were active in their respective churches while my friend considered herself Christian but no longer attended church on a regular basis (her grandfather had been a preacher when she was growing up) but she thought the biggest difference was that she had worked overseas for several years and felt like it had broadened her point of view while the other three had never left Texas other than for vacations.
I thought this was an interesting point.

@Mariah “someone who doesn’t care whether sick people live or die, think gay and trans people are trash, think all the black folks getting shot by police got what was coming to them, think poor people are all just lazy and deserve their situation, think immigrants are evil/terrorists/job thieves, etc”

So… just how many of those people do you think there are?

I personally have never met more than a handfull that actually think that and I keep getting told I live where all these people are.

Dunno how to come up with any kind of country-wide estimate but I run into people who believe this shit on the internet every single day.

@ARE_you_kidding_me I feel that most Americans are rational except when stirred up for political reasons. Most would not even be thinking about much of the crap we see flying around were it not for that. Most people just want to live their lives as best they can and let others do the same. But there are always those few who are on the fringe and/or can benefit from strife. And, those of us who are in the former category don’t get the airplay because that is not newsworthy so all you see are the radical elements.
Of course, there are always those few who are broken (and cannot be fixed) and give the rest of us a bad name. That is my belief anyway..

And that would be a correct belief.
I know many liberals and also many conservatives. I have both in my immediate family. The differences are hard to tease out and are often insignificant. Neither group acts as the other accuses. It is a fringe minority making all the noise. I believe a good bit of it is deliberate. That kind of pot stirring relenquishes our power to work together and holds us hostage with hate. The divide is artificial. Most of what people believe about those on the other side simply is not true.

We have to care about those people, because we don’t really have a choice. If there’s anything at all to take from Trump’s election it is that while it may be difficult to bring these folks to “see the light”, their frustrations can wind up sinking us all. It’s also immoral to allow them to stew in their own juices. It’s necessary to battle over which version of the truth is better for us collectively, because we are collected, like it or not.

Still, @stanleybmanly with all the animosity it is difficult.

@ARE_you_kidding_me So… just how many of those people do you think there are? Come visit me where I live. I am literally surrounded by thousands of them, and I live in a small populated county.

You don’t always see people’s hatred until you are one of the people they hate.

Where? Are they religious? I can totally see pockets of religious people who hold some shitty beliefs but probably not all that are mentioned by @Mariah. It’s also not so much that they are shitty, they’re just not thinking and let their belief system decide for them. I’m in East Tennessee, serious redneck land and it’s pretty obvious that the vast majority don’t fit the shitty human bill. We have our religious nuts and ignorant hicks for sure but overall people are not hatefull. It’s a minority.
Taking time to try to understand where that hate comes from amost universally leads to “these people are ignorant, are not thinking or misunderstand” Is it right to hate them back for it?

When people want me dead, I hate them for it, and I don’t really care what grievance in their life turned them into a piece of shit. I don’t have the time or energy to stew over whether that’s right. I would have more time and energy if I didn’t have to fight for my right to be alive.

By the way, you don’t have to meet every single criteria in my list in order to be deemed garbage by yours truly.

So who exactly wants you dead?

I’ll answer that for you since I already know. Basically nobody. Nobody. You have twisted what people who are against proposed and current healthcare reform want. They want a system that does rob them of their own wealth. One that does not keep insurance or pharmaceutical companies fat. They want one that will work for people who need it (you) and does not reward negligence or fraud. They want it to be efficient, inexpensive and effective. They are afraid of committees deciding who gets to live or die. They are people like my father in law who is dying of cancer and is out of options yet he can afford to pay for alternative treatments when the insurance companies have written him off. They are people like me who don’t want things to stay as they are and are afraid a sudden health issue will bankrupt me or my family or fear they cannot afford the long-term care their 96 year old grandmother needs yet is out of money. Some of that fear is legit and some is not, regardless those people don’t “want you dead” no matter how you try to twist it.

Also considering people “garbage” because they hold some irrational position or belief without taking into consideration the circumstances is….childish and wrong.

The thing to note in all of this is that this divide can only grow worse. Now that the rich have figured out how to markedly increase productivity without steering any of the gains to workers, the wasting away of the middle class is all but a certainty. That’s right, this whole thing-ALL OF IT is about concentration if wealth.

@stanleybmanly at least we agree the the political system is a shell game run by the oligarchy. Awesome thing is… there is no need to fight them, just stop hating each other for no good reason. We do that and humanity wins.

But those on the wrong side of the current economic equation (and that is now probably MOST of us) have disjointed and multivaried ideas on the reasons for their plight. And you will notice that those reasons always involve shifting the blame to their fellows on the same side of the line. You know the banter: criminal illegals, welfare cheats, greedy teacher’s unions….

Frankly, like I said above, you don’t see much of the hatred until you’re the one that’s hated, and your reply illustrates that very nicely.

I have come across countless people who essentially think disabled people are a burden that the rest of society just puts up with. I have argued with people who said that the solution to our high healthcare costs are for there to be fewer sick people, and to let nature just take its course. I have argued with A LOT of people who say well gee it really is a shame that you can’t survive without my taxpayer dollars but it is theft for you to take them from me and so that shouldn’t be allowed.

The vast majority of people who are trying to kill me are doing it via ignorance; voting for shitty healthcare policy that would kill me if enacted, but not knowing enough about the complex system to understand that. I have less hatred for these people although they are still actively contributing to my death. When the stakes are life and death, people should put in at least a tiny bit of effort to become informed.

You can fuck right off with your judgment of me until you’ve walked in my shoes.

A large percentage of conservatives want the ACA repealed and do not care if a replacement is enacted. I’ve seen the polls. They would be fine with going back to the “old system.” This is a decision that would kill me within a few years. I would hit a lifetime cap on my insurance plan, I would be unable to afford the $60,000 a year that it takes to keep me alive out of my own pocket, I would stop being able to access my treatments, and I would bleed internally until I die.

When asked to explain their view, these conservatives often say something like “we ruined a system that was working perfectly well for the majority just to benefit a minority.” They want to go back to the system that was cheaper for them, fuck the people who the old system was killing. They want to trade my life for their money. That is hatred. That is wanting me dead, or at the very least, being coldly indifferent to my death.

@ARE_you_kidding_me Exactly what @Mariah said. People want to harm my transgender child. They aren’t getting any sympathy from me. They can fuck off. Many people are blind to the hate and intolerance until it directly affects them.

There is more than one kind of ignorance & the proof is shown in his words!!! I have met a lot of smart poor people & have met a lot of ignorant rich ones!!! Even Donald Trump was smart enough to kiss Rosie’s ignorant @ss since she was giving him her support & he loves ignorant voters. I doubt that I’ll ever meet Tim, so I don’t care how he feels. If he “chooses” to insert himself in my world, I think he should remove himself from his discomfort. I don’t have to agree with him in order to accept him in my world. I am smart enough to know how to agree to disagree!!! I know I won’t be showing up at one of his parties… not getting to know me will be HIS loss!!!

@ARE_you_kidding_me you are correct on who is feeling the hate. A close friend of mine went into a tirade over abortion & how it was killing innocent babies. That is…until her own 13 y/o daughter became pregnant & she wasn’t willing to raise another child & didn’t want the embarrassment of unwanted pregnancy. Suddenly, to protect her child, abortion was the ONLY answer to her dilemma Now, when the subject of abortion comes up in conversation, she just keeps her trap shut!!!

Yeah… if your only exposure to that line of thinking is the internet, right wing talking points and “polls” then you’re not getting the actual picture.
Only a complete moron does not want to change healthcare and I really don’t know any people personally who think that way. I do know a great number of people against the ACA but not for the reasons you think. They sure don’t want to “kill you”

Unfortunately @Aethelwine I’m willing to wager you really are seeing direct hate against your daughter. I’m willing to bet its origin is mostly religion. While you have to do whatever it takes to keep her safe combating hate with hate….

Yeah, I thought it was funny how so many people who were against Obamacare were for the Affordable Care Act. All depends on how you phrased the question.

nof funny haha but funny unbelievable

I would argue I’m getting a better picture than you are. When you say nobody who believes these things actually lives in your area, what do you mean? What percentage of people in your area have you actually spoken to about healthcare politics? You think you have a better sample size than a poll conducted by C-SPAN?

It mostly sounds like you don’t want to listen to my lived experiences and just want to deny that what I see every day doesn’t exist. You are not hearing me.

Disabled people rarely get discriminated against in the same way that, say, LGBTQ folk do. There are few people pointing their fingers at us telling us we are abominations. The hatred against us is insideous. Put it this way. My default state is dead. Without a system in place to support me I revert to my default. I cannot be independent. To you, someone saying “I don’t think I should have to subsidize someone else’s healthcare” doesn’t look like hatred. But this is an expression of support for a policy that would lead directly to my death. How then am I supposed to hear that as anything but an incitement of violence against me?

Until you feel the vulnerability that comes with having your very life depend on the cooperation of millions of people who do not give a shit about you you will never understand why I feel as scared, cornered, threatened, and yes, rageful as I do.

@ARE_you_kidding_me They don’t want to kill @Mariah, but many of them say things like, “nobody is left to die in America, if you go to an ER they have to treat you.” They really believe everyone gets treated, but it’s false. The ER only cares that you don’t die in the ER. If you have a chronic illness that needs medication, or if you need a surgery that can cure you, or make your life significantly better, that does not usually happen in an ER. Doctors and hospitals want to be paid. What that means is too many people suffer, or are undermedicated, or die. They really do die, or go blind, or live in more pain than necessary, or have more illness secondary to a primary illness that was not being fully treated.

I don’t think the people against socialized medicine hate other people, I think they don’t fully understand what really happens in the healthcare system. They believe a lot of the lines being told to them.

There are cancer drugs that are way too expensive for cancer patients that could save their lives. This goes for many illnesses and many drugs. When you turn your back on what healthcare means to the masses, you effectively kill people without means to medical care.

I’ll contradict myself a little and say that I’m annoyed also about paying a fortune for other people’s healthcare. In fact, I’m annoyed about paying a fortune for mine.

The biggest problem is the “fortune” it costs, because a lot of people are making a lot of money. If prices were more reasonable, maybe it wouldn’t be so hard to convince everyone it’s best for society to pay into a system that protects everyone’s health.

Any of us can become ill, or have a loved one become ill. It’s naive to feel safe from it. Also, people who have always had very comprehensive care through work have no idea what it’s like to not have it. Our health system actually discourages people wanting to break out in their own as entrepreneurs and small business.

My immediate family feels the way @Mariah described. They won’t say out loud that they would specifically rather see me dead than see the ACA go on, but when I pointed out to them that without the ACA I would literally not be able to get health insurance, and that the likelihood of my cancer recurring increases as I get older (currently the odds stand at about 50 percent) they shrugged and said (and I quote) “Oh, I’m sure it’s not like that.”

These people enjoy robust good health, one lives in Canada, one is very wealthy and has Medicare, and the other has excellent coverage through her work, and military benefits from her stint in the Armed Forces.

But they don’t want me to have any kind of coverage.

These are the people, just the folks hanging around in people’s lives, who don’t talk about it a lot with others, that are “trying to kill us”, as @Mariah says. One example.

@Mariah polls on cspan are not something I would even consider as reliable information. Unless you actually talk to people who are against the ACA and really drill down why then you are only getting part of the equation. I know it’s hard to get around “these people want me dead” when you are in a need based situation but it’s really not what is going on. Most people I know personally who are against it have many of the same fears that you have. Some of them want a single payer system, some want the corruption in the drug and insurance companies cleaned up. Some want practices like how countries can negotiate prices with drug companies yet it’s harder for the US to do so leading to drugs and devices being afordable in other parts of the world but not here. Generally people are wanting something better than the ACA and worry that it will inflate cost, limit access to care in the future and not be efficient. The people who are just yeah me f you are few and far between. Really. It’s not a binary issue. Why would’nt you want something better? You will not get that from the media, internet or in circles that only include liberal minded people.

@ARE_you_kidding_me I want single-payer. Those are not the people I have a problem with.

I have a problem with the people who DO exist despite the fact that you refuse to see them who literally just want to go back to what we had before the ACA because it was cheaper for them because they are healthy. I have a problem with the people who DO exist who are fine with what the Trump administration is doing to healthcare right now (weakening ACA regulations that protect people like with me as a cost-cutting measure). I have a problem with the people who DO exist whose primary goal with healthcare is to make it cheaper for healthy people, at the expense of sick people. The easiest way to lower costs for healthy people is to kick sick people out of the system as what used to happen before the ACA.

Terribly sorry that my experience with these people is all on the internet, but I live in Massachusetts so it’s kind of hard to find this flavor of shithead in person. Nonetheless I HAVE had conversations with LOTS of people (on the internet, which does not invalidate the existence of these conversations) where I have drilled down on why they hate the ACA and in many, many cases it is pure selfishness from people who are currently healthy and do not care to pay for those of us who are not.

Deny my life experience all you want. I know what I have seen, and the conversations I have had.

@Mariah, I live south of you in a very blue state (CT) and I have had theseonversations in person with some actual flesh and blood people. But I’m pretty sure that @ARE_you_kidding_me would negate those, also.

I scrolled through a comment thread on a CSPAN poll for about 45 seconds and found all these people who according to @ARE_you_kidding_me do not exist.

https://imgur.com/a/kRVkppG

Amazing how quickly some of those folks would change their tunes if they lost their work-provided insurance and got diagnosed. The whole “they have to treat you” thing doesn’t cover most problems.

There are not hordes of these people, they are few.
Web trolls and vocal extremes do not represent actual numbers in reality.

You have zero proof of your claim that these people are uncommon. Your sample size is “folks I’ve talked to.” I have polls, which you just keep hand-waving away. Those screenshots comprise some 30–40% of the comments I saw while scrolling through on CSPAN.

The fact that we’re electing politicians like Donald Trump who did not even have a plan for healthcare except to get rid of the ACA shows that a large percentage of people in this country do not give a fuck about my safety.

Donald Trump on healthcare: “I’ll replace ObamaCare with something terrific”
http://thehill.com/policy/healthcare/249697-trump-replace-obamacare-with-something-terrific

I’m done talking to you about this. Clearly you are not interested in hearing from people with different life experiences than yours. You will never listen to me.

I simply do not rely on the internet for that type of information which is often politically tainted and infected with mostly extreme views. I simply do not belive it’s either reliable or truly representitive of reality. I believe heart to heart conversations with actual people. This is quality, confirmed and untainted data. Here in the suburban south among my friends, neighbors, family and coworkers it is indeed an uncommon view to desire to revert back to the way things were.

Quality, confirmed, and untainted data with a sample size of 5.

Good convo pal.

A wee bit more than that.
We will not see eye to eye apparently. If your view of people who don’t think like you comes from the sources you cite you will never really understand.

Cool. Still not a sample that is sufficient to make claims about how common or uncommon any given viewpoint is across the entire US.

I’ve heard the type of talk that @Mariah describes with my own ears from people who live in my community. I think @Mariah clearly understands what she is up against. She lives it.

It really is a tragedy that at this late date universal healthcare remains a progressive fringe issue. It makes you wonder just why it is that so many goals on the conservative agenda are about reducing this country to conditions defining 3rd world places. And you gotta notice that the places most eagerly embracing that agenda are those already bordering on 3rd world status.

This is how pathetic we are. https://www.pgpf.org/chart-archive/0011_health-outcomes