Quote Originally Posted by AmericanPride View Post
What's "good policy for the county" is not always straightforward.
This I think is one of the core truths that's so often lost in polarized political discourse. The guy who disagrees with you is not necessarily a shill for "the 1%", "the commies", "the immigrants", or anything else. He's probably just a guy who has the same basic goals you do, just a different idea of how to get there. What polarized political discourse loses is the reality that no faction has "right" or "truth" on their side: all of them have a piece of it, and a workable solution is best achieved by compromise. The more the discourse polarizes, the more we see people retreating into a shell of "I'm right, they're wrong", and reaching the conclusion that "they" are not just other Americans with different opinions, but representatives of some malign external force. That's when fear and hate come into it, and where fear and hate go, violence follows in short order.

I don't see any of this heading toward revolution or insurgency at this point, but individuals flying off the handle and making a mess... I'm guessing we'll see more of that.